Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 2: The Defining Years, 1933-1938 by Blanche Wiesen Cook

Author:Blanche Wiesen Cook [Cook, Blanche Wiesen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, Autobiography, Women, History, Political, Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9780140178944
Google: RNwDgmvNmBQC
Amazon: B00AFYO5ES
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2000-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

Dewson was particularly disappointed that her effort to get her rainbow flyers filled with New Deal information into every neighborhood was slighted. Like ER, Dewson wanted no votes taken for granted. Their literature was first-rate and their speakers were ready; but spring conferences were not yet planned, and they lacked “some human wonder like the President to go into the states and make the women forget their disappointment over patronage, to draw out the stored up venom.” An “emotional orator” was needed to go around the country and ready “women leaders” for the battle. Apathy reigned; there were “rotten situations” in several states; Dewson felt “powerless,” and signed her letter “Your gloomy Gus, Molly.”

By April, ER was puzzled and miffed that the men continued to do virtually nothing and had not even begun their campaign. On 18 April 1936, she wrote Jim Farley: She wanted at least “one really good woman’s speech” made at the convention in June. ER was eager to go over details with Farley and sent personnel and patronage suggestions:

“Senator and Mrs. Costigan are very hard up.” Despondent over the failure of his antilynch bill, the senator was ailing and ER wanted Mrs. Costigan to “have a job on some commission….

“Don’t forget that Molly wants a job either on the Social Security Board or as an assistant secretary doing [something] she is fitted for.

“I forgot to say that Phoebe Omlie should be given consideration. Is there any chance of moving [Eugene] Vidal? If so she might be assistant secretary in charge of aviation and considering all the fighting she might be rather acceptable to all concerned….”*

Farley assured ER that he would discuss all her suggestions “and be governed by your wishes on anything I do relative to the activity of the women.”

When John Studebaker invited ER to select any topic for a Washington Town Hall Forum, which he chaired, she quickly suggested women and work, and named her panel: Fannie Hurst, George Creel, Josephine Roche. For ninety minutes on Sunday, 2 February, ER spoke candidly to an overflow audience of fifteen hundred:

There is something inherently good for every human being in work. Only through work can a woman fulfill her obligation to herself and to the world and justify her existence….

It is the right of any woman who wants to work to do so.

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