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<text> <title> (40 Elect) Democrats:Mystery Story </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1940 Election </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> July 22, 1940 CAMPAIGN Mystery Story </hdr> <body> Thousands of visiting Democrats and a few donkeys appeared in Chicago last week. Most of the donkeys (on the hoof and on signs) were soon removed. Exactly why, delegates to the Democratic Party's 28th National Convention had to judge for themselves: unexplained mysteries were the rule in Chicago. On a wall of the Convention's vast (21,000 seats) Chicago Stadium, a huge picture of a donkey was replaced by a spotlighted, grisly sketch of Franklin Roosevelt. Assiduously distributed were 500,000 campaign buttons, adorned not by a donkey but by a bright red cock-o'- the-walk and the legend: "Just Roosevelt." Observers said they had never seen such a convention. The Republicans had been leaderless; the Democrats had been bossed into apathy. They were there for just one purpose, and they knew it--to nominate Franklin D. Roosevelt. Those who were not on the Democratic payroll made no secret of their discontent. One delegate brought a dash of vigor and verve along with him. At otherwise abortive hearings on the Party platform (to all intents it was written at the White House), San Antonio's gobliny Mayor Maury Maverick prescribed for the Democratic Party "that aggressive spirit which has made it great." He evoked the Mavericks who pioneered in Texas: "They came praying to God and shootin' Indians. That's the way this country was built and it's the way it's got to be kept alive." One night--Maury Maverick continued--his wife found him praying, said she was "glad that you are praying for our boy." "I'm sorry to disappoint you, honey," the mayor quoted himself, "but I'm not praying for our boy. I'm praying for the British Navy and the Bank of England." But even Maury Maverick succumbed to the pall that hung over Chicago. Said he, surveying the lacklustre scenes at the Stevens hotel ("World's Greatest"), where the National Committee was quartered: "This convention is like a mystery story in which everybody knows the answer to the mystery." After eight years of power, the Democratic Party still had strength. What was lacking as the convention opened in Chicago was an outlet. Silent at the White House, remote on the Potomac, Franklin Roosevelt had dammed the only outlet, presumably would open it in his own good time. Some of his victims cursed the baffling indignity of their position; a few cursed the man who had created and preserved it, simply by letting them assume instead of know that they were there to ratify Nomination III. Despite all the traditional hocus-pocus of bands and bunting, platform committees and "keynote" oratory, the forms and panoply had no more meaning than they had had at Philadelphia, before Wendell Willkie and his freshening forces swept the Republicans' fog away. To the Convention's keynoter, Alabama's William Brockman Bankhead, the 1940 campaign seemed to be nothing more than a necessary footnote. Said he: "The minds of the American people are now so deeply engrossed in...the preservation of our established order of life and institutions, that they will have no tolerance for the superficial banalities of politics. An election must be held, but...the major objective of both parties must be unity and solidarity of purpose...." Orator Bankhead's best and strongest words were reserved for Foreign Policy (his hearers noted that he jointly credited Franklin Roosevelt and Cordell Hull with formulating and executing a sound policy). He quoted the President's "we will not send our men to take part in European wars" and only by inference did he mention, much less defend, U.S. aid to the Allies and then to Great Britain. <list> <l>July 29, 1940</l> <l>PRESIDENCY</l> <l>A Tradition Ends</l> </list> Midnight. A few lights gleamed in the shadowy expanse of the White House. President Roosevelt made his way to a dungeon-like room in the basement that was once used for diplomatic receptions and is now used for radio broadcasts. He sat at a table facing microphones and a small group of friends and White House employes. The night was hot, with the dull, moist heat of Washington midsummer that settles like a tangible weight on the city. The President took off his coat and in a 32-minute speech accepted the Democratic nomination for a Third Term. His was a difficult task. On him lay the responsibility that no other President had faced--that of explaining why he believed it wise and necessary to break a tradition that had lasted through 151 turbulent years of U.S. political life. The step that Washington had refused to take he was at the point of taking; the rejection of the Third Term that Jefferson had elevated into a principle of government he was now prepared to challenge. His task was to answer the historic objections to the Third Term--the tenet of democracy which holds that the great reservoir of democratically trained citizens can always yield new leaders; that one danger of democracy is that an ambitious Executive may use the power of his office to keep himself in power. As he sat in