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IF ONLY HIS FRIENDS “KNEW MORE ABOUT NATIONAL PROBLEMS”
176
●
ROOSEVELT, FRANKLIN D.Typed Letter Signed, as President, with holograph
“Personal” at upper left, to John L. Saltonstall, explaining that no one person or point of
view could hold special influence with the President because he confers with so many
people of different views, and noting that his own friends would be more helpful if they
had a national perspective on the problems that confront the Nation. 1
1
/
2
pages, 4to,White
House stationery, written on rectos of two sheets originally conjoined; horizontal fold.
(TFC)
Washington, 13 January 1938
[1,000/1,500]
“
. . . I fear that you, like so many others, have been . . . ‘taken in’ by an absurd and utterly untrue
mass of stuff which is handed out by news interpreters and radio commentators. If, as you say, ‘the
belief persists’ that any special group has my special ear, or that Mr. A today has great influence with
the President, or that Mr. X has replaced Mr. A in the good graces of the President, all I can say to
that is that I regret the credulity of my friends.
“
What these deliberately untruthful commentators fail to give to the public is the daily list of those
whom I talk with. . . . I see more people than any two previous Presidents combined, and . . . I see
people from literally every walk in life, with just as high a percentage of rich as of poor, of conservatives
as of liberals, of old men as of young men.
“
Honestly, John, if educated people only knew more about national problems from the national point of
view and not the local point of view, or the class point of view, or the rich point of view, or the poor point of
view, these educated friends of mine would help me a great deal more than they have in the past five years.
“
The other day, for instance, I had a conference . . . .The four who were here represented successful and
mature business judgment.After we had talked for an hour and a half they agreed on one thing—that
they had never before realized the complexities of the problems before the Nation.”
WITH
—
Two typed letters from Saltonstall to the President, retained drafts, one being the letter to
which the present letter is the reply, the other being Saltonstall’s reply to the President’s letter. Each 1
page, 4to. Np, 10; 14 January 1938.