Eleanor and Franklin by Joseph P. Lash

Author:Joseph P. Lash
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

38.PUBLICIST FOR THE NEW DEAL—COLUMNIST AND LECTURER

HAD THE CENSUS TAKER IN 1932 ASKED ELEANOR ROOSEVELT her job or profession, she would have said “teacher.” But when she moved to the White House she had to give up professional teaching. Was there anything, she asked herself, that she could do professionally which would reflect her own knowledge and experience and not be entirely the result “of somebody else’s work and position? . . . I turned naturally to speaking and writing.”1

In 1934 she resumed the sponsored radio talks that she had given up when her husband had become president. People, especially women, were interested in her views. Speaking to them gave Eleanor a sense of fulfillment, and the largest audiences were those to be reached over the radio networks. Moreover, she wanted the money, chiefly for Arthurdale, and she decided to risk the criticism that she knew would come and see if she could ride it out. She would not touch the money from those talks herself, she explained to the press; her fees would be paid directly to the American Friends Service Committee to be disbursed at her direction. This announcement muted most of the criticism that had caused her to give up commercial radio in 1933, but not all of it. Her first sponsor was the Simmons Mattress Company, and the other mattress manufacturers, alarmed lest the nation flock to the Simmons product, protested to President Roosevelt that it did not seem fair for the First Lady to use her prestige to assist some single manufacturer. The president sent the protest to his wife. “Ask the President if he wishes to answer?” Eleanor queried. Howe advised against it. “I agree with Louis,” wrote Steve Early, and a notification finally came back: “No ans. F.D.R.”2 A few weeks later, however, when a small manufacturer objected directly to her, she did defend herself by asking if she should not write for a single magazine because it would be unfair to its competitors, or buy from a favorite dress designer. “The principle involved in my broadcasting for a particular firm holds true in everything I do.”3 It was a debater’s answer, and the criticism never wholly abated; but she was willing to accept it, and so, evidently, was Franklin. Her definitive reason was, “I could not help the various things in which I am interested if I did not earn the money which makes it possible.”

Simmons paid her handsomely. “I think you are entirely right that no one is worth $500 a minute,” she replied candidly to an irate citizen. “Certainly I never dreamed for a minute I was!” Her fees, it was noted, placed her in the same class as the highest-paid radio personalities of the time such as Ed Wynn.4

Her broadcasts were sufficiently popular to bring her another sponsor as soon as the Simmons series ended, this one the American typewriter industry, for whom she did six fifteen-minute talks on child education. These were subsequently issued as a pamphlet. Her

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.