The Path to Power (115 page)

M
ONEY WAS NOT ALL
Johnson was providing for the Congressmen. He wrote to candidates in the same terms in which he wrote to constituents. The letters which carried the welcome news of checks on the way contained also the promise of help in non-financial areas. In the letter he sent to the recipients of the October 24 and 25 checks, Lyndon Johnson wrote: “I want to see you
win
. In order to help you and others of our party out in the frontline trenches, I am devoting my entire time in an attempt to coordinate and expedite assistance to you from this end.” Just call on me, he urged them—“call on me, at any hour of the day, by phone, wire or letter. My address is 339 Munsey Building and my telephone number is Republic 8284.” That was a form letter: individual notes expressed in even more emphatic terms his eagerness to help. “I wish you would please keep in close touch with me and let me know if there is any way at all I can possibly help you,” he wrote Nebraska’s McLaughlin. “My services are available to you day and night on anything.”

It was not, in fact, necessary for him to be called on.

He would have read in the newspapers that Senator George Norris, the great old champion of public hydroelectric power, was planning to speak in Portland, Oregon, and visit the Grand Coulee Dam to emphasize the administration’s role in its building. On Thursday of that first week—the week during which he was single-handedly raising and distributing to Democratic congressional candidates virtually unprecedented amounts of money—Lyndon Johnson compiled a list of nine Democratic candidates in the Far West who were supporters of public power, and who were engaged in tight races. Then he wrote a memorandum: “I do hope that when Senator Norris gives his address … he will say something in support of these people in recognition of the battle they have been carrying on. Just one sentence would be helpful. …”No one had asked him to do this; he had just done it—and done it with his usual thoroughness, not merely pleading for “just one sentence,” but drafting nine different sentences, each custom-tailored for one of the nine candidates. (That thoroughness, and his capacity for cultivating not only the mighty but their assistants, was also evident in the delivery of the memorandum. He spoke to Norris’ assistant, Jack Robinson, about it in advance, and when he sent it to Robinson, he sent with it another memorandum asking him to “Please see to it that this gets the Senator’s attention” and adding: “Call on me anytime for anything.”) Prodded by Robinson, Norris delivered the endorsements.

Other nationally prominent New Dealers and Cabinet members were heading out of Washington on speaking tours for Roosevelt. Johnson asked them, too, to speak for the local Democratic congressional candidate as well. Labor was strong in the State of Washington, and Senator Claude Pepper was a symbol, because of his vigorous support of the wages and hours bill, of the New Deal’s support of labor. SENATOR PEPPER SPEAKING SATURDAY IN SEATTLE, Johnson wired his Naval Affairs Committee colleague Warren Magnuson. SUGGESTED TO HIM THAT HE PUT IN GOOD PLUG FOR YOU. CONTACT PEPPER WHEN HE ARRIVES. Magnuson had not asked for the “good plug.” He had gotten it without asking—as, all at once, Democratic candidates who had given up hope of obtaining assistance from Washington were receiving help for which they had not even asked.

Suddenly, Democratic candidates all across the country realized that there was someone in Washington they could turn to, someone they could ask for not only money but other types of aid.

And they asked. By his second week in the new job, requests were pouring into the Munsey Building—for voting records of Republican incumbents from the Democratic hopefuls opposing them; for information on the broad scale (“I am debating the congressman in McKeesport Saturday … and would like to receive all information about his voting record”) or the small, for the little piece of information—difficult for someone unfamiliar with the federal bureaucracy to obtain—that could improve a speech (PLEASE WIRE ME BY WESTERN UNION … THE AMOUNT OF MONEY IN SOCIAL SECURITY FUND. I MUST KNOW BEFORE SEVEN O’CLOCK TONIGHT); for a vital, desperately needed, denial (wired Congressman J. Buell Snyder of Pennsylvania: FOLLOWING APPEARED IN PITTSBURGH TELEGRAPH QUOTE A BILL INTRODUCED BY SENATOR WAGNER WOULD COMPEL 81,000 TEACHERS OF PENNSYLVANIA TO TURN OVER INTO THE SOCIAL SECURITY FUND $147,000,000 WHICH THE TEACHERS CONSIDER [THEIR] ACTUAL SAVINGS FUND STOP GIVE ME WIRE ANSWER YES OR NO NO EXPLANATION WILL DO STOP THIS WILL COST 50,000 VOTES IN PENNSYLVANIA STOP GIVE ME WIRE SO IT CAN BE PUBLISHED AS IT COMES STOP BETTER FOR WIRE TO COME FROM WAGNER TODAY); for endorsements (Congressman Franck R. Havenner of California wired: SENATOR CLAUDE PEPPER WILL SPEAK IN SAN FRANCISCO TOMORROW STOP WILL BE GRATEFUL IF YOU CAN WIRE HIM ASKING THAT HE ENDORSE MY RECORD); for speakers (“We are requesting … Gifford Pin-chot, former Governor and the man who took the county ‘out of the mud’ with his Tinchot Roads’ to come into Lancaster County, I feel that his visit would supply the spark needed here. Please join with us in urging him to come”).