the silent White House room, his words carrying to a silent meeting of the Democratic Convention in Chicago, his task was also to make it clear, if clear he could make it, why these beliefs were no longer valid, why these dangers were no longer real, and why the objections that had been made to the Third Term for other Presidents did not apply to him. With these great questions there were minor ones: Silence. Years ago Washington correspondents began pressing President Roosevelt about his Third Term intentions, were put off with answers that were sometimes jovial, often sarcastic. The President had told his questioners to put on the dunce cap, to stand in the corner, to cease speculating, to drop sophomoric queries, that his intentions would be revealed at a time and place of his own choosing. Last week, as the Democratic Convention got under way, veteran, grey-haired Correspondent Merwin Browne asked at a press conference, "I would like to ask Mr. President, in all honesty and sincerity, why you have refrained from making known your position on the Third Term issue." Correspondent Browne had written and rewritten his question so that it would not provoke a wisecracking answer; had memorized it so that he would not fumble the asking. Replied the President: let the newspapermen listen to the Convention broadcast; they would hear Senator Barkley make an announcement for the President when the Convention's permanent organization was completed. He broke into loud laughter as they rushed off with the sensational news that the secret was out. But the Presidential message that night merely said the President was not asking for the office: "The President never had, and has not today, any desire or purpose to continue in the office of President, to be a candidate for that office, or to be nominated by the Convention for that office." Confusion. If he could answer the people, answer the correspondents, there remained the small but important problem of answering the Democratic National Convention. National Defense and international affairs kept him in Washington but he was not too busy to follow the Convention day & night by radio. Even in his office he kept a gadget pocket radio open on his desk. When the Convention sank into confusion after its spiritless opening, he talked long with Harry Hopkins in Chicago, used the direct wire from the White House to confer long with Senators Byrnes and Barkley. When Alabama's Lister Hill, with lamenting tremolos and quaverollos in his voice, placed the name of Franklin Roosevelt in nomination, no sign or word betrayed Franklin Roosevelt's emotion. But Steve Early, an accurate barometer of the President's political feelings, groaned. While the candidacies of Jim Farley, Jack Garner and Millard Tydings ran their brief, unhappy course, while the anti-Third Term resolution was booed to the flag-draped rafters, while delegation after delegation said its say for Franklin Roosevelt, the President played host to a radio party of friends and trusted helpers. In the historic study that is saturated with the memories of critical decisions, he sat attentive beneath a painting of John Paul Jones. When, on the first ballot, he was for the third time nominated for President, he sent word to the silent, suspicious reporters that he would have nothing to say. Not, added Steve Early, "until he has received official notification of his nomination; that is customary and he would like to adhere to custom." It was 2:15 a.m.; the President went to bed. Delay. If he could answer the people, the press, the Convention, there remained the problem of answering the Democratic Party that was going into a campaign in which it would be unseemly for the President to take an active part. From a dimly lighted, peach-colored telephone booth in the reception room of Chicago's Blackstone Hotel, Senator James Byrnes called the White House, formally informed President Roosevelt that he was the Democratic nominee. All day in Washington the White House remained silent except for a statement that the President would address the Convention after a Vice-Presidential nominee had been selected. But as the night session grew bitter, as boos greeted Henry Wallace as the President's choice for a running mate, as balloting dragged on toward midnight, another word was given--that the speech would be canceled or postponed if Wallace lost the first ballot. At eight minutes after midnight Wallace was nominated; the lights went out in the Chicago Stadium except for the spotlights glaring on a grisly, grey painting of President Roosevelt; at 12:20 a.m. C.D.S.T. the President began to speak. Vice- Presidential revolt had cut his audience--it was 1:20 E.D.S.T. in New York; 10:20 in Denver; 9:20 in the Pacific Coast cities. It was the nocturnal life of the U.S. that caught his words and their intonation--the taxi drivers, the sleepless passengers in de luxe trains, the patrons of bars and restaurants--most workmen and farmers were long since asleep. Answer. In a melancholy, persuasive voice that sometimes grew emotional, Franklin Roosevelt told of his reasons for accepting the nomination: "It is with a very full heart that I speak tonight.... "When, in 1936, I was chosen by the voters for