Al Smith – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

For all his humanitarian work, Hoover remembered for one, crucial moment

A vibrant from-life oil on canvas portrait of Herbert Hoover, autographed, realized $5,250 at a December 2017 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

With the specter of another depression on America’s horizon, my mind flashes back to the past and sad irony of Herbert Hoover. He was born in 1874 in West Branch, Iowa – the first president born west of the Mississippi River. An orphan at the tender age of 9, he was taken in, luckily, by relatives in Oregon. The Minthorns were Quakers like his parents and they taught him the value of community service and hard work.

In 1891, he enrolled at Stanford University, the first year that classes were open. He was a geology major and after graduation ended up in London with a company investigating gold deposits in Western Australia. While at Stanford, Hoover dated Lou Henry, a fellow geology major and the first female to earn a degree. Hoover proposed to her in a telegraph from Australia and they were married in California in February 1899 – two mining engineers … both intrepid travelers.

Together they set off for China, where Herbert discovered coal deposits. The hard work earned him a junior partnership with his London-based employer. This was followed by a stint in Tientsin just in time for the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 when Chinese rebels rose up against colonial powers. The couple became fluent in Mandarin, a skill they would use later in the White House to communicate in private without the WH staff listening in.

Next was a series of trips starting in Burma (silver, lead and zinc), copper and oil in Russia, and then back to Australia in a quest for more zinc. After forming his own company in 1908, their fortunes began to accumulate and by 1913 exceeded $4 million. After the United States entered World War I in 1917, President Wilson asked Hoover to manage America’s domestic food supplies. In Washington, D.C., he was successful in establishing programs to control prices, eliminate waste and promote conservation by the public. His managerial reputation was beginning to grow and his ability to cut through government bureaucracy produced results almost unprecedented in American history.

After flirting with the presidency in 1920, the ultimate winner, Warren Harding, selected Hoover to become the third Secretary of Commerce. When Harding died unexpectedly in 1923, President Calvin Coolidge retained Secretary Hoover in the Cabinet. Coolidge had observed Hoover’s work and decided to expand his formal duties. He put him in charge of the American Relief Administration to assist the recovery of post-war Europe. Hoover was more than qualified and had played a role in assisting thousands of Americans get back home when the war exploded in 1914. In addition, he had helped Belgium and France from starvation after the German invasions.

He soon became universally recognized as the greatest humanitarian alive in the world. In addition to being widely admired, he had the distinction of having an orbiting asteroid, Hooveria, named in his honor. Earlier, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt had proclaimed, “Hoover is certainly a wonder and I wish we could make him president of the United States! There could not be a better one.”

By 1928, Coolidge had tired of Washington and chose not to run for reelection. The 54-year-old Herbert Hoover was certainly not tired and was eager to demonstrate his extensive experience by expanding America’s fortunes even further. He easily defeated Al Smith, the governor of New York, with help from anti-Catholic voters and the burden of corruption associated with the infamous Tammany Hall group. The newspapers excitedly touted Hoover as an innovator and set high expectations for his administration. In his inaugural address, the new president confidently declared, “I have no fears for the future of our country. It is bright with hope!” The joy of his Inauguration day, March 4, 1929, seems totally incongruous with the events of the next four years.

Just seven months after he entered the White House, economic trouble trashed his campaign prediction about “being near the final triumph over poverty.” On Oct. 24, 1929, panic enveloped the New York Stock Exchange when almost 13 million shares changed hands. There was a short respite, but on Tuesday, Oct. 29, the market basically collapsed, heralding the beginning of the Great Depression. No one expected the Depression would last a full decade, including the American Economic Association. Virtually all the experts assumed it would be a matter of months until the normal business cycle resumed. Scholars are still debating the cause of the Depression and the stock market crash is only one of the contributing factors.

Just as it was one of the factors that cost Hoover his job. He didn’t cause the crash, but an episode in 1932 certainly contributed. In 1924, President Coolidge vetoed a bill to pay war veterans a bonus to compensate them for loss of income during their military service. However, Congress overrode his veto and the money was to be paid in 1945. In 1932, 20,000 veterans marched on Washington hoping to get an advance payment to alleviate Depression hardships. Congress was considering a Bonus Bill, but President Hoover opposed it and the Senate rejected it. Veterans turned their sights on the Capitol Building, marching for three days and four nights in a “Death March.”

President Hoover ordered General Douglas MacArthur to force them back into temporary camps. MacArthur overreacted, using cavalrymen with drawn sabers and an infantry with tear gas. Six tanks joined the fray under Major George Patton. The soldiers attacked the camps and the angry veterans set their own huts on fire in protest. Colonel Dwight Eisenhower was shocked at MacArthur’s treatment and later said, “It was a pitiful scene, ragged, discouraged people burning their own little things.” The excessive use of force, especially against veterans, disgusted most Americans. Then Hoover made it worse by deriding the bonus marchers as rabble and refusing to criticize MacArthur.

