The Letters of Franklin K. Lane, Personal and Political
We want more men with garden homes instead of tenement houses.
We want our waters, that flow idly to the sea, put to use; more
stored water for irrigation, more hydroelectric plants to supply
industries, railroads and home and farming activities. There
should be electric lights upon the farm, and power for the sewing
machine and the churn. It can be done because it is being done on
the best farms of the far West.
We want our streams controlled so that they do not wash away our
cities, farms, and railroads, and so as to redeem the submerged
bottom lands for the next generation. ...
We want fewer boys and girls, men and women, who can not read or
write the language of our laws, newspapers, and literature, ...
that those who live with us may really be of us. ...
We should dignify the profession of teaching as the foundation
profession of modern democratic life. ...
We want definite and continuing studies made of our great
industrial fiscal and social problems. The framing of our policies
should not be left to emotional caprice, or the opportunism of any
group of men, but should be the result of sympathetic and deep
study by the wisest men we have, irrespective of their politics.
There should be industrial conferences, such as those recently
inaugurated, to arrive at the ways by which those who furnish the
financial arm of industry and those who furnish the working arm of
industry may most profitably and productively be brought into
cooperation. ... Through the study of what has been done we can
give direction to our national thought and work with a will toward
a condition in which labor will have recognition and be more
certainly insured against the perils of non-occupation and old
age, and capital become entitled to a sure return, because more
constantly and productively USED.
Then, too, we need a study made of the health conditions of our
children,--of the reason for the large percentage of undeveloped
and subnormal children who are brought to our schools, and the
larger number who do not reach maturity. ... Underfed boys and
ignorant boys are the ones who turn to Bolshevism. We can not
stand pat and let things drift without their drifting not to the
"good old days" but to bad new days.
Why should not our system of taxation be subject for the
profoundest study? ... We must find ways by which the individual
may have tools for production which his skill and foresight and
thrift have created and yet take for society in taxes what society
itself gives. ... There must come to society an increasingly large
portion of the wealth created by each generation through
inheritance taxes. Thus all our boys and girls will start the race
of life more nearly at the scratch. This will be for the making of
the race and for the enriching of the whole of society. Yet there
must be saved, surely, the call upon the man of talent for every
ounce of energy that he has and every spark of imagination.
We want our soldiers and sailors to be more certain of our
gratitude and to have an opportunity to realize their own ambition
for themselves. We must not be driven into any foolish or
impossible course by the pressure of a desire to win their votes.
On the contrary, the pressure should come from us who had not the
opportunity to risk our lives, that those who did take such risk
shall be highly honored. For those who will identify themselves
with the tilling of the soil, there should be farms, small yet
complete, for which they can gradually pay on long time. For
others there should be such education for professional or
industrial life as they desire. For others, a home, not a
speculation in real estate, but a piece of that American soil for
which they fought. For these things we can pay without extra
financial strain, if we dedicate to this purpose merely the
interest upon the monies which other nations owe us. The extent of
our willingness to help these men is not to be measured by their
request but rather by our ability and their lasting welfare. ...
We are to extend our activities into all parts of the world. Our
trade is to grow as never before. Our people are to resume their
old place as traders on the seven seas. We are to know other
peoples better and make them all more and more our friends,
working with them as mutually dependent factors in the growth of
the world's life. For this day a definite foreign policy must be
made, one that is fair; to which none can take exception. Our
people shall go abroad for their good and the good of other lands,
with their skilled hands and their resourceful minds, and their
energetic capital, and they must be assured of support abroad, as
at home, in every honest venture.
TRUE AMERICANISM
AMERICA's ambition is to lead the world in showing what Democracy
can effect. This would be my conception of the large idea of the
campaign. It involves much more than the League of Nations. This
is our hour of test. We must not be little in our conception of
ourselves, nor yet have a conceit that is self-destructive.
America must prove herself a living thing, with policies that are
adequate to new conditions. ... We wish an international
settlement that will enable us to be more supremely great as
nationalists. This is the significance of the League of Nations.
It is a plan of hope. It is the only plan which the mind of man
has evolved which any number of nations has ever been willing to
accept as a buffer against devil-made war. ... It is a monumental
experiment which this century and other centuries will talk of and
think of and write of because it involves the lives of men and
women under it, and there is the possibility of giving our full
thought and energy and wealth to making life more enjoyable and
finer instead of more horrible and cruel. While other nations are
in the mood, we should agree with them, that we may spend our
lives and money in a rivalry of progress rather than in a
competition in the art of scientific boy-murder. There are times
when war is the ultimate and necessary appeal, but those times
should be made fewer by American genius and sacrifice.