The requests were answered—with a thoroughness that would have been familiar to Gene Latimer and L. E. Jones, whose high-school debate coach had taught them that if you took care of all the minor details,
if “you did everything you could do—absolutely
everything
—you would win.”

Buell Snyder had asked that the denial he needed come “today,” and it did; his wire was received at the Munsey Building at 1:12 p.m., and a return wire was on its way to Snyder’s Uniontown, Pennsylvania, headquarters that same afternoon, for Johnson had immediately contacted Senator Wagner’s secretary. The denial should come direct from Wagner, Snyder had said, and it did; the return wire was signed with the Senator’s name. And it should “answer yes or no,” and the first sentence of Wagner’s wire was precisely what Snyder needed: MY ANSWER TO REPORTED STATEMENT IS EMPHATICALLY NO. And there followed a wire that could, as Snyder had requested, be published as it came: a long telegram detailing Wagner’s version of the bill in question. That was fast enough service for even a desperate campaigner, but Johnson did not put his trust in Western Union; the next morning he sent his own wire telling Snyder that he should have received one from Wagner: IF NOT RECEIVED, LET ME KNOW, THIS JUST FOLLOW-UP. Answering every request, he did absolutely
everything
he could. The wire that Havenner had requested be sent to Pepper was sent and the endorsement by Pepper was made, and it was not just a
pro forma
endorsement, for Johnson had seen to it—telegraphing and telephoning, and then telephoning again, not only to the Senator’s aides but to the Senator himself, tracking him down on his cross-country tour—that Pepper was given enough details to make it seem that he really was familiar with the Congressman’s record.

Among the items of assistance for which Congressmen had been asking in vain were out-of-district speakers with particular appeal to their constituents, for oratory cost money—money for the orator’s transportation, hotel room and meals (and, in the case of some, honoraria for the rental of their vocal cords)—and the National Committee, which was frantically attempting to scrape up funds to send Harold Ickes and other Cabinet members on cross-country tours for the national ticket, had none to spare for the requests of individual Congressmen.

Touching base only occasionally with the National Committee, Johnson had his staff compile lists of “Speaker Requests,” and the dates of the meetings for which the speakers were requested; he coordinated them, and soon Congressmen with substantial numbers of Polish constituents were notified that Representative Rudolph G. Tenerowicz, past president of the Polish National Alliance, the Polish Alliance of America, and the Polish Union of America, was on his way to deliver one of his renowned speeches—in Polish, of course. (Having won his own, predominantly Polish, district in Hamtramck, Michigan, in 1938 with a majority of 54,000 votes over all other candidates, Tenerowicz needed to devote only limited time to his own campaign.) Candidates with substantial numbers of Negro constituents were
getting a Negro Congressman who was also a renowned orator, Arthur Mitchell of Chicago, and many districts of varied ethnic composition were hearing from little Fiorello La Guardia of New York, who, half Jewish and half Italian, himself an Episcopalian married first to a Catholic and then to a Lutheran of German descent, was practically a balanced ticket all by himself—and could, ranting and shaking his tiny fists, wave the bloody flag in seven different languages. Democratic nominee Alfred F. Beiter, whose Buffalo district included many Italians—who, as he wrote to Johnson, “are inclined to be ‘off-the-reservation’ this year”—had been pleading, in vain, with the National Committee for a visit by Representative D’Alesandro of Baltimore, who, Beiter had been told, “makes a very good rebuttal talk to offset the Republicans’ criticism of the President’s ‘stab-in-the-back’ reference to Mussolini.” Johnson could not get D’Alesandro for Beiter, but did provide Frank Serri, who, he assured Beiter, was a “distinguished Italian Brooklyn lawyer” and “fine orator.” Into melting-pot, multi-ethnic districts whose candidates had been pleading in vain, before October 14, for a single outside speaker, now filed a parade of speakers, many with expense money from Lyndon Johnson in their pockets. Buffalo Congressman Pius Schwert, for example, got Tenerowicz for his Poles, Serri for his Italians, and La Guardia for various ethnic blocs—as well as Arthur Mitchell for the district’s few Negroes. Thanks to Johnson, the breadbasket as well as the melting pot was getting speakers. Oklahoma’s Phil Ferguson wrote him that Marvin Jones “can do more good than anyone. … If he could make Guymon the Saturday afternoon before election [it] would do a lot of good, in fact, it might mean the difference in my election, and then go to Beaver that night would have battle cinched.” Jones was in Guymon the Saturday afternoon before election, and in Beaver that night—and during the last two weeks of the campaign, the Agriculture Committee chairman, identified by farmers throughout the United States with the AAA, was in more than forty rural districts to tell farmers how helpful their local Congressman had been in passing the programs that had saved their farms. Johnson not only dispatched the speakers, he amplified their voices; when, after he had arranged for a visiting speaker, a candidate said he hoped the speech could be broadcast on a local radio station, Johnson provided the funds for the broadcast.

