Eleanor Roosevelt and the Global Atlantic

Chapter 6 “A Different and Better Future”: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Global Atlantic

Dario Fazzi

In his second inaugural address, President Franklin D. Roosevelt explained the intimate connection between freedom and equality. In FDR’s views, the main task of the U.S. government was to “promote general welfare and secure the blessing of liberty,” both at home and abroad. Spreading wealth was the most challenging part of this job, as FDR knew that his administration’s duty was not “to add more to the abundance of those who have much,” but rather to “provide enough for those who have too little.”1 The rationale behind these words, which in a way summed up the fundamental tenets of the New Deal, testified to the affinity, though intermittent, between the president and his wife Eleanor.2 Born in 1884, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt got married to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1905. She was a distant cousin of his, but her lineage descended from the Republican – and much wealthier – branch of the knickerbockered Roosevelt family, the Oyster Bay one. Her uncle Teddy was a national hero: colonel of his own regiment in the Cuban War, a talented politician and ter- rific campaigner, intransigent on financial matters, and a progressive reformist on environmental and social issues. During his time in the White House he substantially modernized the American presidency.3 In his young niece’s eyes, Theodore Roosevelt embodied authority, commitment, and devotion to public duty. He instilled in her the idea that public service and responsibilities were particularly appropriate for people of their class. Soon, however, Eleanor Roosevelt started being exposed to less aristocratic and much more liberal visions. She spent part of her formative years in

1 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Second Inaugural Address, January 20, 1937,” in Documentary His- tory of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidency, vol. 50, FDR Selected Speeches, Document 18 (Bethesda: UPA, 2011), 166. 2 Doris K. Goodwin, No OrdinaryTime. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt:The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994). 3 Serge Ricard, ed., A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt (Chichester: Blackwell Publishing, 2011).

England, where she attended a French-speaking finishing school led by the intriguing mademoiselle Marie Souvestre. Her schoolmistress taught her the love for history, arts, theater, and music; more importantly, Souvestre provided her with a different and complementary worldview. Souvestre was indeed a modern and independent woman who rejected old Victorian social norms and invited her students to do likewise. In her classes, she taught that social and political reforms were the key to overcome exploitation and disenfranchise- ment.4 Back in the U.S. during the early 1900s, Eleanor Roosevelt found a rapidly changing society. New modern technologies and infrastructures were facilitat- ing people’s contacts and exchanges, and shortening distances as well. Massive immigration from Europe was reshaping American demographics and pos- ing new challenges to U.S. society at the same time. The Progressive Era was rewriting the contours of American urban life and the governing elites were trying to invent new political recipes for a quickly changing country. It was this fluid context that ignited Eleanor Roosevelt’s early social activism. The idea that the most privileged citizens had to do something for the less fortunate ones was her most important guiding principle. And the reality of New York City at the turn of the century was providing her with plenty of op- portunities to put this into practice. Settlement houses and immigrants’ shel- ters became familiar places to her. She visited numerous sweatshops, ware- houses, and garment factories in order to gain firsthand experience of workers’ difficult conditions. She found solace and personal satisfaction in volunteering for children, unemployed, newcomers, and poor women. She even took her fi- ancée Franklin on a tour of some of the worst tenement houses of the city. But after her marriage to FDR such a hectic routine had to be (temporarily) inter- rupted. Social activism had to make room for family duties, and taking care of her children became Eleanor Roosevelt’s main task for the rest of the decade.5 In 1910, the Roosevelts moved to Albany, where FDR took office as Democ- ratic state senator, thus launching his political career from the same platform that Theodore had used to start his own. Eleanor Roosevelt took advantage of these years of relative isolation from the city and filled with formal recep- tions to sharpen her political skills and expand her personal network. She attended debates and social gatherings, started being involved in the rising suf- frage movement, came into contact with new political allies, and established

4 Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt: The Early Years, 1884-1933 (New York: Penguin, 1992), 102-124. 5 Brigid O’Farrell, She Was One of Us: Eleanor Roosevelt and the American Worker (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 6-10.