Bathtubs & Babies

"Take bathtubs. I wouldn't care if every bathtub was exactly the same if all people had them and would use them. . . . It's all right to standardize so long as we standardize UP and not DOWN."

President Hoover was sitting in an old leather rocking chair in the Lincoln study of the White House talking to Journalist Frazier Hunt. The "no-quoting-the-President" rule had been partially relaxed because the non-political subject of the President's conversation was very close to his heart. It was more about babies than bathtubs, though, because President Hoover was unfolding his dreams of Child Welfare for the next generation. Journalist Hunt took down his words, printed them in the February Cosmopolitan. Excerpts :

"Only children of a New Generation-- a New America--can stand against this future world. . . . One of the biggest of all problems is to drive in this idea of the necessity of properly born, trained, educated and healthy moral children to the voters and officials of America--most of our native criminal class are products of city slums. If these children were watched and nurtured a criminal type of child would not develop. . . . We must see that their roots have proper soil to put their precious tendrils into. City children must not be denied grass and flowers, fields and streams--all the imaginative surroundings that are a part of nature. . . . Ten years will see the start of this new generation. We can move swiftly after that. Why, today we think little of spending $700,000,000 annually on our two great arms of defense--yet it is with difficulty that we vote a twentieth part of that sum towards national health and national education. Somehow it is hard to 'sell' an intangible thing like protection of children, yet we 'buy' a $17,000,000 cruiser without raising an eyebrow."

President Hoover sent out no Christmas cards because to have sent them would have meant sending 10,000. But last week all those who had sent cards to the White House received a neatly engraved card dated 1930-1931 and reading: "The President and Mrs. Hoover cordially reciprocate your holiday greetings."

To a National Automobile Chamber of Commerce dinner in Manhattan President Hoover sent a telephone message in which he said: "We have been cheerful in the use of our automobiles; I do not assume they are being used for transportation to the poorhouse. . . . Altogether the future of the industry does not warrant any despondency."

Biggest and busiest of U. S. District Attorneyships in the land is that of Manhattan & The Bronx (technically known as the Southern District of New York). This office, empty since Charles Henry Tuttle resigned in September to make his vain race as New York's Republican nominee for Governor, has caused President Hoover much political tribulation. His personal friends urged one candidate while professional Republican politicians urged another for the appointment. Last week the deadlock was broken when the Hoover candidate withdrew and the President, with the goodwill of all sides, appointed a third man as U. S. District Attorney. He was plump, pink, bald, middle-aged George Zerden Medalie, who has a soft, husky voice and gentle brown eyes. Behind District Attorney Medalie's mild exterior, however, was a long and excellent record as a special prosecutor who knew how to send criminals to jail. But what the Senate wanted to know before it confirmed him, what the new appointee had skilfully concealed was whether he was Wet or Dry.

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