1933-"THE FIRST HUNDRED DAYS"

     Thomas L. Stokes deserihes the huoyant approach
     0£ the ne'v admio{stiation to its first and  most
pressing problem: the restoration of the country's b~k-
mg system.

Thomas L  Stokes, Chip Off N{v Shoulder (Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1940), 361-69. Repnnted by permission of the
publisher.

  One night in that early. hectic, hreathless era of the
New Deal which my friend Ernest K.. Lindley has called
`The First Hundred Days," a group of us kept our
vicil in front of the \Vhite House, waihog for one of
the innumerable conferences to break up. Thev came
in dizzy succession, those meQtings in which the Presi-
dent, his Cabinet and his experts drafted plans, first to
salvage the banks and get the nation's financial svstem
back into some sort of ordi r and later for other legis-
lative measures to patch no the weakened structure of
the American econom'       nd  to reform some of the
abuses revealed.
  It began to rain and h\ the erace of a kindly police
othcer, we herded oursel\e5 o'i the front portico. Niarvin
~icInts~re, one of the I re~ihent s secretaries whom ~se
all had known for manv vears about \\`ashin~ton as a
newspaperman, came out and 1oined us.    \: tao is never
so happy as when he is "harmonizing."     He loves tc
assemble a quick quartet.  It is as important to him in
his leisure moments~and he had very few in those
davs and the years aftersvard~~to harmonize a hit as it
was for those baseball players whom Ring Larduer has
left us as merry minstrels of the washroom on the tra~n
as thev went from one citv to another.   NIa~ dre;~  u
ahout him and we struck up the \\`hite Hou~e fasor c
"Home on the Range.~'      Rich and strong and slight
raucous, it filled the rain-drenched air as we huddlec
toeether, arms across each other's shoulders     on
front porch of the \\`h~te House.  `iVe finished  Then,
suddenly, we all looked at each other and laughec.
   `Imagine doing this in the Hoover administration!"
someone said.
  He spoke the thought of ~ of us.
  That scene is typical to me of the carefree hravado
of those days.  The gloom, the tenseness, the fear ef
the closing months of the Hoover administration had
van~shed.  It seemed for a time that the country had
gone to hell.  hut, what the hell, said we, we are going
to build it over again!  `iVe were so confident and cock-
sure.
  So, too, were the young men who descended upon

\Vashington from coHege cloisters and la~,'ers' offices
and quickly found themselves places behind hundreds
of desks and began to explore every cranny of the na-
tional economy, to probe its faults and to draw diagrams
and blueprints of a new world.     They were going to
make the world over.  \Ve talked then of a planned
economy.  \Ve learned  new   nomenclature.       In time
there were agencies with initials which gave the whole
task the aspects of revolution. \Ve spoke of "The Roose-
velt Revolution."
  They were exciting, exhilarating da\,'s.  It was one of
the most joyous periods of my life. \Ve came alive, we
were eager.
  \Ve were infected with a gay spirit of adventure. for
something concrete and constructis'e finally ,~`as being
done about the chaos which confronted the nation. The
buoyancy and informalits of the New Deal, the roll-up-
your-sleeves and go-to-it attitude, percolated out from
the conferences at the \Vhite House, from conferences
in other government buildings, from conferences at the
Capitol where Congressmen were caught up in the en-
thusiasm.
  \Ve achieved a national unity that was glorious to
see. A little sadly I look hack upon it. It was good that
we were able to get together in that time, for otherwise
we might have lost our democracy. But it is good, too,
I suppose, that when we acquired a certain health again
we began to quarrel and question,    for otherwise we
might have lost the resiliency necessary for democracy
and might have set up a system that later would have
been available for something  other than      democracy.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, however, never would have been
par~ to anything else than democracy. Of that I am
convinced.
  Roosevelt could have become a dictator in 1933. He
did not. . . . His first job was to do something, and do
it quickly to save the nation's banking structure.  The
banks were cracking all about us on that \4arch 4. One
of his objectives throughout his administration has been
to harness financial power, to move the financial capital
from New York to l"Vashington, to turn the control of

money and credit back to the people through         their
elected  represent iti\ Cs This he    could have accom-
plished in one bold stroke by taking over the banks at
the time and n itionalizing them. But he did not take
this way, though he ~as urged to. kistead he turned
the banks haek to their owners and operators and trier!
to realize his ends b\    the slow process of reform  of
the svstem thiough las~    I-low hard that has been, how
it ~ a~ tesi~ted  I mi ~elf can testifi for I covered the
tedi(~u5 cour~e thro'igh Con ress of the securities act,
the sto~k market ~ct     and the ban~ing acts of the ad-
miiiist ation designed   to ei\e \V~shington   reeniator,'
possers o\er the operations of pri\ate finance.
  Roose'ielt in those dass ~as the confident comman-
de   blithe of sp'rit, esourceful
  One night I walked away from one of the general
legislative coufereoces with a Republican leader.   \\`e
strolled along the \\~hite House drivewav.
  "~iy, that man is refreshing after Hoo"er!" he said.
  "Like a nice, cool highball after dUnkine stale, fiat
beer   It is interesting. too, to watch him operate. I sat
there tonight, sort of haek in a eorner~after all, I'm
a Republican, you know."
  He smiled.
  "He nas courteous. He deferred here and there.     He
was good-humored.     But all the way through he kept
a straight line toward what he wanted. \\`heu it was all
os~er, he had got his way.   He's smart!"
  In his voice was the admiration of one politiciar:
for another.
  Roosei~elt's calm and optimism carried us throng!:
those trying days, so that we could joke about our in-
dividual plights as he closed the banks.    That was or-
dered in a proclamation issued at the \Vbite House at
one o'clock in the morning of Monday, March 6, less
than two da'i,~s after he had been in the \Vhite House.
Most of the banks were shut down already. The bank
holiday he proclaimed stopped all financial transactions.
\\`orking day and night, he and his experts drew up a
plan for their reopening. He called in the beads of the
press association and explained the plan to them. Ray

Clapper represented us, the United Press. I was on the
night service at that time. I was in the office standing
by, ready at the telephone to take the story when Ray
called. His voice had a tense quality and be sounded
far away. He explained he was calling from within the
\Vhite House. He dictated his lead, which was pulled
from rny typewriter and rushed to the wire. Take by
take the story went out.
  The next night the President talked to the people
in their homes about the radio in the first of his "fire
side chats." He explained the banking dilemma in simple
language and told what was being done about it. It was
a masterpiece of exposition. His voice inspired confi-
dence. The effect was just as if he were sitting in the
room with the family. He displayed in that talk the
insight into public psychology which made him the idol
of the masses.
  My endeavor is to recapture the fine frenzy of that
period? to recapture my own enthusiasm and zest. For
it had an important influence upon my thinking. New
hope filled me. I saw that something could be done
about lots of things. Those who had been so long in
the minority, crying in the wilderness, now became a
militant majority. A new period of education began
for me. I went back to school. We reporters all went
back to school-we have commented on it often since.
We had to in order to turn out our daily copy, for the
administration was probing into the whole economic
structure.   The  classrooms were government  offices,
headquarters for the new agencies which sprang up over
night in Washington. .
  As I look back upon myself in those days I see that
I was pretty naive in some respects. I was 50 eager, so
hopeful. I don't regret it. I regret none of my enthusi-
asms. Some of them died away, but I still retain others.
Some heroes developed bad eases of clay feet.  Some
have worn well. I am glad that I could have faith again
in something.
  I learned to know my country, then, and I learned
to love it, a~nd I knew that it could be saved.