"It's Off"

It was four minutes to two by the Cabinet room clock as President Roosevelt sat down at the head of the long mahogany table, flicked a red ribbon from a rolled document and began to read the bill for the manufacture and sale of 3.2% beer. A forest of tripoded newsreel cameras and lights hemmed him in against a heavy window drapery. His gold signet ring glinted in the artificial glare as he fingered the crisp white pages before him. At a photographer's command he picked up a pen and wrote Frank. With another he added I'm D. A third pen got as far as Roos. A fourth finished the job with evelt and thereby legalized beer sales beginning April 7.

"Well, it's off," remarked the President, half to himself as he handed a pen to New York's Representative Cullen. sponsor of the new law, and put the other three aside for Mississippi's Senator Harrison, the American Legion and the American Federation of Labor. "I notice the Vice President blotted his signature. He must have been excited."

In Milwaukee, Cream City Brewing Co. announced it would fly its first two cases of bottled beer to the White House. Explained the manager: "That's our way of showing appreciation." From George J. Meyer, president of a Milwaukee bottling equipment firm, went a $5,000 check to the Democratic National Committee "for keeping its promise'' (see p. 43).

The return of beer not only stirred the nation's economic interest but raised a tangle of legal questions for definitive answers to which President Roosevelt had to look to the Supreme Court. Major paradox: the new law assumes that 3.2% beer is no more intoxicating than ginger ale, yet the Federal Government stands pledged to protect from importations any State that assumes otherwise. A brewer in a Wet State may start to ship his product through a Dry State to another Wet State, only to have the Dry State confiscate his freight as intoxicating and call upon the Federal Government to prosecute him. But the brewer could also appeal to the LT. S. on the ground that he was engaged in legitimate interstate commerce with a non-intoxicating beverage, that it was the Federal Government's job to prevent State interference, even by force of arms. Only by an appeal to the Supreme Court could the U. S. discover where its legal duty lay. If that court upheld the brewer, it would in effect void Dry states' Prohibition Laws. If it sustained a Dry State, it would be declaring 3.2% beer intoxicating, the new 3.2% beer act invalid.

The same interstate commerce complication lurked in the distribution through the mails of publications carrying beer advertising into Dry states. If 3.2% beer can legally pass through the mails as parcel post, does it become intoxicating and therefore non-deliverable the moment it crosses a Dry State line? Other legal questions yet unsettled:

If 3.2% beer is non-intoxicating, can it be sold at Army posts in Dry states, aboard Naval vessels in Dry harbors? Last week Army Corps orders were issued for its sale at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

If 3.2% beer can be sold in the U. S. Capitol, why cannot it be sold in any other Federal building on Federal property throughout the land?

Last week air transport companies announced that their pilots could drink no beer on duty, regardless of Congressional assumptions. The National Park Service was ready to allow beer sales only in Wet states. The Post Office Department ruled that brewers could start their advertising campaigns immediately, provided they did not give the impression of offering premature sales.

President Roosevelt's interest in beer was not its ultimate legality but quick revenue for an empty Treasury. This he was already beginning to get last week as brewers lined up before Commissioner of Industrial Alcohol James Maurice Doran to pay their $1.000 license fees.

P: Breaking his custom of lunching from a tray at his office desk. President Roosevelt went to the White House dining room one noon last week to eat a 7-) cent meal. The menu: stuffed hard-boiled eggs with tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, bread, prune pudding, coffee. He cleaned his plate. The luncheon was Mrs. Roosevelt's experiment with White House economy, to be served only to members of the family.

P: "Dear Arthur," began a personal letter in which the President last week offered Nebraska's Arthur Francis Mullen, his floor manager at the Chicago convention, a seat on the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Mr. Mullen, whose friends had hoped he would get the Attorney Generalship, turned down the judgeship because "in these stern and tragic times I can render greater service to your administration as a private citizen."

P: President Roosevelt's Ford roadster at Warm Springs was given a distinctive license plate: "Georgia R 1933."

P: Because it was first on the list, argol, a tartar sediment in wine casks, gave its name to that provision of the Dingley Tariff (1897) which authorized a President to negotiate reciprocity agreements on a few articles with other nations. "Argols" were back in last week's news as a result of White House conferences on ways & means of carrying out the Democratic tariff platform. The Constitution requires the Senate's "advice and consent" on most international agreements made by the President. The Roosevelt method apparently is going to be: get the "advice" first in the form of a broad grant of power and let silence give consent. The President would be voted a bigger, better "argol list," with authority to cut duties up to 50% in return for foreign concessions. Such reductions would stand unless the Senate withheld its consent by a veto vote.

P: Newsmen asked President Roosevelt if the U. S. was ready to join the "Peace Club." The President looked blank until it was explained that this was the name of the current effort of Britain, France and Italy to prevent another European war (see p. 14). "Well," mused President Roosevelt, "I'd have to know what the club dues are first."

P: President Roosevelt last week nominated John W. Troy, Juneau publisher of the Alaska Empire, to be Governor of Alaska. Other nominations: Mississippi's James William Collier, onetime chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, to be a Tariff Commissioner; Nebraska's James H. Hanley, to be a Radio Commissioner. Nellie Tayloe Ross, onetime Governor of Wyoming, was in line for appointment as Treasurer of the U. S., a job which would put her name on all paper money.

P: "Look at that!" cheerily exclaimed President Roosevelt as he joined the White House birthday party of Granddaughter Anna Eleanor ("Sistie") Dall and beheld her huge six-candled cake. He started the party of youngsters off by helping them pull their colored snappers, adjust their paper caps. C. At a press conference last week President Roosevelt outlined his plans for establishing an "extraordinary budget" to cover emergency expenditures for relief, public works, mortgage refinancing. By this method of bookkeeping which many a critic condemns as concealing the true state of Federal finances, the President would "constructively"' balance the regular Budget, ordinary receipts against ordinary expenses, and perhaps have a small surplus. All extraordinary outlays, derived from long-term bond issues instead of current tax receipts, would be set aside for the next generation to pay off in better times. Thus the gross Public Debt would continue to mount as the result of capital investments but the annual Budget would look trim and shipshape.

P: Secretary of Labor Perkins, Secretary of the Interior Ickes and leaders of the United Mine Workers conferred with President Roosevelt on the state of the coal industry, which Chief Justice Hughes has characterized as "deplorable" (TIME, March 27). Both Secretaries hurried directly to the White House from a conference on another of the nation's fuels: the Governors' oil conference. Convened to settle the question of proration (now on the verge of complete breakdown), the conference at once split into the usual two factions: big producers for proration, independents against.

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