When Democratic presidential candidate FDR heard about the fiasco, he simply said, “This will elect me.”

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Roosevelt selected a running mate who now ranks among the best

A pencil portrait of Franklin Roosevelt by E.A. Burbank, dated 1939 and signed by both, sold for $2,270 at a June 2008 auction.

“I hardly know Truman.” – Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1944)

By Jim O’Neal

President Franklin Roosevelt was a tired and worn out man. The worry aroused by his appearance was more than justified. Unbeknown to all but a few, he was suffering from a progressive, debilitating cardiovascular disease. Several elite cardiologists agreed he would be dead within a year, especially if he decided to run for a fourth term. But FDR was determined, and told a few close confidants that he would resign as soon as WWII was concluded satisfactorily.

He had ventured into national politics when his name, youth and political strength in populous New York led to his nomination for vice president in 1920. The DNC had met in June in San Francisco and picked James Cox for the president slot. However, the Republican ticket of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge won easily.

The following year, the 39-year-old Roosevelt contracted poliomyelitis while vacationing at the family’s summer home on Campobello Island in Canada. He was crippled in both legs, permanently. In a show of intestinal fortitude, he mastered the use of leg braces, crutches and a wheelchair; he built his upper-body strength by swimming. He demonstrated his new skills in dramatic fashion in June 1924 at the National Democratic Convention.

He rose from a wheelchair and, unassisted, walked to the speaker’s rostrum and nominated Al Smith for president. The crowd went wild after Roosevelt crowned Smith “the Happy Warrior of the political battlefield.” Smith ultimately lost the nomination that year; four years later in 1928 he won the nomination but lost the election to Herbert Hoover. The economic good times favored the better-known Hoover, but there was also the lingering issue of Smith’s Catholicism. This would remain an issue until 1960 when Jack Kennedy would vanquish it permanently.

In 1930, FDR was re-elected governor of New York. In the wake of the stock market crash, he convinced the legislature to provide $20 million to the unemployed. This was the first direct unemployment aid by any state and was a harbinger of bigger government programs. It was also a springboard to the 1932 Democratic nomination for president. FDR was so energized that he flew to Chicago to accept – the first time a nominee accepted in person.

No one was surprised at the results of the 1932 election, when FDR defeated Hoover in a landslide. The country had turned on Hoover and the Republicans and was eager and impatient to have the new president installed. This led directly to the 20th Amendment of the Constitution, which advanced the presidential inauguration to Jan. 20 and Congress to Jan. 3. Alas, it didn’t go into effect until 1933. Hoover was full of ideas on how to help the new president, but Roosevelt was less willing to accept any advice, since he had his own plans.

And so it began. With a soothing voice and supreme self-confidence, Roosevelt rallied a fear-ridden country to overcome the Great Depression. With a New Deal, he provided social justice; security to the aged; relief to the unemployed; and higher wages to the working man. He revamped the federal government, adding scores of new agencies and reshaping the Democratic Party from states’ rights into a Hamiltonian model of a strong central government.

Twelve years went by fast, and the last days of the Second World War required a series of critical decisions and it started with a decision on a fourth term. His trusted advisers saw defeat unless something was done about VP Henry Wallace. A plant geneticist by profession, he had become very popular as an author, lecturer and social thinker. To the “wise men,” he seemed pathetically out of place and painfully lacking in political talent. But there was more concern over the president’s declining health, which could no longer be ignored. All realized that the man nominated to run with Roosevelt would probably be the next president.

That man turned out to be Senator Harry Truman from Missouri. Together, they would win the 1944 election; 82 days after taking office, Truman would become president when FDR died on April 12, 1945. He would end the war as expected, win re-election in 1948 and become embroiled in another war, this time with Korea. However, with each passing year, Truman continues to gain in stature and now often polls among the top 10 best presidents.

Empire State Building Remains One of World’s Great Wonders

Guy Carleton Wiggins’ oil on canvas board *The Empire State Building, Winter* sold for $44,812 at a May 2011 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

“From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the Sphinx,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “rose the Empire State Building.”

The “ruins” was an oblique reference to the stock market crash in 1929. Completed on May 1, 1931, on the site where the Waldorf Astoria had stood, no building ever reached so high, so fast; 102 stories tall and with a 200-foot mast to hitch your dirigible. It was built in just over a year, during what would become the nation’s worst depression.

