Franklin D. Roosevelt: Typed Letter Signed as President....

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Letter signed November 8, 1937 on The White House Washington stationery, one page (conjoining leaves), to Herbert Bayard Swope, with very historic content regarding New York Senator . FDR writes: "Dear Herbert [an interesting reference to Swope's name, FDR usually referred to the journalist by his middle name ‘Bayard'] :/ It gives me great pleasure to be associated with those who are planning to honor Senator Wagner in recognition of the work he has done in behalf of public housing. A good beginning has now been made to rid our cities of those slum areas which for all too long have been a menace to health and happiness./ We rejoice that slum clearance and low cost housing are now recognized under the law for which Senator Wagner labored so faithfully and that at last something tangible may be accomplished in a reform long overdue./ We are grateful to Bob Wagner for all he has done in behalf of so worthy an undertaking and welcome an opportunity to make public acknowledgment of our appreciation of his vision as a statesman and his worth as a man./ Very sincerely yours,/ Franklin D. Roosevelt."  Robert Ferdinand Wagner, the youngest of nine children, was born in Hesse-Nassau, Germany, on June 8, 1877. His family emigrated to the United States in 1885 and settled in New York City. Wagner was unable to speak English when he started school but he was a good student and eventually graduated from the New York City College (1898) and the New York Law School (1900). Wagner was active in the Democratic Party and with the support of Charles Murphy and the Tammany Society he won a seat in the state legislature in 1904 and four years later was elected to the State Senate. Wagner took a particular interest in industrial working conditions and developed a sympathy for the emerging trade union movement. In 1919 Wagner became a justice of the New York Supreme Court. He held this position to 1926 when he was elected to the United States Senate. During his first term Wagner failed in his attempts to persuade Congress to pass legislation to help trade unions and the unemployed. In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Wagner as the first chairman of the National Recovery Administration. Wagner became an important figure in the Roosevelt Administration and helped draft the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Social Security Act, and the National Labor Relations Act, which is commonly called the Wagner Act. In 1937 Wagner persuaded Congress to establish the United States Housing Authority, an agency to provide loans for low-cost public housing, legislation to which FDR is most probably referring in this letter to Hoopy, who in 1937 was still serving at the American Construction Council. However, Wagner was less successful in his attempts to create a national health care system. He also failed to convince Congress to pass anti-lynching legislation. Wagner resigned from the Senate for health reasons in 1949. However, he recovered and spent his last few years helping to establish the new nation of Israel. Robert Ferdinand Wagner died in New York City on May 4, 1953. Herbert Bayard Swope (1882-1958) was a  journalist who became famous as a war correspondent and editor of the New York World. After graduation from high school, Swope spent a year in Europe before going to work as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He later went to the Chicago Tribune, then the New York Herald and the New York Morning Telegraph, with short periods of employment at the New York World, which he finally joined full-time in 1909. He remained with the paper  until 1929, with an interruption for service in World War I. After serving as a crime reporter for the World, Swope became a war correspondent, reporting from Germany early in World War I. He came to be recognized as an authority on Germany. His articles, collected in the book Inside the German Empire (1917), won him a Pulitzer Price in 1917. Swope came back from Germany in 1915 to become city editor of the World, but he returned to the front in 1916. When the United States entered the war in 1917, he was commissioned in the U.S. Navy and made assistant to Bernard Baruch on the U.S. War Industries Board. He returned to the World in 1920 as executive editor and, in that role, concentrated on building up a page devoted to columnists opposite the editorial page. In that period, ending with his retirement in 1929, the paper won three Pulitzer Prizes. In retirement Swope served the U.S. government in various advisory roles and was chairman of the New York State Racing Board for 11 years, starting in 1934. During and shortly after World War II, from 1942 to 1946, he served as a consultant to U.S. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. Swope had a critical role in causing FDR to use the famous "Happy Warrior" phrase in his June, 1924 nomination speech for Al Smith at the Democratic National Convention in Madison Square Garden. FDR's nominating speech at the convention marked his return to the political arena after his August, 1921 paralysis from poliomyelitis. Widely regarded as the most memorable speech of the 1924 convention for the Democrats, FDR originally didn't want to use the phrase "Happy Warrior" in nominating Al Smith for President. As recounted by one of Smith's closest advisors, Judge Joseph M. Proskauer, who originally placed the phrase in the nominating speech, "So I took Herbert Bayard Swope, the editor [of the New York World] with me to Roosevelt's place up the Hudson so that we could work it out. Swope made the mistake of the century. He picked up Roosevelt's speech, turned to me and said, ‘Joe, this is awful. It's dull. It won't do.' And he flung it on the floor. Then he picked up my ‘Happy Warrior' speech. ‘This is great, Frank,' he said to Roosevelt. ‘You've done it just the way it ought to be.' Well, Roosevelt damn near went through the roof. We fought and fought. Finally I told him, ‘Frank, I have this message from the Governor [Smith]: Either you give this speech or you don't nominate him." FDR gave the speech, with his own editing, and FDR's stirring effort, his first major appearance using his leg braces and crutches, marked his return in full force to the Democratic Party and national politics. As noted by FDR biographer Nathan Miller in FDR: An Intimate History (page 205), after FDR finished his nominating speech, "The lid blew off the Garden and the cheering lasted for an hour and thirteen minutes. Connoisseurs of political oratory universally agreed that it was by far the best speech of the convention. Following this display of courage and eloquence, Roosevelt was probably more popular than any of the candidates, and most observers believed the image of the ‘Happy Warrior' better suited him than Smith." A wonderful and personal letter from FDR honoring Senator Wagner, and showing first hand FDR's progressive leadership and recognition of others so inclined with a "vision" that assists those in public housing. What a great letter from one progressive titan speaking about honoring another.