Free Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H. W. Brands Page A

Milburn was up to its cufflinks and cravats in the signature antitrust suit of the era, with John Milburn personally serving as counsel to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, then under indictment by Theodore Roosevelt’s Justice Department. Lewis Ledyard represented J. P. Morgan and the United States Steel Corporation, the giant trust Morgan had created in 1901, which continued to swallow its competitors under Ledyard’s legal guidance. Three decades later Franklin Roosevelt would consider big business, and the lawyers who defended the great firms, to be his mortal enemies, but at the outset of his career he entertained no such prejudices. On the contrary, Carter, Ledyard & Milburn seemed everything a young man in his position could ask for.
    An apprenticeship was appropriate, for academic legal education in those days strongly favored theory over practice. Roosevelt discovered that Columbia had prepared him hardly at all for the day-to-day work of a lawyer. He had never been inside a courtroom and didn’t know the first thing about trying a case. “I went to a big law office in New York,” he explained afterward, regarding his hiring by Carter Ledyard. “And somebody the day after I got there said, ‘Go up and answer the calendar call in the supreme court”—the New York supreme court—“tomorrow morning. We have such and such a case on.’” Roosevelt had to confess that he had no idea how to do what was being asked. “Then the next day somebody gave me a deed of transfer of some land. He said, ‘Take it up to the county clerk’s office.’ I had never been in a county clerk’s office. And there I was, theoretically a full-fledged lawyer.”
    Those just ahead of Roosevelt in the firm’s hierarchy gradually filled him in on what Columbia had failed to teach him. They introduced him to the procedures and personnel of the New York courts. He caught on sufficiently that the firm appointed him managing clerk in charge of municipal litigation. He mainly pushed paper but in the process gained an appreciation for how the law affected the lives of those caught in its coils. He was assigned some minor cases of his own and learned to bargain with opposing counsel in order to settle cases before they reached trial. His heart wasn’t always on the side of his clients, typically big corporations being sued by plaintiffs and lawyers with far inferior resources. One story remembered of Roosevelt had him haggling with a plaintiff’s lawyer over a claim for damages. The lawyer asked for $300; Roosevelt refused. The lawyer asked for $150; Roosevelt again refused. Roosevelt finally visited the lawyer’s apartment. The lawyer was not at home, but his mother was, and she explained that the family was in dire straits. The condition of the apartment confirmed her remarks. Roosevelt wrote a note to the lawyer: “I would be glad to settle this case for thirty-five dollars. I cannot get myself to honestly believe that it is worth a cent more, probably less. Enclosed is a small personal check which I am sure you will not return until you are well out of these temporary difficulties.” The check was for $150. “I wept,” the lawyer said. “Six months later I paid him back.”
    Away from work Roosevelt mingled with the people an up-and-coming member of the New York elite should know. He sailed at the Yacht Club and lunched at the Knickerbocker. He golfed in Westchester County when staying in the city, and on Dutchess County courses when at Hyde Park. By all appearances he was making a successful start on a life of respectable ease and moderate good service to the institutions upholding the status quo of capitalist America.
     

     
    E LEANOR R OOSEVELT WORKED hard at her marriage, trying to be a loving wife to Franklin and a devoted daughter to Sara. Neither task came easily. Sara’s presence had hovered over the newlyweds’ ship as they steamed to Britain on their honeymoon, and it tracked them across the Continent.