No Ordinary Time, Page 55

  The response was overwhelming. In the course of two weeks, the nation’s stockpile was increased by more than four hundred tons; the average contribution was almost seven pounds for each man, woman, or child. The White House itself was inundated with a motley assortment of rubber items. “Today I am mailing you my old rubber girdle I have cut and torn into strips,” Mrs. Meta Kirkland wrote from Santa Ana, California. “I hope I may claim the privilege of being the first to donate personal wearing apparel for the good cause.” From Ben Cohen in New York came a package of rubber balls and rubber bones. “On December 7th when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, my dog Snuffy went the way of all flesh, a tried and true pal,” he wrote. “Our dog was all we had and I trust you don’t think me a screwball after you receive my dog Snuffy’s toys, these toys are the last of Snuffy’s memory.” And from the Sixteenth Ward Democratic Club of Reading, Pennsylvania, came a hundred thousand rubber bands collected and formed into a huge ball weighing more than seventy pounds.

  Once the rubber drive was completed, the president turned to financier Bernard Baruch and asked him to head a committee to investigate the entire rubber question, to recommend such civilian actions as necessary to ensure an adequate supply of rubber for the armed forces. The choice of “Mr. Facts,” as Baruch was dubbed during World War I because of his insistence on finding the facts before he approached any problem, was a master stroke. “The nation waits anxiously these days for the definite report on rubber,” The New York Times observed in mid-August. “That report may mean the end of auto driving for leisure for the duration and thus drastically change the pattern of American life; but it is believed here that the man in the street will accept the sacrifice once the facts are laid before him. The confidence is due in no small measure to the character and reputation of the man whom the President has named to head the special investigating committee.”

  Baruch’s report, made public in early September 1942, called for a new nationwide gas-rationing system. “Gas rationing is the only way of saving rubber,” it concluded. “Every way of avoiding this method was explored, but it was found to be inescapable. The limitation on the use of gas is not due to a shortage of that commodity—it is wholly a measure of rubber saving. Any localized measure would be unfair and futile.” The report also called for a reduction in the national speed limit to thirty-five miles per hour and the appointment of a “Rubber Director.” “The Baruch report on rubber seems like the first really good job done in Washington since the war began,” The New Republic noted. Fortune concurred. For all the initial confusion and public clamor over the first misguided attempt at rationing, Fortune observed, “the Baruch Committee report is supremely an example of the ability of a country and of a government to grow by its own criticism.”

  As nationwide gas rationing was put into place, pleasure driving virtually ceased. On Sundays, traffic shrunk to a trickle; red and green lights blinked mechanically on and off, but nothing stopped or started. Since Sunday drivers knew they were liable to be stopped by an OPA investigator and asked to explain why their trip was necessary, it was easier to leave the car at home. Citizens learned to walk again. In the months that followed, car pools multiplied, milk deliveries were cut to every other day, and auto deaths fell dramatically. Parties at homes and nightclubs generally broke up before midnight so that people could catch the last bus home.

  All in all, pleasures became simpler and plainer as people spent more time going to the movies, entertaining at home, playing cards, doing crossword puzzles, talking with friends, and reading. At the time of Pearl Harbor, William Shirer’s Berlin Diary stood at the top of the best-seller lists. It was replaced the following spring by Elliot Paul’s The Last Time I Saw Paris and John Steinbeck’s The Moon Is Down. Then, in July, “a meteor burst across the publishing skies” as Marion Hargrove’s memoir of training camp at Fort Bragg, See Here, Private Hargrove, became one of the best-selling books of all time. Americans liked to read, one observer noted, about what their boys were doing at that moment. When the boys went into action, books about the war itself, such as William White’s They Were Expendable, took center stage.

  Once the rubber mess was brought under control, the president turned his focus to the rising cost of living and the threat of inflation. The seven-point stabilization program he had called for in April had not yet passed the Congress. Fearful of constituent reaction in an election year, Congress was reluctant to impose price ceilings on farm products or to levy higher taxes. By summer’s end, the entire stabilization program was in jeopardy, as food prices kept rising while wages were fixed. Labor was furious. “You cannot expect the laborer to maintain a fixed wage level if everything he wears and eats begins to go up drastically in price,” Roosevelt said in a truculent address that ended with an ultimatum: if the Congress did not act by October 1 to stabilize farm prices, he would act on his own. His war powers enabled him to do so and he intended to use them.

  Though Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin declared that the president had “placed a pistol at the head of Congress,” the threat worked. The Congress passed the necessary legislation at 9 p.m. on October 2, only one day late. That same day, the president appointed Associate Justice James Byrnes of the Supreme Court to a powerful new position as director of economic stabilization. And later that week, the Congress agreed to increase personal and corporate income taxes. The fight against inflation was finally on track.

  CHAPTER 14

  “BY GOD, IF IT AIN’T OLD FRANK!”

