Couch & Coach

(See front cover)

Against the curving white wall of President Roosevelt's study on the second floor of the White House stands a big black leather couch. It is comfortably low and squashy, holds four grown men. Many long sittings have worn off most of its shine. Before it on the floor lies a tiger- skin rug and within easy reach is a pedestal ashtray. The couch's deep easy pitch not only relaxes the body but loosens the tongue to friendly informal talk. If the World Economic Conference, opening in London June 12, proves a success, it will be due in no small measure to last week's discussions between President Roosevelt and his distinguished visitors on this White House couch.

On it James Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister of Great Britain and First Lord of the Treasury, let himself go limp and restful as he and the President viewed and reviewed the economic distress of the world, tried to bring into common focus War Debts, armaments, tariff barriers, trade restrictions, silver, currency. On it Edouard Herriot, France's chunky special envoy who quickly tires of standing, eased his short legs while he discussed his country's need for political security with a U. S. President whose good French made M. Herriot blush for his bad Eng- lish. On it sat large-framed Richard Bedford Bennett, Prime Minister of Canada, whose eagerness to strike a quick trade & tariff bargain with the U. S. had to be restrained by President Roosevelt. On it next week were to sit Guido Jung, Italy's Minister of Finance, on his way to the U. S. aboard the Conte di Savoia as Premier Mussolini's personal representative, and Hjalmar Schacht. president of the German Reichsbank whom Dictator Hitler had dispatched to Washington.

Not actually on the couch during the White House talks, but sitting close by in the oval study was generally to be found last week a stocky, square-shouldered man of 46. Grey streaks his thin dark hair above a domed forehead. His nose is long and straight between round, ruddy cheeks, over a full-sized chin and small mouth. Mostly he listened but when he did speak between puffs of a cigaret, his voice was pleasantly rich and low. almost a diffident drawl. He was Raymond Moley. Officially he was there as an Assistant Secretary of State. Personally he was there because, as head of the "Brain Trust," he is President Roosevelt's closest, most intimate adviser. The President calls him "Ray." He calls the President "Governor." His job was not only to stoke the discussions with facts & figures but also to note and catalog each foreign viewpoint as it was expounded by one statesman after another from the black couch.

Ranged around to help Dr. Moley help the President was a corps of U. S. sub-experts, chief among them William Christian Bullitt, veteran of the Paris Peace Conference and unofficial man-about-Europe whom President Roosevelt fortnight ago put back into the State Department as a special assistant to Secretary Hull; James Paul Warburg, able banking son of an able banking father; and Charles William Taussig, head of American Molasses Co., a minor member of the Roosevelt "Brain Trust'' during the cam- paign. James Warburg's father was the late Paul Moritz Warburg, member of the first Federal Reserve Board. James first saw light in Germany 36 years ago. A Harvard man, he served his banking apprenticeship in Boston, Washington, Manhattan, emerged as vice president of In- ternational Acceptance Bank, is today vice chairman of Bank of Manhattan Co. On Broadway he is known as Paul James whose lyrics, with music by his trim wife, Kay Swift, helped to make the first Little Show and Fine & Dandy successful. Last year he advised a House committee to cut the dollar's gold coverage from 40% to 35% or 30% and make up the difference in silver. He is now being considered by President Roosevelt as Undersecretary of the Treasury. Mr. Taussig's sugar business has given him wide knowledge of trade and tariff problems, on which President Roosevelt has drawn heavily. Also 36, he is smooth, polished, clever. The job of the sub-experts was to nail down indisputable facts with the foreign experts and pass their composite work along to the White House. What was the world silver situation? Dr. Moley & colleagues would gather all available silver data, march into a conference room at the State Department, sit down around a table with a corps of British experts. They would compare their statistics, debate discrepancies, argue unknown quantities and agree on a set of figures about silver which both the President and Prime Minister MacDonald could accept for their broad discussion of policy. A few hours later Dr. Moley would lead his sub-experts into a second room to do the same thing with the French on tariffs, then into a third room to settle wheat matters with the Canadians, finally back to the first room to take up currency with the British. These rounds were not flashy enterprises to make newspaper headlines; they were a diplomatic necessity on which the White House couch talks were based. Let the President hesitate on a detail of India's silver holdings or France's light artillery or Canada's tariff administration--and Expert Moley was close at his side to supply the exact information. Once or twice a day during the week President Roosevelt and his visiting statesmen would issue joint White House communiques about their talks. Like most communiques, these were more concealing than revealing. They dealt almost wholly in generalities. One told how President Roosevelt and Mr. MacDonald had laid the basis of a "clearer understanding" on War Debts but, in the next breath, denied that "any plan or settlement is under way." The President and Mr. Bennett had "a very helpful exchange of views." The President and M. Herriot came to "as complete an understanding as possible between our two countries in regard to our common problems" but left "definite agreements" to the World Conference. Mr. MacDonald explained in his farewell to the Press: "We now understand each other, as it were, elbow to elbow. We have got above and beyond mere market haggling and foggling. 'I will give you sixpence in silver if you will give me six coppers.' Bah! That is not the way of going to work together. We've got above that."

