Way Out

Dinning in President Hoover's ears since the adjournment of Congress last March has been a chorus of shouts for him to DO SOMETHING about Depression. The American Legion petitioned him to call a non-political White House conference of Business & Industry. Insurgent Republican legislators insisted that only a special session of Congress would do. Chief shouter for such a session has been Wisconsin's persistent young Senator La Follette. Memorials from religious societies have also poured in upon the White House requesting the President to summon the Senate to ratify the World Court protocol. Last week President Hoover answered all shouters with the following statement, read out with emphasis at a routine press conference:

"I do not propose to call an extra session of Congress. I know nothing that would so disturb the healing processes now undoubtedly going on in the economic situation. We cannot legislate ourselves out of the world economic depression. We can and will work our way out."

While most businessmen were pleased with this declaration, Senator La Follette retorted: "Still muddling through. . . ."

P: As week-end guests at his Rapidan camp the President last week had Edsel Ford and Theodore Roosevelt, Governor of Porto Rico who is now reported to aspire to the Governorship of the Philippines. President Hoover reached the camp just in time to settle down before a big log fire and broadcast a brief speech dedicating Cornell University's War Memorial.* His theme: the patriotism of college men who went to War.

P: Economy continued to be uppermost in President Hoover's mind last week. The Treasury deficit rose to $984,000,000. Two departmental conferences on the Rapidan had provided savings of only $8,000,000 for next year. This seemed disheartening progress to some but President Hoover declared that he hoped before be got through to squeeze at least $125,000,000 out of the Government's expenditure sponge. To do its share the War Department announced that it would dispose of ten active Army posts, 14 inactive camps and landing fields, 29 harbor defense forts already closed down. The sale of these properties at their appraised value would put $22,000,000 into the Treasury but it was unlikely that they could be marketed quickly. The savings on maintenance will be small. To the Rapidan President Hoover called Postmaster General Brown and the four Assistant Postmasters General to see what economies the postal service could stand. This year's postal deficit will be around $140,000,000. Considered were proposals to increase the first-class postage rate from 2-c- to 2 1/2-c-, cut down on the subsidies for air and ocean mail. Because of slack business the Post Office Department this year will spend $38,000,000 less than Congress appropriated for it. Small economies next year are to save $15,000,000 more.

While the President was thus conferring up in the mountains, his Secretary of the Treasury in Washington broadcast a speech in which he proposed undefined tax changes to meet the deficit. What Secretary Mellon seemed to be arguing for was a broader income tax system to include more citizens ("Some 380,000 individuals now pay 97% of the tax"), and an increase in excise taxes.

P: On May 21, 1881 Clara Barton (1821-1912) called a meeting in Washington which formed an American Red Cross Society, lobbied actively until the Senate had ratified the Geneva Convention which made the U. S. a member of the International Red Cross. This strong-willed little New England spinster had done relief work through the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. For 23 years she was the energetic, arbitrary ruler of the American Red Cross. In 1904 a minority of its members attacked her dictatorship, forced an investigation of her poor business management, caused her, amid bitter recriminations, to resign. Last week President Hoover, his extremely distant Swiss relative, President Max Huber of the International Red Cross, Chief Justice Hughes and many another assembled at the New Willard Hotel for a Red Cross "golden jubilee" dinner. Declared President Hoover: "The Red Cross is one of the most beautiful flowers of the American spirit. . . . Like so many benign social agencies, it sprang from the mind and the heart of a woman. Clara Barton was in her own person and her own life all that the Red Cross has since become. . . . The Johnstown flood found her ready and within an hour after it was reported she was on her way to the stricken city. . . . Clara Barton did not look to government for support of her work. Governments are always too slow, frequently too shortsighted, to meet the sudden sharp demands of critical emergencies. She depended upon the instant response of the individual human heart. . . . The Red Cross is a living embodiment of the people's heart and soul."

P: Work kept Herbert Hoover Sr. away from the circus last week. Herbert ("Peter") Hoover III could not go either. He had a cold. But the President's wife rounded up everybody else at the White House and took them to Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth. It was Granddaughter Peggy Ann's first circus and her eyes almost popped out of her head as she sat in the centre of the front row watching everything at once. For company she had Patsy, 7, daughter of Mrs. Frederick B. Butler. Mrs. Hoover's social secretary; Robert, 11, son of Hoover Secretary Joslin; John Marshall, 11, and Grace, children of Hoover Secretary Newton. Peggy Ann's father was there too, plump-cheeked and heavier, out for his first fun since his convalescence at Asheville. Because they were "circus-minded" Mrs. Hoover also took along her White House guests, Mrs. Stark McMullin of Palo Alto and Hugh Gibson, U. S. Ambassador to Belgium.

*Of the 9,000 Cornellians in the War, 264 were killed. First appearance of the U.S. flag at the French front was in May 1917 when it was displayed as a Cornell unit under French command. Barred from the University's memorial was the name of one Cornell graduate (Hans Friedrich Wagner, 1912) who died fighting for Germany. Fortnight ago Cornell undergraduates started a fund to give him a memorial of his own.

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