  On Thursday night, September 17, 1942, the president and first lady boarded the ten-car presidential train to begin a two-week inspection tour of factories, army camps, and navy yards. It had been a long day. The president had awakened early to bid farewell to Princess Martha, who had been a houseguest for several days. Then, from midmorning through dinner, he was caught in one meeting after another, with congressional leaders, economic advisers, and military men. Now, as he settled down in his oak-paneled private car, which held four staterooms, a comfortable living room, and a dining room large enough to seat twelve, the president was undoubtedly glad to relax.

  Franklin Roosevelt was not a man who asked favors of a personal nature easily. Yet, on this occasion, he had made it clear to Eleanor that he wanted her to accompany him on his fortnight’s train journey. She had agreed to go as far as Chicago with him; at that juncture, she would have to leave for previously arranged meetings in Washington. Later, perhaps, she could join him again, for the rest of the trip.

  Roosevelt had been alone that summer in a way he had not been for years. Weekends at Martha’s estate on Pook’s Hill had offered him pleasant distraction from the war, but at the end of each working day, he was by himself. Harry Hopkins still lived in the White House, but while his devotion and energy had not wavered, his marriage had dramatically reduced the evenings he and Roosevelt could easily spend together. And, most important, it had become painfully apparent to Roosevelt that summer that he and Missy would never be able to restore their former relationship.

  Against certain facts the president was helpless: against Missy’s devastating illness; against his mother’s death; against Harry Hopkins’ falling in love. But with Eleanor, there was still a chance to alter the relationship so they could be together more often, perhaps a chance to open their hearts to one another again. He wanted her with him on the train.

  As additional companions on the trip, the president had invited his two unmarried cousins, Laura Delano and Margaret Suckley. When Roosevelt was tired late at night and would see no one else, he enjoyed sitting with Laura and Margaret. “You’re the only people I know,” he told them once, “that I don’t have to entertain.” Like Franklin, both Laura and Margaret had been trained from early childhood to present a sunny face to the world, to be pleasant and gracious. “They were just very good company,” Anna’s daughter, Eleanor Seagraves, recalled. “They were charming, witty, intelligent, and full of fun. After Missy’s stroke, they were around all the time.”

 
At fifty-two, Laura Delano, known to family and friends as Polly, was still a beautiful woman. She had a thin face with high cheekbones and an exquisite widow’s peak, which she accentuated by dying her hair a blue-white, almost purple shade. “She was the only person I knew on whom that purple hair looked wonderful,” Eleanor Seagraves recalled. With her penchant for wearing red velvet slacks and adorning her wrists with five to six bracelets which rustled as she walked, she seemed to bring with her at 9 a.m. the brilliance of the late-night drawing room. Aware of the effect of her looks, she “flirted like mad,” Eleanor’s niece, Eleanor Wotkyns, recalled, bustling about the president with vivacious charm. The story was told that she had once been in love with the first secretary of the Japanese Embassy, Saburo Kurusu, the scion of a rich Japanese family. “It was quite a scandal,” Anna’s son Curtis Roosevelt observed, “totally unacceptable to the Delano family. The pressure was too great; the affair was ended, and Laura never married.”

  By contrast with the flamboyant Laura, Margaret Suckley was quiet and plain, free from the slightest shade of coquetry. Short and thin, with a wry sense of humor and a gentle demeanor, “Daisy” was an intelligent listener, a lover of birds, dogs, and books. It was Daisy who had given the president Fala, the beloved Scottish terrier who accompanied him everywhere. In 1940, the president had put Daisy in charge of sorting through his private papers for the library, a perfect job for this totally discreet woman.

  Eleanor had mixed feelings about the Misses Delano and Suckley. Though she was glad to have them along since it gave her the freedom to leave the train at midpoint, as she wished, she had little patience with either the smiling homage they paid the president or the insubstantial nature of their conversation. “Evidently the P[resident] likes women who are not too serious,” Tommy wrote Esther Lape. “Laura Delano is no fool, but she has the technique of so many women who appear to be just chatterers.” What is more, Laura loved to gossip. “She had a compulsion to be the one who tells things before someone else,” Curtis Roosevelt observed. “And while FDR delighted in gossip, Eleanor did not.” Nor did Eleanor appreciate Laura’s lighthearted humor. After Eleanor met Churchill, the only thing Laura wanted to know was whether he was sexy. Not knowing how to banter, Eleanor simply said, “I just don’t know, Laura, I just don’t know.”

  It was the president’s wish, he had told his Secret Service aide Mike Reilly before the trip began, to see everything he could from coast to coast without pointless parades and fancy receptions that would only slow up production and prevent him from really absorbing what was going on. The only way to make this possible was to keep the trip “off the record,” alerting the plant owners and the governors of all the states at the last possible moment, usually 3 a.m. the day of the president’s arrival. Reporters were told they could only write about the trip after the fact.

  The first stop was Detroit, where a transformation of historic proportions had taken place. In nine months, the entire capacity of the prolific automobile industry had been converted to the production of tanks, guns, planes, and bombs. Pearl Harbor had accomplished what UAW leader Walter Reuther had envisioned. General Motors was now making complete planes, anti-aircraft guns, aircraft engines, and diesel engines for submarines. Ford was now producing bombers, jeeps, armored cars, troop carriers, and gliders. Chrysler was building tanks, tank engines, army trucks, and mine exploders. The industry that had once built four million cars a year was now building three-fourths of the nation’s aircraft engines, one-half of all tanks, and one-third of all machine guns.

