218 a short history of the united states
pork barrel. A proposed $ 900 million for public works, he argued, was
an outright “raid on the public treasury.” Nevertheless, a $ 2 billion relief
measure passed Congress, only to be vetoed by the President. He par-
ticularly opposed a feature that allowed the RFC to make loans to indi-
viduals and small businesses. He also vetoed a bill for the construction
of a hydroelectric facility, at Muscle Shoals on the Tennessee River in
northern Alabama, which would provide electrification for a vast area of
the Southeast. The President called the measure a gigantic leap by the
government into private business. To him it smacked of socialism.
The devastating economic collapse gave Democrats un-
bounded confidence that they could achieve a monumental victory in
the upcoming presidential election. They held their convention in
Chicago in June 1932 , and since expectations ran high, the contest for
the nomination turned into a battle royal between the forces of Al
Smith, supported by Tammany Hall, and the Governor of New York,
Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had won reelection in 1930 by the largest
majority ever received by a gubernatorial candidate in the state’s his-
tory. A Harvard graduate who had studied law at Columbia University,
an assistant secretary of the navy during the administration of Wood-
row Wilson, FDR suffered an attack of polio in 1921 but through deter-
mined efforts had achieved partial recovery by 1928. Although he
enjoyed the backing of a majority of delegates, he lacked the necessary
two-thirds for nomination. Not until the fourth ballot, after the very
conservative John Nance Garner of Texas, the Speaker of the House of
Representatives, threw his support to Roo sevelt, was he nominated to
head the Democratic ticket. In return, Garner received the vice presi-
dential nomination, which would remove him from his much more
powerful position as Speaker, something reform-minded Democrats
had hoped to do. Disregarding the tradition by which a candidate nor-
mally waited until he was formally notified of his nomination, Roo se-
velt flew from Albany, New York, to Chicago to personally deliver his
acceptance speech. His fl ight electrified the entire nation. And on his
arrival at the convention he made a solemn vow to the delegates: “I
pledge you, I pledge myself, to a New Deal for the American people.”
The party platform demanded repeal of the Eighteenth Amend-