And our prestige and power should not be wasted at this critical
time, because out of some fecund mind may come an abstract and
legalistic plan for some other kind of League. Let us be
practical. Let us go to the fullest limit with other nations who
are now willing to join hands with us, yet never yielding the
Constitutional Congressional control over our war making. ... Let
us take thought to-day of our opportunities else these may not
exist tomorrow. ... Cordially yours,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
TO TIMOTHY SPELLACY
August 2, 1920
MY DEAR TIM,--Here you are, when you are sick yourself, worrying
about me. Now, don't give any concern to any matter excepting
getting thoroughly well, just as soon as possible. You are doing
too much. You are not resting enough, and you are worrying. You
have got enough to take care of yourself and your family for the
rest of your lives, you have the respect of every one who knows
you, and the affection of every one who knows you well; in fact,
you have nothing to work for, and every reason to be contented. So
I suggest that you learn, in your later years, how to bum. I have
no doubt that Mike will come across something very good in
Colombia, if he doesn't get the fever, or break his blooming neck.
I have never seen so aggressive a group of old men as you fellows
are. You will not admit that you are more than twenty-one. ...
With my warmest regards, as always cordially yours, FRANKLIN K.
LANK
With the presentation of an Irish flag, August 10, 1920.
To Edward L. Doheny, with the cordial esteem of Franklin K. Lane.
This flag is a symbol. It stands for the finest thing in a human
being--aspiration--the seed of the Divine. It represents the
noblest hope of a thwarted and untiring people. It makes a call to
the heart of every generous-minded man, and gives vivifying
impulse to the home-loving of all faces. It is a symbol of a
people to whom most of the arts were known when England and
America were forest wastes, whose women have made the world
beautiful by their virtue, and whose men have made the world free
by their courage.
To Franklin D. Roosevelt New York, August, [1920]
DEAR OLD MAN,--This is hard work--to say that I can't be with you
on this great day in your life. [Footnote: Notification ceremonies
following Franklin D. Roosevelt's nomination as Vice-president by
the Democratic party.] You know that only the mandate of the
medical autocrats would keep me away, not that I could do you any
good by being there, but that you might know that many men like
myself take pride in you, rejoice in your opportunity, and keep
our faith in Democracy because out of it can come men of ideals
like yourself. I know/that you will not allow yourself to become
cheap, undignified, or demagogical. Remember, that East and West
alike, we want gentlemen to represent us, and we ask no man to be
a panderer or a hypocrite to get our votes. Frankness, and
largeness, and simplicity, and a fine fervor for the right, are
virtues that some must preserve, and where can we look for them if
not from the Roosevelts and the Delanos?
It is a great day for you and for all of us. Be wise! Don't be
brilliant. Get plenty of sleep. Do not give yourself to the
handshakers. For now your word carries far, and it must be a word
worthy of all you stand for. I honestly, earnestly ask God's
blessing on you. As always,
FRANKLIN K. LANE
Our love to your dear Mother,--proud happy Mother,--and to
Eleanor.
To Mrs. George Ehle
Katonah, September, 1920
TO THE EHLE,--Now this is a pleasure to have a minute's talk with
you in the cool under an apple tree. You are gay, with Grouitches,
and other festive creatures, while I am glum, gloomy and
lugubrious. You know this is a novel experience for me to be in
care of two nurses and a doctor, not to speak of a wife; but I am
obedient, docile, humble, tractable, and otherwise dehumanized.
The plan here is to follow my boy's statement of the modern
prescription for women, "Catch 'em young; treat 'em rough; tell
'em nothing." Well, they don't catch me young, but otherwise the
prescription is filled. They reduced me to weakness, dependence,
and a sort of sour-mash, and now they say that on this foundation
they will build me up. Tho' I am still to lose some weight, being
only twenty-four pounds under my average for twenty years. I will
emerge from this spot, if I emerge at all, a regular Apollo, and
will do Russian dances for you on that lovely lawn under the
mulberry tree. And what happy memories of that spot I do have, and
they cluster about you, with your soft hand and your understanding
eye and your sympathetic mouth. You don't mind my making love to
you in this distant fashion do you? Well, this is a charming jail,
but jail it is after all, for I can't flee, though all the leisure
in the world were mine--and it irks an American eagle or eaglet.
Dear Anne has been improving here. She now is jolly, tho' it has
been hot. Responsibility kills her, and I thrive on it.
I believe I will take that place we went to see on the Shepaug.
Ryan, my friend, is to manage it. Well, we have a place of refuge,
eh? where the wicked and the boring and the ununderstanding cannot
pursue.
But oh! my dreams do not come true these days, the magic touch is
lost, the Fairies have been hurt in their feelings, my Daemon has
deserted, and instead of beauty and joy and power, sweet content
and warm friendship, I am struggling merely to live--and to what
end?
Please go into my room some morning early and look out to the
gate, the cobwebs must be diamond-sprinkled on the circle at the
doorway, the catalpa trees must stand like stiff, prim, proper,