  Observers accustomed to the “swing-and-duck rivalry” that had existed in Detroit before Pearl Harbor were astonished to note that the Big Three were now “more or less loosely knit,” dependent on one another for parts and subassemblies. “Ford is making all-important units for General Motors,” journalist Walter Davenport reported in Collier’s in the summer of 1942, “and the latter is loud in its praise of the lean, dry genius whom it used to pretend to ignore. It’s just as if the Brooklyn Dodgers took a few days off and won a few games for the Phillies.”

  The first stop in Detroit was the Chrysler tank arsenal, the largest arsenal in the world devoted completely to the production of military tanks. Only a year ago, a cornfield had stretched across the site of the huge manufacturing plant, which measured five city blocks wide by two city blocks long, connected by a railroad track extending the full length of the building. As the president entered the plant in an open-top car, the startled workers whooped and whistled. “By God if it ain’t old Frank!” one smudge-faced mill operator shouted. The president laughed with delight and waved his hat at the man. Accompanied by Eleanor, Governor Murray Van Waggoner of Michigan, and President K. T. Keller of Chrysler, Roosevelt proceeded to a testing ground where a new M-4 Sherman tank, heavier, faster, and safer than its predecessor, the Grant M-3, was experimenting with a half-dozen difficult maneuvers. An uneasy moment ensued when the powerful tank, after running through a series of muddy depressions, rumbled straight toward the president at considerable speed. Roosevelt’s eyes bulged a bit as the driver brought the tank to a standstill about fifteen feet from his car. “A good drive!” the president laughingly remarked. “A good drive!”

  At the time of the president’s visit, tanks were rolling off the assembly lines at Chrysler, Cadillac, and fifteen other plants at the phenomenal rate of nearly four thousand a month. This extraordinary level of achievement can best be understood by recognizing that Germany, the previous world leader in tank production, was currently producing at a rate of four thousand a year. In September, Hitler announced a major expansion in Germany’s tank production. The goal he set—eight hundred tanks per month—was less than 15 percent of Roosevelt’s objective for 1943!

  Later that afternoon, as a bright sun came out from under the clouds, the presidential party arrived at Ford’s Willow Run, the big bomber factory named for the willow-lined stream which meandered through the woods and farmland on which the giant plant was built. Boasting “the most enormous room in the history of man,” with a system of conveyors designed to bring the parts from manufacturing and subassembly into final assembly, Willow Run had captured the imagination of the public in the early months of 1942. “It is a promise of revenge for Pearl Harbor,” exulted the Detroit Free Press. “Bring the Germans and Japs in to see it,” Ford’s production chief, Charles Sorenson, boasted; “hell, they’ll blow their brains out.” But it had taken longer than expected to build the $86-million plant, to design new fixtures for mass production, to train tool designers, engineers, production men. Only one bomber had come off the assembly line before the president’s visit.

  When the president and first lady arrived, Ford officials suddenly noticed that old Henry Ford was not in the welcoming lineup. The crusty chief was found in a far corner of the plant, playing with a new machine. Shrugging his shoulders, he reluctantly agreed to join the presidential party. But he was scrunched between the Roosevelts in the back seat, and his face wore a menacing look as he watched the enthusiastic response of his workmen to his old enemy. The president, as always, was enjoying himself thoroughly. Spotting two midgets working high up on the tail section of a half-assembled B-24, where persons of normal height would be unable to fit, he asked to say hello. The two men scrambled down immediately, thrilled at the chance to shake the president’s hand.

  As Eleanor cast her eyes about the huge L-shaped room, she took great pleasure in the sight of hundreds of women standing side by side with the men. For the first time in the history of the company, women were working on the assembly line as riveters, welders, blueprint readers, and inspectors. Only now, as the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor approached, were officials willing to admit what Eleanor had predicted many months before—that vast numbers of women would be needed as the men went off to war.

  “I feel quite certain,” Eleanor had insisted in 1941, long before anyone would listen, “that we will use women in many ways as England has done. I think it would save time if we r
egistered women now and analyzed their capabilities and decided in advance where they could be used.” The president had reacted positively at first to Eleanor’s registration plan, but when he was told by War Manpower Commission chief Paul McNutt that large reserves of unemployed men were still available, he decided against it.

  Attitudes toward female employment began changing when the dramatic increase in the armed forces substantially reduced the supply of male workers in war-production centers. The War Manpower Commission reflected this shift in a new statement of policy. “The present number of gainfully employed workers is inadequate to fill even the immediate requirements of the war production program,” it stated. “In many areas the lack of adequate housing and transportation facilities compels full use of the local labor supply. These considerations require that substantially increased numbers of women be employed in gainful occupations in war production and essential civilian employment. The recruitment and training of women workers must be greatly expanded and intensified.”