The Plots Against the President by Sally Denton Page B

last frontier has long since been reached, and there is practically no more free land. More than half of our people do not live on their own property. There is no safety valve in the form of a Western prairie to which those thrown out of work by the Eastern economic machines can go for a new start. We are not able to invite the immigration from Europe to share our endless plenty. We are now providing a drab living for our own people … The independent business man is running a losing race … If the process of concentration goes on at the same rate, at the end of another century we shall have all American industry controlled by a dozen corporations, and run by perhaps a hundred men. But plainly, we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already.
    Roosevelt made clear that it was time for a revolutionary reassessment of what democracy in America should look like in the twentieth century. “Every man has a right to live, and this means that he has also a right to make a comfortable living. He may … decline to exercise that right; but it may not be denied him.” Hinting darkly of speculators, manipulators, and financiers, his words—written by Adolph Berle—left little doubt that he favored some kind of wealth redistribution. This concept of the sanctity of individualism, this championing of personal rights over property rights, this plea for relief to the masses, was a shot heard throughout the nation. That an American aristocrat had sounded the clarion call made it all the more poignant and uplifting—and, to members of Roosevelt’s class, terrifying. “It was a real shocker for those who simply assumed that free competition was no more to be questioned than home and mother,” recalled Rexford Guy Tugwell, who saw the speech as the turning point that launched Franklin Roosevelt into the realm of legend, which he would occupy into the next century.
    Early returns on November 8, 1932, confirmed that the Roosevelt forces had accurately gauged the mood of the nation. No other Democrat had ever won such a large margin of the popular vote. Roosevelt had carried forty-two states, winning by 7 million popular votes and 472 electoral votes, compared with Hoover’s 59. Democrats took over the Senate and the House as well, guaranteeing an opportunity for Roosevelt to manifest his vision for a New Deal. Listening to the results in a suite at New York City’s Biltmore Hotel, surrounded by family and friends, the candidate was strangely somber.
    Louis Howe refused to leave his own headquarters across the street, until victory was certain so as not to jinx the good luck. One of the guests described him as a “well of pessimism, overflowing now and then with dire predictions.” Not until Hoover conceded shortly after midnight did Howe break out a twenty-year-old bottle of sherry he had been saving for the day his protégé was elected president.
    Sitting in a corner of the suite, Eleanor broke into tears, lamenting her new role as First Lady. “Now I will have no identity,” she said quietly to a cousin, unable to mask what she later described as the “turmoil” in her heart.
    The couple returned to their town house at 49 East Sixty-fifth Street, where an exuberant Sara Delano Roosevelt was waiting. “This is the greatest moment of my life,” she said, embracing her son.
    For his part, Roosevelt was suddenly and uncharacteristically overcome with doubt and trepidation about the burden he was facing—a challenge equal to that of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln as the Great Depression entered its fourth year. Despite the Roosevelt theme song, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” which was struck up throughout the country, “there was no excitement … no petty sense of impending personal triumph,” Raymond Moley wrote years later of the election victory. The “gathering economic storm