Franklin Delano Roosevelt A Man of the Century

“My dear Roosevelt:
Now that you are back in private life and in a suburb of your own
home town, I want you to join the Century. Tell me who will propose and
who will second you, and I will write them and tell them to do it.
W.C. Brownell, the literary critic of Scribner’s, was in an elevator
at the New York Athletic Club and he heard one man say to another:
“Did you ever hear of the Century Club?
“Yes, it’s down in 43 rd Street.
“What sort of a club is it?
“It’s a club of eminent men.
“Ain’t that a hell of a club!”
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Sincerely yours,
C.C. Burlingham”
The next day, FDR wrote Mr. Burlingham that he accepted the invitation to be
proposed as a member of the Association, writing that he felt “very highly honored… for
in spite of the remark of the man in the elevator, there is only one Century Club in the
world.” On February 16, Burlingham sent FDR the Club book so he could mark those
members he knew well, leaving it then to CCB to ask a proposer and seconder to do their
duty. Among those FDR marked as known friends were George Blagden, William
Chadbourne, Frederic Coudert, Augustus Hand, Thomas Lamont, George Putnam and
Robert Grier Monroe whom Mr. Burlingham chose as FDR’s proposer. John G. Milburn,
a senior partner of the law firm where FDR had served his legal apprenticeship [Carter,
Ledyard and Milburn] agreed to be his seconder “because I know him well and am very
fond of him.” It was in Milburn’s home in Buffalo, New York that President McKinley
died and Theodore Roosevelt had taken the oath of office twenty years before.
FDR was certainly familiar with the Century before he became a member. In
May 1921, for example, he was a guest of Edward Bok, the creative and business genius
of the Saturday Evening Post and the Curtis Publishing Company – whose grandson,