The attached article presented a dusk till dawn account of one day in the life of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882 – 1945).
Written during his first term (prior to the war), the journalist recounted who the reoccurring players in his life were, the time of his rising, the preferred meals, the length of the meetings, distractions, recreations and other assorted minutia -but you'll not read the word "wheelchair" once. This is a fine example of the press black-out that was in place in order to prevent the public any knowledge whatever of Roosevelt's paralytic illness, which rendered him paralyzed from the waist down (he suffered from Guillain-Barré syndrome which he contracted in 1921). Read a 1945 interview with FDR's economic adviser, Bernard Baruch; click here.
Click here to read about the four inaugurations of FDR. Five months after the death of President Roosevelt, writer Michael Sayers (1911 – 2010) managed to get this FDR article to press while the public's interest in the man was still hot. It addressed the tremendous lengths the Secret Service went to on a daily basis to protect President Roosevelt from Axis assassins and general kooks who wanted a shot at him:
"The White House detail, headed by six-foot Michael Reiley (1909 - 1973), stayed beside the President at all times. They became his shadows, unseen in the public glare, but always at hand... The President was not permitted to set foot in any place that had not been thoroughly investigated beforehand." "'Doesn't LBJ remind you of FDR?'"
"That's the question I hear most of these days. He does, and touring through the poverty-stricken states of Appalachia with President Johnson, I saw why."
- so wrote Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. (1914 – 1988) in the attached article that was penned some 23 years after his father's death. Here are the results of PATHFINDER MAGAZINE's 1940 poll concerning FDR's controversial run for a third term. The pollsters were interested in discovering the voter's thoughts on the third term as a concept for future presidents - rather than gaining a better understanding as to the popularity of President Roosevelt.
The poll considered the opinions of citizens who voted for FDR in 1936 and those who sided with Republican Alf Landon in the same election. They concluded that 68.6% of poll's participants were against a third presidential term.
Although the Roosevelt administration believed that integrating the armed forces was far too risky a proposition during wartime, it did take one important step to insure that fair hiring practices were followed by all businesses that held defense contracts with the Federal government; during the summer of 1941, while American industry was still fulfilling its roll as "the arsenal of democracy", a Federal law was passed that criminalized racist hiring practices. The attached editorial from Collier's Magazine applauded the President for doing the right thing.
During the war, the British working people had tremendous admiration for FDR - you can read about that here
"It would be difficult to select the typical New Deal bureau. In not a few there is considerable friction between different degrees and elements of thought as to how far the New Deal should really go... The program is so vast, the limits of its intent so completely shrouded in the vague phraseology of the new idealism, that there appears to be plenty of work for all. [For example] unwanted surplusses were found in the electrical power and appliance field. It was perceived that here was a case of 'under-consumption' on the part of American homeowners. How to solve the problem? With another bureau, of course. And so we have the EHFA - the Electric Home and Farm Authority."
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