"I Accept"

Few were the prominent New Dealers not at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia last week. One absentee was Franklin Roosevelt who remained in Washington. Another was his wife, Eleanor, who at Reedsville, W. Va., her favorite subsistence homestead, awarded ribbons in a fiddlers' contest and received the first vacuum cleaner assembled as an industrial job by the homesteaders. The President did not have a great deal to do except sign some bills left by Congress and say good-by to a few others who were not going to Philadelphia. For him it was something of an experience to sit at home, almost disregarded by the country, and twiddle his radio in solitude.

Once the nominating hour of the convention had come and gone (see p. 11) Franklin Roosevelt stepped briskly back into the national spotlight. Late Saturday afternoon he and Mrs. Roosevelt entrained at Washington, detrained at Philadelphia, drove into Franklin Field a few blocks from the convention hall. Carpeting the ground of the great stadium below the speakers' stand sat the tattered veterans of the convention soon to be invalided home. Around them, wet by showers but undampened in spirit, sat a new bevy of New Dealers, 100,000 strong. National Chairman Farley had rallied them to adorn the Rooseveltian triumph; 200,000 tickets had been printed; Philadelphians by the thousand had been enlisted at booths where the tickets were distributed free; Boss Frank Hague of Jersey City had delivered legions of his well-drilled yeomanry. The fresh army of enthusiasts rose and roared acclaim as Franklin Roosevelt marched out upon the platform on the arm of Son James. Standing at the rostrum he and John Nance Garner clasped hands and raised them aloft--the Democratic ticket for 1936.

Lily Pons sang the Star-Spangled Banner. Protestant Episcopal Bishop Francis Marion Taitt pronounced a prayer. Senator Pat Harrison announced to Mr. Garner his renomination as Vice President. The Vice President answered in a brief speech of psalmodic inspiration:

"Franklin Delano Roosevelt is my leader, my commander-in-chief. In his presence, before this multitude and with the stars of heaven* to bear witness to my covenant, I renew the pledge of fealty I gave four years ago." The vital radio hour of 10 p. m. was so close at hand that Senator Robinson cut his notification to Mr. Roosevelt down to two sentences: "Mr. President, it should be a matter of gratification and pardonable pride for you to know. . . . Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States."

For the second time Franklin Roosevelt came forward to strike while the political iron was hot, before the heat of a new nomination had cooled. At Chicago four years ago, in a speech hastily written aboard an airplane, he began by saying:

"We will break foolish traditions and leave it to the Republican leadership to break promises," and ended with: "I pledge myself to a New Deal for the American people. This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms." At Philadelphia last week, in an address prepared at leisure in his air-cooled White House office, polished with every effective artifice of rhetoric and delivered in his clear, golden voice, he expounded an interpretation of history according to which this country has twice borne the yoke of royal tyrannies, once under the British and once under a modern economic dynasty, has twice revolted, once in A. D. 1776 and again in A. D. 1932. Declared President Roosevelt by way of accepting his second nomination :

". . . . I come not only as the leader of a party--not only as a candidate for high office, but as one upon whom many critical hours have imposed and still impose a grave responsibility. . . . "I cannot, with candor, tell you that all is well with the world. Clouds of suspicion, tides of ill-will and intolerance gather darkly in many places. . . . "Philadelphia is a good city in which to write American history. . . . ". . . In 1776, we sought freedom from the tyranny of a political autocracy--from the eighteenth century royalists who held special privileges from the Crown. . . . Political tyranny was wiped out at Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.

"Since that struggle, however, man's inventive genius released new forces in our land which reordered the lives of our people. The age of machinery, of railroads, of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution. . . . Out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. . . . "There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small businessmen and merchants. . . . They were no more free than the worker or the farmer "It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. . . . "The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor--these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small businessman, the investments set aside for old age--other people's money--these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in. . . . Private enterprise became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise. . . . "The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. . . . "We seek not merely to make government a mechanical implement, but to give it the vibrant personal character that is the embodiment of human charity. We are poor indeed if this nation cannot afford to lift from every recess of American life the dread fear of the unemployed that they are not needed in the world. We cannot afford to accumulate a deficit in the books of human fortitude. . . . "Governments can err--Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. "Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. "There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of others much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny. "In this world of ours in other lands, there are some people who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy. I believe in my heart that only our success can stir their ancient hope. They begin to know that here in America we are waging a great war. It is not alone a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization. It is a war for the survival of democracy. . . . "I accept the commission you have tendered me. . . ."

There were two more sentences to Franklin Roosevelt's speech: "I join with you. I am enlisted for the duration of the war." But the crowd did not hear them. A great roar rose from the stadium. Beaming, the President raised his hands and clasped them like a fisticuffer above his head. One by one his mother, his wife. three of his sons, his daughter, his daughter-in-law, his son-in-law, grouped themselves about him. At his beck John Nance Garner, James Aloysius Farley, Joseph Taylor Robinson joined the happy family, standing under the floodlights in a grand finale, ready to march forward together to the Yorktown of economic royalism. After a few minutes of hubbub President Roosevelt called on the band leader to play Auld Lang Syne. For a moment he stood as if in tribute to some unknown dead, then waved gaily to his audience, made his exit on his son's arm. On the rapidly emptying platform Pennsylvania's Governor Earle, in a transport of rapture, executed a few steps of the hornpipe. Below the stand the President emerged in his limousine, circled once around the arena in triumph, vanished into the night.

* The night was murky, overcast.

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