Private Thoughts of a Curmudgeon

by FRANCES PERKINS

THE first volume (representing about one third) of The Secret Diary of Harold L. lakes (Simon & Schuster, $5.00) begins with an entry on March 5, 1933, the day after the inauguration of President Roosevelt, and closes with an entry on November 7, 1936, after Roosevelt had been reelected by enormous majorities.

The preface by the editor, who is the author’s widow, fills in certain preliminary facts and explanations of personality and point of view. The book is in the nature of an old-fashioned diary in which the writer confides to “My Journal” personal reactions, feelings, emotions, suspicions, which he would never have made in a public statement.

The writer of the diary, however, did confine himself pretty closely to recording and expressing his reactions to matters which related to his job as Secretary of the Interior or to his political activities and the contacts in government which furnished his political problems. One wishes that he had let more of his other life — his personal, social, and family life — creep into this journal to illustrate the life of the times in which he lived, and also his own personal growth, his hopes, and his satisfactions. Nevertheless, these pages do reveal much of the personality of a conscientious, high-strung, soundly liberal, and high-principled man faced with the confusions and problems of a critical period in American history, and operating in a field which was largely new to him.

One is astounded at the industry which could keep a man as overworked and harassed as was Harold Ickes at his self-appointed task of making systematic entries in his diary every night and every week. This is a book historians will regard as a mine of information about many details of the first four years of the New Deal which are not clear in the available official papers. Students of political science will also read it for its discussion of some of the complicated and extraconstitutional activities of a Cabinet in the United States. The relations between the President and his Cabinet, between Cabinet officers, between members of the Cabinet and the elected representatives in Congress, are all revealed in an informal and unself-conscious way. Ickes was not writing a thesis on the function of the Cabinet. He was merely recording his own day-byday experiences and operations. Ickes plunged in on March 5 and accepted political problems and government problems as they arose, confining himself originally to what he conceived to be the duties of the Secretary of the Interior in relationship to the Department of the Interior. It is obvious, however, that his broad interests and naturally inquiring mind led him almost immediately into concern about all parts of the government and eventually to a kind of activity and leadership in thinking and action which was not apparent in his early entries.

Although Ickes constantly says that his primary interests were in conservation of natural resources, which is the largest element of obligation in the Department of the Interior, he nevertheless spent most of his time, thought, and diary writing on public works; methods of administration of public works; the political pressures exerted in an effort to make a straight public works program into a work relief program in which relief was the principal objective; the oil industry and the administration of an oil control program; and, finally, the political movements, problems, schemes, antagonisms, and aspirations that were developing in the United States.

The first quarter of this book contains so many expressions of admiration, affection, and total loyalty to President Roosevelt that this reviewer began to ask: “Is he never going to differ with the President or criticize him unfavorably?” The spell was broken, and Ickes finally exploded in 1935, when he read in a newspaper that the President had signed an order directing him to cease allocations of public works projects and to turn all such matters over to the emergency program of which Ickes had not approved. In his own description, he “talked up” to Roosevelt “ in a way in which he had never expected to address the President of the United States.”

There are many incidental revelations of the quality of mind and imagination which Harold Ickes had: a charming description of Hyde Park on the occasion of his first visit, “a place I would dearly love to live in myself”; a touchingly childish appreciation of having been told by a casual acquaintance and again by a member of Congress that he had done very well indeed on the public works administration; the agonies of his social life in Washington (he didn’t like the domestic champagne served at the White House and thought the chairs provided for guests during musicales horribly uncomfortable); the exhaustion and fatigue which he suffered almost constantly and which he frankly says through his journal “accounts for some of his ill-humored” attitudes and comments; the excessive and tiresome demands of official ceremonies (one has to realize that Cabinet officers sometimes have to change their clothes twice in one afternoon and again at night, in order to meet the demands of the social functions). His meticulous recording of the dates and places and persons present or involved in certain movements and debates is evidence that he was consciously preparing himself for the possibility of future investigations, when he would not be found guessing in his testimony. He was well aware that public works was a dangerous business and that handling oil was even more dangerous, and was determined to be prepared for anything.

His record as given here so simply by his daily recordings is an impressive one. He was honestly absorbed as well as truly interested in the subjects which were his responsibility, He was bored by the subjects and activities in which other people, sometimes his colleagues, were interested and concerned, and he refers to them so briefly as to make one wonder if he took them in at all. Nevertheless, his record shows that he invariably helped out with such influence as he had on the major items of social progress. In spite of his preoccupation with his own public works program he could not resist the temptation to put his finger into every other problem, and his own record in this diary of the innumerable private appointments he demanded with the President bears out the impression which many had during his lifetime that he was advising the President on matters outside of his department.

Ickes deeply resented Henry Morgenthau’s frequent personal and private conferences with the President, but this diary would indicate that he sought and had about as many. He resented, according to his own diary, any effort of other branches of government to enter into his domain either as advisers or coöperators or, as he came to suspect, as rivals for the political prestige and undivided authority with which he administered.

He makes himself perfectly clear through his diary that he does not believe in practicing the “soft answer” technique. “They are less likely to make trouble,” he says, “if they know I am not only able but willing to fight back.”

One is surprised at the frequency with which he complains of his hard work and exhaustion, for nothing would have kept him from his late hours at his desk and no one could persuade him to delegate more of his duties. Nevertheless he did a good many things that amused him. He took little rides into the country and commented on the beauty of the landscape; he sat on the grass by the banks of the Potomac with Henry Wallace and John Collier (Commissioner of Indian Affairs). He went to a family dinner with the Roosevelts and apparently chuckled to himself at the picture of the Roosevelt family all talking at once, debating among themselves and disputing their father vigorously, even as the children of other families do.

He comments with a good deal of insight on the general ballyhoo with which the New Deal began its work in the National Recovery Administration and points out that General Johnson thought it should be continued as a permanent method of operation. One constantly reminds oneself that this was a private diary, and that if candor is a relief to the writer he is certainly entitled to practice it. But some of his comments, particularly about General Johnson and his associates, are perhaps a little too frank for necessity. His comments on the weaknesses of other people undoubtedly gave him relief, and one is moved to laughter at his expression of the pouting and peevishness of one Cabinet member, of the unctuous and pompous ways of another, the overtalkativeness of a third, and the indirect and perhaps deceitful methods of another. These are not profound revelations, and one wishes that he might have had time for ripe reflection on the varieties of human nature and on the development of his own attitudes and conclusions.

His obvious worries over his troubles with his Chicago brokers and their determination to disgrace him; the effect of newspapers and newspaper comments on actions of government itself; his irritation over the leaks to the public or to the press; his loyalty to his own appointees even when they were under severe criticism; his total innocence, as recorded in his diary, when the President rebuked his Cabinet and the Executive Council for public and semipublic criticism of each other at a time when most people thought the rebuke was meant for Ickes himself, and Ickes records in his diary that it was intended purely for another—all combine to make this book not only a political history but a human-interest story. A personality was being made by the operation of the times. Both these aspects of the book are fascinating, and it will be read for interest in the man as well as in the political and historical document that it is.