a second time as President, it was my firm intention to turn over the responsibilities of government to other hands at the end of my term. That conviction remained with me.... "During the spring of 1939 world events made it clear...that a great war in Europe had become...a probability.... "When the conflict first broke out last September it was still my intention to announce clearly and simply..that under no conditions would I accept reelection.... "It soon became evident, however, that such a public statement on my part would be unwise from the point of view of sheer public interest.... "It was also my obvious duty to maintain to the utmost the influence of this mighty nation in our effort to prevent the spread of war, and to sustain, by all legal means, those governments threatened by other governments which had rejected the principles of democracy.... "The normal conditions under which I would have made public declaration of my personal desires were gone. "Thinking solely of the national good and of the international scene, I came to the reluctant conclusion that such declaration should not be made before the National Convention. It was accordingly made to you within an hour after the permanent organization of the Convention." But, said the President, the real reason he had accepted was that the country needed every citizen: now it was up to the electorate to say whether or not be had made the right choice. "During the past few months, with due congressional approval, we have been taking steps to implement the total defense of America. I cannot forget that in carrying out this program I have drafted into the service of the nation many men and women...calling them suddenly from their homes and their businesses.... Regardless of party, regardless of personal convenience, they came--they answered the call. Every single one of them, with one exception has come to Washington to serve. (Presumably Alf Landon, who was reported to have refused a Cabinet post unless the President rejected the Third Term.) "...But they alone could not be enough to meet the needs of the times.... "...Some form of selection by draft is as necessary and as fair today as it was in 1917 and 1918.... "Lying awake, as I have on many nights, I have asked myself whether I have the right, as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, to call on men and women to serve their country or to train themselves to serve and, at the same time, decline to serve my country in my own personal capacity if I am called upon to do so by the people of my country." Thus President Roosevelt gave his reason both for accepting and for having kept silent as to whether he would or would not accept. The melancholy that had pervaded his words about his desire to return to private life turned into sternness as he spoke of the issues of the conflict: "It is a revolution imposed by force of arms which threatens all men everywhere. It is a revolution which proposes not to set men free, but to reduce them to slavery.... In the face of the danger which confronts our tie, no individual retains, or can hope to retain, the right of personal choice which free men enjoy in times of peace." Only the people, said the President, can draft a President "If such a draft should be made upon me, I say, in the utmost simplicity, I will, with God's help, continue to serve with the best of my ability and with the fullness of my strength." On the grounds that an answer was necessary to the world the President based his case. He blasted at appeasers ("I do not recant the sentiments of sympathy with all free peoples resisting such aggression."). He gave the Convention a promise about his personal help in the campaign: "I shall not have the time or the inclination to engage in purely political debate. But I shall never be loath to call the attention of the nation to...falsifications of fact which are sometimes made by political candidates." He gave the Democratic Party a talking point: "If our own Government passes to other hands next January--untried hands, inexperienced hands--we can merely hope and pray that they will not substitute appeasement...." But he spoke most clearly and firmly in his denunciations of tyranny and of the issue facing the U.S. in a world at war. "We face one of the great choices of history.... It is the continuance of civilization as we knew it versus the ultimate destruction of all we have held dear--religion against Godlessness; the ideal of justice against the practice of force moral decency versus the firing squad...." So the 32nd President scrapped the Third Term tradition. Few who heard his acceptance speech did not believe that before doing so he had convinced himself that his decision was for the best interests of the nation. If in the coming campaign voters are also convinced, the tradition will be scrapped for good; if not, it will be Franklin Roosevelt who is scrapped. CAMPAIGN By Acclamation The thin man stood by the window, fingering a cigaret, inhaling smoke steadily in long, deep drags, his hot brown eyes staring across Michigan Boulevard's river of traffic, across the concrete esplanade that bridges the railroad tracks, and out to the blue peace of Lake Michigan. The thin man's thoughtful