Roosevelt & Hopkins: Every Day

I'm about to let go and take this book back to its home in the library.  It's a first edition of Robert Sherwood's Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History.  It's not everybody's idea of a great read, not at more than 950 pages with notes.  And it basically covers only the years of World War II, though there's biographical material and material about the Depression early on.  Although a playwright, Sherwood was also a writer and adviser for FDR, and he witnessed this history in the White House.  He had access to documents, to actual notes in the hand of FDR and Churchill, etc.  So there is a lot of detail.  The book was published in 1948, but both of his subjects-FDR and Hopkins--were several years dead.  It's clear from this book that they'd given their lives for their country.

I suspect not a lot of people have read this book, let alone re-read parts of it, but some have. One of the things I love about old library books is the Date Due sticker, and this one shows that at least one or a few people have taken it out every decade, beginning in April 1948 and ending so far with me in 2014.  I do worry that the library will get rid of it, as they have so many books (all the better to give more space for computers.)  But I think I've saved it for awhile--they tend to go after books that haven't been taken out for 10 years.  There is something special about this very book being a first edition, the feel of the paper and the typeface as well as the language and punctuation all shouting 1940s.  (This photo of the spine seems to be of the first edition; the HSU library edition is red and black, and this spine title is worn to almost illegible. The cover above appears to be a later edition.)

But I'm not bidding farewell to all that just yet.  I've typed out a number of especially interesting passages, especially those that still pertain.  I'm going to reproduce them here now and again.

In my first post I'll give my favorite Harry Hopkins quote, and one of my favorite quotes of all time.  It probably came directly from this book.  But before then...a little background.

Harry Hopkins, born in Iowa (small town, lower middle class), graduate of Grinnell College in Iowa (member of the Midwest Conference with my Illinois alma mater Knox College), he had a few jobs in New York City administering programs for the poor, worked for the Red Cross in New Orleans, returned to Manhattan and caught the eye of then Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt by his efficient administration of a state relief program in 1931.  FDR brought him to Washington to run New Deal programs including public works.

Though he also helped organize the American Association of Social Workers, he loved the Manhattan night life, and knew a lot of celebs.  He had a talent for friendships, which eventually included Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and even, to a degree, Joseph Stalin.

 People liked him because he was trustworthy, direct and to the point. (One of the reasons he was also vilified by political opponents.) Sherwood writes that Churchill teased him with the prospect of a royal title to be conferred after the war.  He said it had already been picked out: Lord Root of the Matter. (p.5)

Harry, Sherwood wrote, "could slip now and then into skepticism but...always returned to a state of passionate hopefulness." [15]

Now a story with that quote from Hopkins very early in the New Deal. Hopkins boss was Harold Ickes, Secretary of Interior.  But his real boss was FDR.  When public works projects weren't getting started fast enough for FDR, he made a change by establishing the Civil Works Administration.  (Now I quote directly from Sherwood, p. 52.  The only changes I'm making are dividing the text into shorter paragraphs, placing FDR's words in italic and adding my own emphases in bold.)

 “...Civil Works Administration which put four million people to work in the first thirty days of its existence and, in less than four months, inaugurated 180,000 work projects and spent over $933 million. It was the parent of W.P.A. and marked the real establishment of the princple of the right to work from which there could be no retreat.

Of the formation of C.W.A. Roosevelt wrote:

‘The Public Works Administration (P.W.A.) had not been able by that time to commence a very extensive program of large public works because of the unavoidable time consuming process of planning, design and reviewing projects, clearing up legal matters, advertising for bids and letting contracts.’

This was Roosevelt’s tactful means of explaining why he took nearly a billion dollars away from Ickes and entrusted the spending of it to Hopkins at that time (he eventually did the same with many times the sum.)

Ickes was a very careful, deliberate administrator, who took pains to examine personally every detail of every project and the disposition of every nickel that it cost, whether it be a village post office or a Triborough Bridge. This is hardly to his discredit for it was the approach to each problem of a hardheaded businessman as well as a conscientious public servant.

 Ickes was concerned about the return on the taxpayers’ investment. Hopkins did not give a damn about the return; his approach was that of a social worker who was interested only in getting relief to the miserable and getting it there quickly. His ultimate argument was “Hunger is not debatable.”

 Ickes thought primarily of the finished job—Hopkins of the numbers of unemployed who could be put on the job. As an instance of Hopkins’ impatience: someone came to him with an idea for a project which would take a lot of time to prepare in detail but which, Hopkins was assured, “will work out in the long run,” and his exasperated comment on this was, “People don’t eat in the long run—they eat every day.” [end of excerpt]

Long range planning is important, as is envisioning the future.  But we must always remember that people eat every day--the present, especially for people at the edge of need, can be more important.  Reconciling the two is the art of policy.  But the point Hopkins made is about not forgetting the most important and urgent task (Lord Root of the Matter, remember?) in the fog of planning.

The debate over spending money to meet infrastructure needs as well as for social good continues in our time along some of the same lines.  However we've even further behind that debate in acknowledging the real problems.  Jonathan Chiat today writes about a "debate" over poverty ostensibly between NY Times columnists David Brooks and Paul Krugman.  Krugman alludes to "some people" who insist people in America are poor because of moral failings and wrong values.  Krugman, sounding a little like Hopkins, writes: "The poor don’t need lectures on morality, they need more resources — which we can afford to provide — and better economic opportunities, which we can also afford to provide through everything from training and subsidies to higher minimum wages.”

But even this debate pales against the stark realities that Hopkins recognized by addressing them directly.  And by building the public infrastructure that is still the foundation of economic as well as public and personal life in America.  Including infrastructure now crumbing dangerously, more than 80 years later.  Which our elected representatives ignore.