July 16, 1940: The Democratic National Convention is being held at the Chicago Stadium, the big Midwestern city's largest arena, home of the NHL's Chicago Black Hawks. (Starting in 1986, the official spelling became one word: "Blackhawks.")
It's not going well. The Democratic Party is badly divided. Their leader, the incumbent President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is in his 8th year, the last year of his 2nd term. Only 2 of the previous 30 men to hold the Presidency have run for a 3rd term, or what would have amounted to one: Ulysses S. Grant and FDR's cousin, Theodore Roosevelt. Only 2 others have even seriously considered it, before realizing that they were unlikely to win: Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson.
But FDR has made no announcement as to whether he would run again. To make matters worse, the Democrats appear to have no obvious successor in place:
* Vice President John Nance Garner was a Southerner, from Texas. Although Andrew Johnson had become President upon the death of Abraham Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson had been a Virginia native but the Governor of New Jersey when he was elected, no politician representing a Southern State had been elected President since Zachary Taylor from Kentucky in 1848. And even he wasn't exactly a "politician": He was the leading General of a war that had just been won, and had never run for office before. Garner was also considered too conservative outside the South.
* The other major candidate was the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who was also in FDR's Cabinet, as Postmaster General: James A. Farley of New York. Farley was considered a great organizer, but didn't really have name recognition among the general public, and was a Catholic. Except for Alfred E. Smith, who lost the general election of 1928 very badly, no Catholic had ever even been nominated for President by a major party.
* FDR might have wanted his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, to be the next President. But Hull was another Southerner, having served Tennessee in both houses of Congress. What's more, Hull had a speech impediment on top of his Southern accent, which would have ruined a campaign in this era of radio and newsreels.
* Another would-be President, Joseph P. Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain, a Boston native who thought that his large personal fortune and network of personal contacts could make him the 1st Catholic President, but his isolationism and apparent favoritism toward Nazi Germany made him persona non grata in the Party.
* Several potential Presidential candidates had been defeated in the Republican tide of the 1938 elections, including James Michael Curley, the former Mayor of Boston and Governor of Massachusetts, who lost a Senate race that year. And, besides, he was a Catholic.
* And then, of course, there were the Republicans. Having gotten clobbered in the elections of 1930, 1932, 1934 and 1936, they didn't have a clear President-in-the-making, either. They ended up nominating Wendell Willkie, a man with no political experience, but a strong anti-New Deal message, but also a willingness to help Britain against Nazi Germany in World War II, while otherwise keeping the U.S. out of it -- in other words, FDR's position.
FDR had been thinking about running for a 3rd term, even in 1939, but he really wanted to retire to his mansion on the Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York. Certainly, the Republicans' rhetoric at their Convention, in Philadelphia, suggested that they were running against him, as the avatar of American liberalism, rather than against the Democratic Party in general.
What made FDR run again was the Nazis' leader, Adolf Hitler. In May, his troops began marching across Western Europe. By mid-June, it had all fallen to him, even France. Britain was next in their sights, and whoever was going to be President starting on January 20, 1941, the end of FDR's 2nd term, was going to have to deal with Hitler's seemingly limitless ambition. And he, Roosevelt, was the only person in the country who was even remotely experienced enough to take Hitler on.
The problem was, being that he was seeking an unprecedented 3rd term, he had to do what Presidential candidates used to do, before his time: Make it look like he wasn't actively running. The idea was that the office should seek the man, not the other way around. So he drafted a statement for the Convention Chairman, Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley of Kentucky, to read to the Delegates. It concluded:
The Delegates sat in shocked silence for a moment. Then came a voice thundering over the stadium loudspeakers: "We want Roosevelt! We want Roosevelt! We want Roosevelt!"
The voice belonged to Thomas D. Garry, Superintendent of Chicago's Department of Sanitation -- in other words, the sewer department. He was a trusted henchman of Chicago Mayor Edward J. Kelly, the Convention's host, an FDR loyalist, and, himself, chief engineer of the Chicago Sanitary District during the 1920s.