Certain facts, however, bulked through the misty idealism generated by the White House conversations:

1 ) President Roosevelt promised no War Debt moratorium June 15; he expects full payments on that date, pending a separate settlement of the debt issue outside the London Conference.

2) President Roosevelt is ready to consider France's demand for a consultative treaty to determine and punish an aggressor nation, such a treaty being a step toward guaranteeing France's political security; but France and Europe must first agree to real disarmament at Geneva and show an honest desire to keep the peace (see p. 16).

3) President Roosevelt favors an all-round tariff truce until the World Conference; such a truce would prevent any power from jacking up its duties before June 12 to gain a bargaining advantage at London (see p. 16). In the White House Woodrow Wilson was a college professor who surrounded himself with practical politicians to help him work his executive will. Representative Oscar Underwood wrote his tariff bill.

Representative Carter Glass wrote his Federal Reserve Act. William Jennings Bryan handled his foreign relations. William Gibbs McAdoo ran the Treasury. Franklin Roosevelt is a practical politician who has surrounded himself with college professors to help him work his executive will. The oldest, closest and most trusted of these is Raymond Moley. He is not a great man but he is a powerful one. His influence on the Administration is felt far beyond his nominal job of Assistant Secretary of State. Through his ear is the shortest and swiftest route to the heart of the White House. He does not make up the President's mind for him but he supplies the raw material on which that mind is made up. What Postmaster General Farley & Col. Howe are to President Roosevelt in the realm of practical politics Dr. Moley is to him in the realm of political practice. Raymond Moley has come far by his own wits since his humble birth at Berea, Ohio, outside Cleveland. His grandfather, Hippolyte Moley, was a Frenchman who went to Trinity College, Dublin, married an Irish woman. A precocious child, "Ray" Moley was reading Ivanhoe at 7. discussing the Trojan Wars at 8. At 19 he was graduated with a Ph.B. by Berea's Baldwin-Wallace College. Migrating to the neighboring village of Olmsted Falls, he served as superintendent of schools, was elected mayor at 21. Tuberculosis drove him to Denver. Two years later he was back in Ohio a well man, though to this day he has to be careful about his health. In Cleveland he got a job teaching high school history, while on the side he took his master's degree at Oberlin. His call to Western Reserve as assistant professor of political science resulted largely from his reputation for using the library. That summer he married Eve Dall (no kin to the President's son-in-law), who bore him twin sons, now aged 8. At Western Reserve he is still well remembered as the professor who required his classes to read the New Republic when that polite journal of parlor liberalism was considered Red. In 1919-20 crime suddenly engulfed Cleveland. Professor Moley resigned from Western Reserve to take charge of the Cleveland Foundation and, with it conduct a notable survey of criminal conditions in the city. His report not only resulted in a civic clean-up but also marked his real start as a professional factfinder. He conducted similar crime investigations in Missouri, Illinois, Virginia. Pennsylvania, Connecticut. Michigan. California. Indiana. Later his service on the New York State Crime Commission gave him the final stamp of authority as an expert on the administration of criminal justice. Yet despite his insight into conditions, he declares: "I feel no call to remedy evils. I have not the slightest urge to be a reformer. Social workers make me very weary. They have no sense of humor." In 1923 he transferred as an associate professor of government to Columbia Uni- versity where he had got his Ph.D. five years before. In 1928 he was made a professor of public law. To the girls of Barnard College he taught government and politics in a humorous, informal way that charmed most of them. They also liked his after-class teas.