Just a short two years earlier on May 1, 1929, architect William Van Alen had broken ground on the Chrysler Building. He had been commissioned by Chrysler to design and construct the tallest building in the world. When the Chrysler Building opened in April 1930, it was indeed the tallest at a magnificent 925 feet – a world record that would only stand for a fleeting 28 days! Then the Manhattan Bank Tower completed its construction and opened at a height of 927 feet, which allowed it to lay claim to the World’s Tallest title by a measly 2 feet.

Hang on. The race wasn’t over. In the history of high wire, where one-upmanship is the oxygen that fuels architectural competition, the Chrysler Building’s William Van Alen had kept a surprise hidden up his sleeve that would allow him to reclaim this prestigious crown.

Van Alen had designed a stainless spire of five sections, which was lowered through the top of the building. At a fixed time, before a highly appreciative audience, Van Alen delivered his coup de grâce to the Manhattan Bank. A huge derrick, its gears slowly turning, raised the spire from the innards of the Chrysler Building. “It gradually emerged,” Van Alen wrote, “from the top of the dome like a butterfly from its cocoon.” At 1,046 feet, the Chrysler Building was suddenly, once again, the World’s Tallest Building.

Alas, it only remained so for less than a year, when the Empire State Building – topping out at 1,250 feet – grabbed the title for itself. It would retain the crown until 1971 when the World Trade Center towers opened. Fittingly, the group behind the Empire State Building included the Happy Warrior himself, Al Smith, former governor of New York (four times) and the Democratic candidate for president in the 1928 election (won by Herbert Hoover). Smith’s grandchildren cut the ribbon when the world’s (newest) tallest skyscraper opened May 1, 1931, and President Hoover turned on the building’s lights using a remote push button in Washington, D.C.

Subsequently, the building has become a worldwide icon and in 1994 it was named one of the “Seven Wonders of the Modern World” by the American Society of Civil Engineers … joining the Golden Gate Bridge and the Panama Canal, all American architectural marvels. Plus, who can forget Fay Wray as Ann Darrow in the 1933 classic King Kong, when the beast from Skull Island plucks her from the building?

The Empire State Building took only 410 days to build since the architectural firm used design plans for the (similar but smaller) Reynolds Building in Winston-Salem, N.C., a project they had worked on earlier. The staff at the Empire State Building sends a Father’s Day card to the Reynolds Building each year to honor the contribution it made to their existence.

Although long since surrendering its crown for height, the Empire State Building is a “must see” for all tourists to New York and, amazingly, revenue from ticket sales for admission to the observation decks exceeds office space rental income.

Its place in history seems quite secure.

Labor Secretary Perkins Did Her Part to Make Sure Social Security Endures

A Feb. 27, 1935, memo by President Roosevelt to Francis Perkins regarding Social Security went to auction in December 2008.

By Jim O’Neal

President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt created the U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor on Feb. 14, 1903. It was renamed the Department of Commerce in 1913 and various bureaus and agencies specializing in labor were shifted to a new Department of Labor.

Until 1920, women were prohibited from having Cabinet-level positions since they were not allowed to vote. President Franklin D. Roosevelt broke this barrier in 1933 by appointing Francis Perkins as Secretary of Labor. She was instrumental in aligning labor with the New Deal.

The New Deal was a complex integrated plan to provide present relief, future stability and permanent security in the United States. Much of the president’s thinking about security – which would soon come to be called “social security” – rested on a premise that overcompetition in the labor market depressed wages, spread misery rather than income, curtailed the economy and worked special hardship on the elderly.

Roosevelt was determined to find a way to “dispose of surplus workers,” in particular those over the age of 65. The federal government could provide immediate relief to able-bodied workers as the employer of last resort, while returning welfare functions to the states. Unemployment insurance would relieve damage from economic downturns by sustaining workers’ living standards, and removing older workers (permanently) through government paid old-age pensions would create broad economic stability.

The longer-term features of Roosevelt’s grand design were incorporated into a landmark measure whose legacy endured and reshaped the texture of American life: the Social Security Act. No other New Deal measure proved more lastingly consequential or is more emblematic of the very essence of the New Deal. No one was better prepared to thread the needle of the tortuous legislative process than Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins and FDR personally assigned her the task of chairing a Cabinet committee to prepare the legislation for submission to Congress.

Madame Secretary (as she preferred to be called) brought to her task the commonsense practicality of her New England forebearers; compassion of the special milieu from her time at social-work pioneer Jane Addams’ Hull House; and a dose of political expertise gained as a labor lobbyist and industrial commissioner in New York. Perkins had evolved from a romantic Mount Holyoke College graduate, who tried to sell “true love” stories to pulp magazines, into a mature, deadly serious battler for the underprivileged.

