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amiability. After all, it was a social occasion, not a political debate.
I can't peg the date of this, but it was before the Schechter case - well, before that. It was probably in 1934. We came into office in the spring of '33. There was very little social life that spring. The next autumn is when the big season would begin. November of '33 would be the beginning of the social season. People usually entertain, if they're going to, in the late winter and early spring. I expect it was in that period, or the following autumn, the autumn of '34.
There was already talk that the Court was deliberately tending to these anti-liberal positions. The first record that I have of the President saying to me, “There ought to be some Roosevelt appointments on that court,” is this time which I've just mentioned in later '34 or early '35, but there were rumblings about it before. Other people, among them Homer Cummings, were saying at the Cabinet table, whenever anything adverse happened, “Well, Mr. President, you've got that Supreme Court on your hands.” Ickes would say, “Well, so long as we've got that Supreme Court I don't know that we can ever hope to do this or that.” Henry Wallace would say, “We certainly have a court that is not in favor of these things.”
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