eyes were tired, his scanty hair disordered on his pallid skull. His bony shoulders drooped like a weary farmer's, his little paunch sagged in the baggy white trousers that flapped inches short of his ankles. Harry Hopkins was tired, but he was happy, happy as he could be. Constantly he smiled; often his short barking laugh broke out. The long, tortuous road to a Third Term was nearly past its next-to-last milestone; the Democratic Convention was being held in his bedroom. The way to Harry Hopkins was well known to every Term III Democrat: it traversed the plush gloom and sombre elegance of the old red-brick Blackstone Hotel; down the red-carpeted marble corridors to a spacious sitting room of candy-striped chairs, a crystal chandelier, a plumed, bustled lady of the English Regency, framed in the pink-&-gilt fireplace, delicately offering all comers a symbolic prize--a prickly rose. In this room operated dapper young Vic Sholis, Hopkins' secretary, and soft- spoken David K. Niles, the Janizariat's undercover man, who engineered the biggest financial coup of the 1936 campaign by wangling $500,000 out of John L. Lewis' United Mine Workers. Off the sitting room was the real goal of the Democrats who trod the path of Term III, a tan-walled bedroom with green-spread twin beds, a screen, a telephone wire direct to the White House. That very suite (308-09) was historic before Harry Hopkins' advent: there, about 2 a.m. on the morning of June 12, 1920, a sweating, anxious group of G.O.P. old Guardsmen had chosen to nominate romanesque Warren Gamaliel Harding, fulfilling Harry Daugherty's prophecy and indelibly stamping into the language a special meaning for his phrase: "...smoke-filled room." Treading in such hallowed footsteps came the Democrats last week. Most frequent caller was Chicago's Mayor Edward J. Kelly, smirking in gentle good will, nodding approval as his gorilla- shaped body-guards tipped photographers off-balance as fast as they could get set for a picture. Almost as often came bald Frank C. Walker, oldtime White house adviser, white-haired Leo Crowley, FDIC Chairman who became chairman of Standard Gas & Electric (and is the New Dealers' 1942 hopeful for the Wisconsin Governorship); Jersey City's high-collared Mayor Frank Hague; and a long procession of men who had been tentatively promised the Vice-Presidency. Two men rushed in & out of the bedroom without knocking: South Carolina's Senator Jimmy Byrnes, foxy, mellow, casual; Florida's Senator Claude Pepper, the eloquent, scarlet-faced swamplands slicker--both 100%ers. Big & little Democrats came in hordes, some humble like San Antonio's globular Maury Maverick (who came out saying "I didn't sit down--a small-time politician like me wouldn't dare"), some sardonic, like massive Federal Lender Jesse H. Jones, who lounged about, cracking hard Texas jokes, made no attempt to consult with the new Field Marshal of the Democratic Party. 100% or Nothing. The distinction that was made between these visitors was clear, deliberate, sometimes purposely cruel. Only 100% Roosevelt Democrats were welcome. The shock to party oldsters was frightful. Hundreds on hundreds of them went to Chicago personally acquainted with only one nationally-known Democrat, Jim Farley. Now they mobbed Big Jim in elevators, lobbies, on the street, stopping his car, clutching his hands, his clothes asking him puzzled questions. But what Jim Farley knew, he had pledged not to tell. And beyond that one thing he knew nothing. Scratching their heads, perplexed, anxious, the hordes went to the Hopkins headquarters. There they got rough treatment. Not a single post-Convention promise was made to them, and only one pledge was exacted from them: unquestioning obedience to the New Dealers. By Monday night even the blindest party hack could see what had happened. For the first time since 1932 Franklin Roosevelt was in absolute command of the party he had raised from a 15,000,000-vote low (1928) to a 27,000,000-vote top (1936). The purge that had failed in 1938 was being carried through in 1940. Two years ago Franklin Roosevelt had at last begun to carry out a pledge made to his intimates in 1932: to force the Democratic Party to become the liberal party of the U.S. Many a delegate had no objection to this aim, but they had many an objection to Harry Hopkins. Still, it was Hopkins or nothing. Some got drunk, some went home (one of these was Virginia's apple-cheeked apple grower, Senator Harry Flood Byrd). But most went around to Hopkins' headquarters, there meekly, glumly, sadly or rebelliously surrendered. Over their heads the shrewd, cool Secretary of Commerce held one awful threat: one false move out of the convention and your only candidate won't run. Then where are you? Griping, mutinous, sore, united only in the fear that the party would be left without its one big vote-getter, the professionals grumbled as they went to Chicago's Stadium on the first night, to sit on the red-painted chairs in the vast arena, hear the old Hamlet of the House, Speaker William B. Bankhead, elocute his meandering way through half an hour of the corniest Southern oratory most of them had ever heard. By the second day their discontent began to take an ugly turn. The