BY JOHN T. FLYNN

THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY • NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1948, BY

JOHN T. FLYNN

All rights reserved. Permission to reproduce material from this book must be obtained from the publishers.

First printing, August 1948

Second printing, September 1948

Third printing, October 1948

Fourth printing, October 1948

Fifth printing, December 1948

Sixth printing, January 1949

Seventh printing, April 1949

Eighth printing, May 1949

Ninth printing, June 1949

THIS BOOK IS IN NO SENSE A BIOGRAPHY OF FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT. It is rather a critical account of that episode in American politics known as the New Deal. As to the President, it is an account of an image projected upon the popular mind which came to be known as Franklin D. Roosevelt.

BOOK ONE

SATURDAY MORNING, MARCH 4, 1933, AS THE SUN STRUGGLED lazily into position through gray clouds hurrying before the chill March winds, Washington was like a beleaguered city. All over the place high officials were up early packing their bags, ready to be off as the legions of the Grand Old Party that had occupied the city for so many years prepared to evacuate.

THE FESTIVAL OF THE INAUGURATION WAS BUT THE OPENING SCENE. The inaugural address was merely a prologue uttered before the curtain rose upon the stirring drama of the Hundred Days.

The President summoned the new Congress in extraordinary session. He issued an order closing all the banks. Most of them were already closed by state action or by the forces of nature. Congress convened March 9. Then began that hectic and tumultuous hurricane of laws and projects and orders in council which came to be known as the Hundred Days.

WE MUST RETURN NOW FOR A BRIEF SPACE TO THE TWO MONTHS preceding Mr. Roosevelt’s inauguration and to the rising crisis hurried along by the events in the banking world. All through January, as the inauguration came into view, the newspapers chronicled daily the banking failures. Depositors were taking their money out of their own banks. Foreign depositors were withdrawing their balances here, which set in motion an increased flow of gold out of the country. Many large investors were turning their security holdings into cash and this into gold to ship abroad.

IN THE BEGINNING, OF COURSE, WAS ROOSEVELT. AND THEN CAME the Brain Trust. After that we had the Great Man and the Brain Trust. The casual reader may suppose this is just a catchy collection of syllables. But it is impossible to estimate the power these few words exercised upon the minds of the American people. After all, a crowd of big business boobies, a lot of butter-fingered politicians, two big halls full of shallow and stupid congressmen and senators had made a mess of America. That was the bill of goods sold to the American people.

ALL THAT HAPPENED IN THOSE FOUR YEARS FROM 1933 TO 1936 IS now lost behind the fiery curtain of the war. It seems so long ago. Few remember much about it. Out of the blur remains the impression that this Second New Deal must have been quite a success because in 1936 the people turned out en masse to approve it in the greatest electoral victory in our history. Roosevelt carried every state but two—Maine and Vermont—and many commentators said it meant the end of the Republican party.