Garry was stationed in a basement room with a microphone, waiting for that moment. Kelly had posted hundreds of Chicago city workers and precinct captains around the Stadium. Other Democratic bosses had brought followers from their home territories. All of them joined Garry's chant. Within a few seconds, hundreds of delegates joined in. Many poured into the aisles, carrying state delegation standards for impromptu demonstrations. Whenever the chant began to die down, State chairmen, who also had microphones connected to the speakers, added their own endorsements: "New Jersey wants Roosevelt!" "Arizona wants Roosevelt!" "Iowa wants Roosevelt!"
Despite coming out of the loudspeakers, Garry was in the basement, and thus became known as "The Voice From the Sewers." Life magazine, conservative as always, called it a "shabby pretense" that "fooled nobody." Nevertheless, on the 1st ballot, FDR got 946 Delegates, Farley 73, Garner 61, and others got 20. There would be no 2nd ballot.
It would be harder to get the Vice President FDR wanted. Nobody wanted Garner to have the job for a 3rd term, including Garner himself: The former Speaker of the House had said, "The job isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss." For public consumption, it was printed as "a pitcher of warm spit."
FDR wanted his Secretary of Agriculture, Henry Wallace. There were problems with this: Wallace was a former Republican, was pro-civil rights, and was considered to have questionable ties, both to the Soviet Union and to Nicholas Roerich, a Russian painter, writer and philosopher with some odd views. The conservative Southerners were adamant that Wallace not be nominated.
So FDR sent First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to Chicago, to speak on behalf of Wallace. She flew there, and told the Delegates, "You cannot treat this as you would an ordinary nomination in an ordinary time." It was the best-received speech of the Convention, and Wallace defeated the Speaker of the House, William Bankhead of Alabama, on the 1st ballot.
Perhaps Bankhead would have made a stronger bid for the office had he not been ill, and he died 2 months later. His father, John, had served Alabama in both houses of Congress; his brother, John II, was a Senator and a Delegate to the Convention; and his daughter, Tallulah Bankhead, was one of America's greatest actresses.
Unlike in 1932 in Chicago, and in 1936 in Philadelphia, FDR felt he had to stay in Washington, and so he delivered his acceptance speech remotely, by radio, which was piped into the Convention. He would do the same in Chicago in 1944. He was the 1st Presidential nominee to deliver his acceptance speech in person, and he remains, through the 2020 election, the last one to not do so.
The 1940 Convention was not one of the Democratic Party's best. But it did show a commitment to the principles that FDR had stood for, and wanted to stand for. For all intents and purposes, it is still his Party.
Ed Kelly served as Mayor of Chicago from 1933 to 1947, and lived until 1950. Thomas D. Garry, who had worked on a sewer survey under Kelly, served as Assistant Commissioner until 1963, and who always insisted that the D stood for "Democrat," lived until 1976.
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July 16, 1940 was a Tuesday. These baseball games were played:
* Elsewhere in Chicago, at Wrigley Field, the New York Giants lost to the Chicago Cubs, 2-0. Vern Olsen pitched a 6-hit shutout, outpitching Harry Gumbert. Phil Cavarretta drove in both runs with a 7th-inning single. Mel Ott went 1-for-3 with a walk.
* The New York Yankees lost to the Chicago White Sox, 5-1 at Yankee Stadium. Johnny Rigney outpitched Marius Russo. Joe Kuhel hit a home run. Joe DiMaggio went 1-for-4, driving in the Yankees' only run.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 5-3 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.
* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Detroit Tigers, 3-1 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Hank Greenberg went 1-for-4.
* The Washington Senators beat the Cleveland Indians, 11-8 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.
* The St. Louis Cardinals beat the Boston Bees, 4-3 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. This was the last of 5 seasons in which the Boston team of the National League used the Bees name. The next season, they went back to their former name, the Boston Braves.
* The Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Browns moved their game scheduled for today back 2 days, to have a Sunday doubleheader and a bigger gate. The BoSox won the opener, 5-4. Roger "Doc" Cramer doubled Dom DiMaggio (Joe's brother) home with the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning. This made Emerson Dickman the winning pitcher in relief of Lefty Grove. Dickman would win 22 games in his career; Grove, 300.
The Red Sox won the nightcap, 7-3. Over the 2 games, Ted Williams went 1-for-9.
* And the Cincinnati Reds and the Philadelphia Phillies were rained out at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. It was agreed to play the game on July 28, as part of a Sunday doubleheader, and move it to Shibe Park. The Reds won the 1st game, 7-2. The Phils won the 2nd game, 4-1.
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