delegates didn't know what they were going to do, but were determined to do something. Harry Hopkins, conferring endlessly, smiled a satisfied smile. He was now certain of 900 delegates out of 1,100; John Nance Garner's career needed only a suitable monument; Montana's Burton K. Wheeler had been bought off ten days before by personal promise from Franklin Roosevelt that the foreign-policy plank would be as isolationist as Mr. Wheeler. Maryland's Millard Tydings was stubborn but negligible. There remained only big Jim Farley. What Harry Hopkins & Co. wanted was a real draft: nomination by actual acclamation. Failing this, the Janizariat wanted a nomination by apparent acclamation. But Mr. Farley stood solidly in the way, and no nomination opposed by the only Democrat beloved from end to end of the party could be made to seem unanimous. Demonstrations. A quick stroke was decided on. At 4:20 p.m. E.S.T., the Convention actually began. Mr. Roosevelt told his press conference to listen to the radio that evening, as Kentucky's Alben Barkley would read the Convention a message from the White House. This was the first real news out of the Convention, and it came from Washington. By 6:30 p.m. Columnist Robert Kintner and Newshawk Turner Catledge of the New York Times had seen the message. Word quickly spread--and by the time bumble-tumble Mr. Barkley began bellowing at 9 p.m. C.D.S.T., only galleryites and radio listeners wondered what he was going to say. The Hopkins strategy was simple. Delay seemed to be growing dangerous, so, doubtedly reflect that they ought to be sitting under shade trees dreaming just for the fun of dreaming. He has said: "..I believe that most of us, once the opportunity is afforded, will discover within ourselves a variety of stimulating and pleasant things to do." He has listed dreaming as one of the worth-while occupations. To Henry Wallace, campaigning in nightmarish 1940 will not be one of the pleasant things to do. The Voice of the Convention Alben Barkley's dull roar died away. In its stead, for a long moment during the Democratic Convention last week, there was only the manifold murmur of the crowd in the Chicago stadium. The seating, shuffling, staring thousands had just heard Franklin Roosevelt's inconclusive message that he could be had, wondered what would happen next. Suddenly the loud-speakers clustered above the delegates came alive. A voice thundered: We want Roosevelt! The delegates on the floor, the thousands stacked in the galleries began to stir, here & there to cry with The Voice: We want Roosevelt! The Voice continued, for 45 minutes, intermittently sustained a sonorous tom-tom chant: The Party wants Roosevelt! New Jersey wants Roosevelt! The world needs Roosevelt! Everybody wants Roosevelt! The Voice which thus lifted delegates and spectators from apathy into their first big, draft-Roosevelt demonstration belonged neither to Alben Barkley, to the People, nor to God. Politically it belonged to Chicago Bosses Ed Kelly and Pat Nash: technically, to their Superintendent of Sewers Thomas D. ("for Democrat") Garry. Leathery, pot-bellied Tom Garry was the Kelly-Nash henchman who had charge of Stadium decorations. By prearrangement, he also had an electrical pipe line to the loud-speaker circuit, which was supposed to be controlled exclusively from the convention rostrum. In the hour of his triumph last week he was ensconced in a tiny basement room, where the amplifier circuits were centred. Six times he ran from "the catacombs" to Mayor Kelly's box and up into the galleries to survey the milling, parading, shouting results of his tongue work, then dashed back to his microphone. "It was a job right up my alley," said Tom Garry next day, beaming through his bifocal glasses and stroking his green plaid jacket. "I figured out a lot of my own angles." Tom Garry went into politics at the age of 12, when he rang doorbells for his father, who was an alderman in Chicago's Eighth Ward. He also learned to lay brick (and still carries a union card), but for more than 30 years Chicago's brand of politics has been his business. Along with other Sanitary District employes he was once indicted for general conspiracy, was never tried. He has been Superintendent of Sewers three years, gets $6,000 a year. Says contented Tom Garry: "People in politics are the biggest chumps in the world. Only one out of 20,000 makes a living out of it. I'm just an ordinary lug who loves the game of politics." Tom Garry has a comfortable apartment on Chicago's West Side, a wife, four daughters (three are married). His great day last week was also Mrs. Garry's birthday, the first in 33 years when he had failed to give her a party. "But she's a good pal," said The Voice, "and sees the convention is more important.... Outside of my wife, my hobby is Mayor Kelly and Pat Nash. They're the greatest humanitarians in the world. They're the nuts." Proud of his 3,800 miles of sewers, his 300,000 manholes and catch basins is Tom Garry. And he has his own way of emphasizing their (and his) importance to Chicago. "First thing when you get up in the morning," says Tom Garry, "you come in and see me. You don't know it, but that's me you're visiting." </body> </article> </text>