Bonus Episode: From Drug Deals to the New Deal

A century before his grandson, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, rose to power, Warren Delano grew very rich from trafficking a highly addictive drug. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Westbrook Pegler was an ultra conservative newspaper columnists during the
middle of the twentieth century, sort of the Rush Limbo
of his day. He was famous for his harsh commentary
and inflammatory accusations, and for Peglar. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
was public Enemy No. One. A lot of things the
president did got under Peglar's skin. For example, during the

(00:22):
Great Depression, Roosevelt often criticized wealthy Americans for their unhealthy
influence on US democracy. And we all know that got
a month by organized money. It's that ingerous as got
by organized mob. Roosevelt also claimed that many wealthy Americans

(00:47):
were living off fortunes that were acquired by dishonest means.
This claim especially angered Pegler. Why well, because, as Peglar argued,
the president's family's own wealth could be traced to some
extremely dubious deeds in China more than a century before.
Roosevelt's family fortune, Pegler wrote, was quote derived from the

(01:09):
degradation and wretchedness of the Chinese people. It was a
shocking allegation to make against a sitting president, especially in
the early nineteen forties. The White House declined to comment,
and the issue went away. But here's the thing Pegler
was right. Roosevelt's grandfather, Warrened Delano, was a buccaneer and

(01:30):
a drug trafficker in China during the nineteenth century. Indeed,
the Delano family fortune, and likely Roosevelt's own rise to power,
can be traced directly to China and to the sale
of a highly addicted drug, opium. I'm Sean Braswell, and

(02:08):
welcome to The Thread, a podcast where we examine the
interlocking lives and events of history. Season two will debut
early next year, but we'd like to share another bonus
episode with you. This week's Many Thread explores the connection
between the architect of the New Deal, Franklin Roosevelt, and
some very lucrative drug deals. A century before, the seventeen

(02:34):
hundreds were boom time for China. The flourishing nation tripled
its population to over three hundred million. It became an
economic powerhouse. China sold massive quantities of tea and silk
to Western nations, and even better, China was so resource
rich that they felt little need to buy much in return.
As one Chinese leader told Britain's King George the Third,

(02:55):
we possess all things I set no value on objects
strange and in genus, and have no use for your
country's manufacturers. There was one potential import that China was
hard pressed to resist, though, opium, and one astute British
Empire official realized it the one who oversaw the poppy
growing region of Bengal in India. Soon, the Bengal to

(03:19):
China opium trade became the world's most valuable commodity line.
Opium sales eventually became a major part of the British
Empire's revenue stream. It arguably made Britain's Queen Victoria, history's
largest drug dealer Jesus opium. That's what the approximately twelve

(03:42):
million opium addicts in China called the drug they bought
from mostly white Christian dealers. The dealers sold the drug
offshore from what the locals called devil ships. These ships
anchored in the Pearl River Delta outside of Canton at
night and sold the drug under the cover of darkness.
The illegal narcotic worked its way into China's economic bloodstream

(04:03):
even faster than its Western proponents imagined. Opium sucked up
a tenth of China's money supply by the mid nineteenth century,
the epidemic of addiction tore at the nation's social fabric
and brought one of the wealthiest nations on Earth to
its knees. Most of the wealth found its way into
British hands, but the opium trade was like blood in
the water for any enterprising business, shark or company at

(04:26):
the time. All you needed was a boat, preferably a fleet,
and so a number of adventuresome young men from New
England seafaring families went east to ride the opium wave
in China, and many made out like well, they made
out like the bandits that they were up. Next, we

(04:48):
find out how one prominent American family got its financial
start in China. Franklin Delano, Roosevelt's grandfather, Warrened Delano, came
from a long line of Boston seafarers. In his early twenties,

(05:10):
Delano joined a Boston merchant bank and shipping firm and
sailed overseas to make his fortune. He discovered the booming
opium trade in China and spent nearly a decade dealing
the drug. In letters home to his family, the young
man admitted that opium had an unhappy effect upon the pale,
zombie like addicts he encountered. Still, he insisted that its

(05:31):
sale was quote fair, honorable, and legitimate. He claimed it
was no different than the importation of wine and spirits
to America. Officials in China or trade in the potent
drug was declared illegal saw it very differently. Delano returned
home to New York a wealthy man. He invested his
winnings in real estate and railroads and started a family.

(05:53):
But then a great economic crisis hit the US, the
Panic of eighteen fifty seven, and warrened Delano lost most
of his fortune. His wife was pregnant with their ninth
child at the time, and so Delano returned to China
to regain his fortune. He was gone for several years
while the Civil War raged in the US, but he
did eventually return to upstate New York, and with a

(06:15):
second opium fortune. Warren Delano and his family became an
elite Northeastern clan thanks to their opium derived fortune. One
of his daughters, Sarah, was a smart young woman who
had no shortage of prominent suitors. She would eventually settle
on a wealthy railroad executive named James Roosevelt. They had

(06:39):
one child together Franklin Delano Roosevelt born in eighty two.
It is not clear how much Franklin Roosevelt knew about
the origins of his grandfather's wealth. The family mostly ignored it,
Roosevelt biographer Jeffrey Ward observes in his book Before the
Trumpet and a family fond of retelling and embellishing. Even

(06:59):
though mildest of ancestral adventures, no stories seem to have
been handed down concerning Warren Delano's genuinely adventurous career in
the opium business. The Delano's, however, were not the only
prominent American family to make a fortune in the opium trade.
Other beneficiaries included the Cabitts of Boston, major donors to Harvard,

(07:21):
the Russells of Connecticut, big supporters of Yale. The mother
of former U S Secretary of State John Kerry came
from the Forbes family of Boston, which also made its
fortune in the Chinese opium trade. This list goes on.
Of course, you can't hold the sins of the bandit
grandfathers against subsequent generations, but the Warren Delano story is

(07:42):
a good reminder that if you dig deep enough beneath
any dynasty or massive aggregation of wealth, you're likely to
find some dubious deeds. Ka The Threat is produced by

(08:15):
Libby Coleman and me Sean braswell. Our editors are Carlos
Watson and Samir Raw. Chris Hoff engineered our show special
thanks to Cindy Carpion, Senjief Tandon, Nat Row, Daisy Carrington
and Tracy Moran. This episode features music by the New
Division with a song called Opium. Check us out at
ausy dot com or on Twitter and Facebook. If you

(08:37):
love surprising, engaging stories from history, look no further than
the flashback section of ausy dot Com. That's o z
y dot Com Dreams, another anistic send a go