She owed her position to a comrade-in-arms relationship with New York Governor Al Smith and FDR in New York reform battles and also the spreading influence of an organized women’s faction in the Democratic Party. She wisely believed that enlightened middle-class reformers could do more for themselves through tough legislation than union organization; and without the distraction of industrial conflict and social disruption.

Meanwhile, the American labor movement, led by the stubborn Samuel Gompers, relied exclusively on protection of labor’s right to organize. Even after his death, his American Federation of Labor (AFL) spurned legislation and continued to bargain piecemeal, union by union, shop by shop … a strategy that collapsed as the depression deepened.

We know how this ended on Jan. 17, 1935, when President Roosevelt unveiled his Social Security program. Today, 61 million people – or one family in four – receive benefits. However, there is no “lockbox” for Social Security and the flow of taxes and benefit payments are co-mingled with all General Obligations; which includes Medicare, military spending, food stamps and foreign aid. Everything is dependent on the federal government’s ability to levy taxes and borrow money to fund the unsustainable debts backed by “the full faith and credit of the United States.”

Some say that when it comes to global sovereign debt, we live in the best house on Bankrupt Street. However, I am willing to bet that FDR’s cherished Social Security program will never be touched. Francis Perkins did a superb job of getting this concept engrained in a special way and she must still be smiling. She liked her work and served for 12 years and one month – almost a record. James “Tama Jim” Wilson holds that distinction, serving as Secretary of Agricultural from 1897 to 1913, the only Cabinet member to serve under four consecutive presidents, counting the one day he served under Woodrow Wilson.

President Wilson’s Daughters Were Champions of Women’s Suffrage

suffrage-poster-inez-milholland — A poster featuring Inez Milholland Boissevain was produced to commemorate her ride through Washington, D.C., and her fateful death in 1916. This example realized $402.50 at a June 2005 auction.

By Jim O’Neal

On March 3, 1913, the day before the presidential inauguration, the Thomas Woodrow Wilson family arrived in Washington, D.C. There was very scant attention paid to the arrival of the new president-elect since it coincided with an unusually high-profile demonstration.

About 8,000 women, led by Vassar-educated lawyer Inez Milholland Boissevain (astride a beautiful white horse), were marching in the capital’s streets to further the cause of women’s suffrage. There were marching bands, floats and pageantry galore along the route. The demonstration was intended to emphasize frustrations with the slow progress in Congress, despite the many years of effort to gain national rights.

Prior to 1912, only 1.3 million women in six states had equal voting rights with men and a mere three states had been added for a grand total of nine. However, the movement seemed to be gaining broader support, although eight more years would be needed before the 19th Amendment was approved.

On this particular day, the crowds were boisterous and opponents took delight in spitting on their banners and throwing lighted cigarettes and cigars at and on marchers. At times, the crowds got out of control and more than 100 people were trampled or bruised to the point they required hospital care.

The three Wilson daughters, Margaret, Jessie and Eleanor (nicknamed Nellie), were all ardent supporters of women’s suffrage and were constantly badgering their father to make it a priority even before he was elected. Jessie had even taken a bold stance while in college and ended up resigning from her sorority when her efforts were scorned.

jessie-woodrow-wilson-sayre — Jessie Woodrow Wilson

Jessie Woodrow Wilson was born on Aug. 28, 1887, and educated far beyond most women of the day, similar to outgoing First Lady Helen Taft. She had studied at Goucher College and Princeton, where she was Phi Betta Kappa after her high academic accomplishments. After college, she worked at the Lighthouse Settlement House for women millworkers, where she observed firsthand the downtrodden women, and it transformed her into a passionate supporter of women’s suffrage and equal rights.

In 1915, Margaret acted as honorary hostess for the convention of the National American Women Suffrage Association (later known as the League of Women Voters) and Eleanor would speak at the convention along with members of her father’s cabinet. 1915 was also the first year a U.S. president would attend the World Series. The Philadelphia Phillies won the first game, but it would take 65 years before the next one (1980). The Red Sox easily won the series 4-1. Their pitching staff was so good that a young pitching star named George “Babe” Ruth was limited to a single appearance as a pinch-hitter (he grounded out).

Jessie Wilson continued her political career and even introduced Al Smith as the first Catholic presidential nominee in 1928 (he lost to Herbert Hoover), and was obviously poised for big things when Franklin D. Roosevelt won the first of his four elections and dominated the Democratic Party.

Alas, on Jan. 15, 1933, Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre died at age 45 following complications from abdominal surgery. I suspect she would have been heavily involved in politics had she lived a longer life.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is President and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].