He was providing other types of help as well. His entrée to Ickes—and to other high officials of Interior—was put to the use of other Congressmen. “A lot of projects were approved that Fall,” Walter Jenkins recalls. “Mr. Ickes was very cooperative.” Roosevelt had told Johnson to work through Jim Rowe, and Rowe’s entrée to other departments—and the fact that he could speak in the name of the White House—was put to the use of still others. After more than a year of struggling with the War Department bureaucracy, Martin Smith had finally secured the requisite permit for construction of an airport in his district, only to see the project snarled in WPA red tape. By making him seem ineffectual in Washington, D.C., “this delay
is not doing me any good politically,” Smith wrote Johnson on October 26. “If I could get final approval of this project by the WPA, and have it approved by President Roosevelt, before the end of the coming week, it would be a great help.” A week later, Smith received a telegram from the Munsey Building: YOUR WPA APPLICATION HAS BEEN APPROVED BY WPA AND IS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AWAITING THE PRESIDENT’S SIGNATURE. WILL DO MY BEST TO GET THIS SIGNED FOR YOU AND WIRE YOU BY MONDAY. Time was running out; Monday was the day before election, but on that day, another Western Union envelope was delivered to Smith:

There was help available for Congressmen now not only on projects but on personnel. A “local labor leader” in Scranton was employed by the General Accounting Office, Representative Patrick J. Boland informed Johnson; “will you kindly try to obtain [him] an increase in salary?” Another example of many requests in this area that Johnson handled had been addressed to Drewry first, by Representative John M. Houston of Kansas’ Fifth Congressional District. In a casual conversation in a corridor while the House had still been in session, Drewry had assured Houston that if a federal job for one of his constituents would help in his campaign, he would obtain it, but when Houston asked for a job for one W. W. Brown of Wichita, “who swings a lot of votes” because of his membership in a “very strong” United Commercial Travelers local, “and is out of work,” the chairman of the Congressional Campaign Committee was unable to deliver. But when his assistant, Cap Harding, appealed to Johnson for help, Johnson was able to deliver. Telephoning a bureaucrat in the Agriculture Department’s Office of Personnel, he sounded him out on what was immediately available, and persuaded him to make a call to a higher official who had a $2,400-a-year job open in the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation. A wire went out to Houston informing him: AT REQUEST OF CONGRESSMAN LYNDON JOHNSON HAVE REQUESTED OUR REGIONAL DIRECTOR IN MILWAUKEE … TO FORWARD APPLICATION FOR EMPLOYMENT TO W. W. BROWN.

In other branches of political activity in which similarly urgent appeals came in from Congressmen, Johnson was also able to help. In the same letter in which he thanked Johnson for “sympathetically” helping him with various problems, Martin Smith added: “A new problem has arisen.” This problem was a strike that had tied up lumber mills in his district, and was arousing resentment toward the New Deal, which had encouraged the new militancy in organized labor; “As you well know,” Smith wrote Johnson,
“the President, the Administration and the M.C. [Members of Congress] are given the bulk of the blame for allowing such conditions to prevail.” Although this strike could be settled only by the labor leaders in New York, and Johnson didn’t know those leaders, Tommy Corcoran did; the introductions necessary for Johnson to get them on the phone were arranged, and the very day he was informed of Smith’s “new problem,” he was able to assure the Congressman the width of a continent away that he was working on the problem: TALKED TO LUBIN AND HILLMAN TODAY, THEY ARE DOING EVERYTHING POSSIBLE ON STRIKE.