Hot Sun & Linens

President Hoover left Washington for the Caribbean a very tired man. Even a broken coupling that split his special train during the night was not enough to wake him in his private car. At Old Point Comfort, Va., his party--Secretary of War Hurley, Secretary of the Interior Wilbur. Private Secretary Richey, naval and military aides, 25 news and camera men--was put aboard the U. S. S. Arizona, Capt. Charles Freeman commanding. The President was assigned the captain's two-room-&-bath suite while Secretaries Hurley and Wilbur bunked together in the admiral's quarters.

Flying the President's flag (U. S. eagle-&-shield with four white stars on a blue field) from her main truck, the 31,000-ton dreadnaught nosed out into the Atlantic for her first "shakedown" run after two years in drydock being reconditioned. The cocky little destroyer Taylor served as escort. President Hoover had smooth sailing southeastward for four days. He took long naps morning and afternoon, lounged before a wood fire. On deck he played medicine ball, losing one ball overboard. After dinner (for which he dressed) an orchestra played softly, he attended talking cinema shows (Rain or Shine, The Temple Tower). The third day out the Taylor was to be relieved by the Dupont from Guantanamo. A miniature presidential review was arranged. For nearly an hour the President, Capt. Freeman and the Arizona's crew stood at the rail awaiting the Dupont which had miscalculated the battleship's position. When the Dupont did not arrive, as a substitute diversion Capt. Freeman sent his crew into the rigging to perform tricks, led them in three big cheers for their Commander-in-Chief.

Radio telephone communication was established the last day out between the Arizona and Herbert Hoover Jr., convalescing at Asheville, N. C. President Hoover talked briefly with his son and Granddaughter Peggy Anne, who chirped: ''It's snowing here. We're going back to Washington tomorrow." (Next evening he could have tuned in to hear his wife's voice in her Unemployment broadcast--see p. 10.)

The Arizona slipped through Mona Pass and came to anchor at night off palm-fringed Ponce on the south coast of Porto Rico (see map, p. 8). Next morning President Hoover went ashore, was welcomed by Theodore Roosevelt, Governor of Porto Rico. Bands crashed. Natives cheered. For them it was a double holiday--the 58th anniversary of the abolition of slavery and the second visit to Porto Rico by a U. S. President. At the City Hall the President was presented with a large tablecloth on which had been embroidered elaborate flower designs. Governor Roosevelt had asked President Hoover to leave behind his top-hat and tailcoat because few Porto Ricans own such ceremonial attire. By the President's compliance, everybody was in informal linens.

"Rich Port." Under a blistering sun President Hoover and Governor Roosevelt got into the first car of a long motorcade and started the five-hour journey across the island by the old Spanish military road to San Juan, the capital. By prearrangement, in the front of the crowds that lined the way were children, the brown, half-naked, half-starved little creatures who are Governor Roosevelt's chief concern.-- Beggary is a pastime among these youngsters whose cry ("Gimme moan-ee") is known to every tourist.

As he moved along the highway the President could see wide fields of sugar cane, with tobacco on higher ground and coffee cultivation on the uplands of the red clay mountains which caused the elder Roosevelt on his 1906 visit to call the island the "Switzerland of America."

At San Juan, President Hoover was a guest at La Fortaleza, the 499-year-old Governor's Palace overlooking the harbor which Ponce de Leon called "Rich Port" when he established the first colony for Spain in 1508. Native politicians crowded about for conferences with El Presidente.

When the U. S. took Porto Rico from Spain in 1898 and made it an adjunct of the War Department, the island's population was suffering from four degrading centuries of misrule, neglect and exploitation. Quick crude efforts by hack administrators to '"Americanize" these people, part Spanish, part Negro, produced more resentment than results. In less than two years, however, Governor Roosevelt has done more to win their confidence than others in the last 20 years. He learned Spanish. He traveled over the islands. He set up relief stations, went to the U. S. to collect funds, to fight Porto Rico's battles before an indifferent Congress. He addresses the natives as "We Porto Ricans." Altogether his administration has been an extraordinary success.

But untouched remains Porto Rico's basic problem--over-population. On the island live 1,543,913 persons, or 450 to the square mile as compared with 40 in the U. S. (In Barbados it is 1,000 to the square mile.) In one decade the population has increased 18%,. The result is that Porto Rico's resources, natural and economic, are exhausted. Birth Control, seriously agitated in the insular government, is blocked by the dominant Roman Catholic Church. Poverty and hunger are on all sides. A laborer is lucky to make $150 per year. Hookworm and tubercu- losis take a heavy toll. The hurricane of 1928 (called "San Filipe" by the natives) struck the island a $100,000,000 blow from which it is still staggering. The 1929 sugar price slump hit the island's chief source of income. Tourist trade, despite the fine big Condado-Vanderbilt Hotel in San Juan, is negligible because Porto Rico, as part of the U. S., is nominally Dry. Even the natives' greatest sport--cock fighting--is illegal, although this month the insular Senate passed a bill to permit it.

Governor Roosevelt has publicly complained that the U. S. treats Porto Rico more like a stepchild than a member of the Federal family. His relief program consists largely of trying to put the jibraros back on the land, to make them selfsupporting. Likewise he would increase the island's industrialization with the aid of ample waterpower. Porto Rico, for instance, produces 600,000 tons of raw sugar per year but lacks a big refinery. Politically Porto Rico wants full statehood (minor voices call for independence) or at least a civil territorial status like Hawaii and Alaska. Porto Ricans were outraged when the U. S. Congress at the last session classified it as a colony by appropriating $5,000 for it to exhibit at the International Colonial Exposition in France.

Bay Rum. The Virgin Islands, whither President Hoover was to go this week, got a new civil governor last week. The little minesweeper Grebe carried Dr. Paul M. Pearson, like the President a Quaker, into the harbor of St. Thomas while a Marine detachment shot off a 17-gun salute. The black population with its 5% sprinkling of whites massed in Emancipation Park to watch Governor Pearson take the oath of office, hear his inaugural address. They were all in good humor because the ceremony marked the transfer of their government from the Navy under Capt. Waldo Evans to the Department of the Interior. The blackamoors (who speak Danish) stared in wonderment as Governor Pearson, who used to teach public speaking at Swarthmore College, rolled out a sonorous address in which he recognized the islands' "critical economic problems" and promised to aid in their relief.

The U. S. bought the Virgin Islands, once famed as a buccaneer's resort, from Denmark for $25,000,000 in 1917 when it was feared Germany would establish a submarine base there. Until last week they were a neglected appendage of the Navy Department which used them as a coaling base. Their transfer to civil government by President Hoover was generally regarded as the first step in a program to demilitarize U. S. insular possessions.

Around the Virgin Islands prevail the old Danish tariff law (average rate: 7%,) instead of the U. S. Hawley-Smoot Act (average rate: 39%). Danish currency is likewise legal tender because the islands' bank continues to operate under its original Danish charter. The U. S. Congress appropriated $600,000 to put the black islanders back on the land, 90% of which is owned by a score of rich foreigners. Emigration to the U. S. has cut the islands' population in a decade by 15%, down to 22,012.

What the Virgin Islanders want most from President Hoover is permission to revive their once-profitable trade in rum, bay and otherwise.

*The island's infant mortality rate is 18 per 100. One of the most common sights in the back country is the native funeral, small coffins carried on men's shoulders with the male relations shuffling along in slow procession.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.