Before he was Governor of New York, Franklin Roosevelt spotted Professor Moley on the State Crime Commission, decided he would be a useful citizen to keep within calling distance. Mr. Roosevelt was impressed with his ability to assemble political facts; liked his fresh political outlook. Here was no cut & dried college professor wedded to the past but rather an agreeable, cultured man who was itching for a chance to put his academic theories on government into prac tice, a man of thoughtful independence who could admire Tammany's Boss Murphy and still vote for Socialist Norman Thomas, a man who could say without cynicism: "Practical politics is dependent upon an ability to guess accurately which way to act." Raymond Moley is not an economist, nor is he a lawyer. Yet Mr. Roosevelt, after his presidential nomination, found him highly useful in both fields. He became the first member of the Democratic campaign "Brain Trust." He helped Mr. Roosevelt write his speeches. He coined stinging phrases for him (e. g., "industrial cannon fodder"). He traveled up & down the land with the party nominee. And he had his reward when he and he alone marched into the Red Room with President- elect Roosevelt to discuss War Debts with President Hoover last November. President Roosevelt gave Dr. Moley his State Department appointment three days after the inaugural. For his personal staff the new Assistant Secretary picked Arthur Mullen Jr., son of Mr. Roosevelt's Chicago convention floor manager; Celeste Jedel, 22, a pretty honor student out of one of his Barnard classes; Annette Pomerene, 23, a tall, dark, crisp graduate of Hunter College. Celeste Jedel has her desk in his office, is carried on the department's rolls as a member of its legal staff. She used to help Dr. Moley run his Barnard classes, manage his tea parties. So well does she know the current of his mind that she can, if necessary, write letters, articles, speeches for him. A feature of the Assistant Secretary's office routine is what he calls "the children's hour between the dark and the daylight'' when his staff assembles at his desk to dispatch departmental business before going home. Dr. Moley lives with Mr. Mullen at the Carlton Hotel, three squares from his office. He drives a sleek new Packard roadster. He takes no exercise, plays no golf, says: "I know of no scientific proof that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Mrs. Moley and the twins have been in Santa Barbara since September, will probably remain there until au- tumn. Dr. Moley likes to exhibit to callers his sons' watercolors and drawings from California. Their photograph, in identical bathing suits, hangs high on his office wall. Each morning he walks to the White House and spends his two most important hours of the day there. Later, back at his office, he receives a string of callers, each with an Idea to be put before the President. Worthwhile ideas reach their destination in short order. Many an evening Dr. Moley passes with the President, re-viewing the day's developments, planning for the morrow. Because of his easy access to the White House and the weight of his words with the President, Dr. Moley is viewed with alarm, if not distrust, by most of the Democratic politicians at the Capitol. So are the other members of the "Brain Trust"--Rexford Guy Tugwell in the Department of Agriculture and Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. in the R. F. C., Columbia professors both. Senators and Representatives privately denounce them as "second-raters" who command no widespread academic respect, flay them as radical theorists who are about to strangle the U. S. Government to death. Oft-repeated are the predictions that some day the power of the "Brain Trust" over the White House will cause a terrific rebellion within the party against its leader. But Dr. Moley, jealous of his close association with the President, is no radical. He believes in economic planning--just as Herbert Hoover did before the election. He believes in private property rights and due process of law no less firmly than does Chief Justice Hughes. For practical politicians like "Jim" Farley and "Joe" Robinson he has the greatest admiration. He has even expressed this arch-Hamiltonian view: "We would have better government if less people voted. There is no such thing as faith in numbers. The more numbers you have, the more foolish is the result." Friends know he is not being ironic when he says: "I am essentially a conservative fellow. I tilt at no wind-mills." As a political technician his job is primarily to show President Roosevelt how to do things rather than what to do. The greatest achievement generally credited to Technician Moley is the White House discovery of how to get around the Constitution. The Moley method: have Congress delegate its constitutional power to the President for a fixed period and within certain broad limits. That principle was the basis of the Economy bill whereby the President cut veterans' pensions which Congress was scared to touch. On it also rests the farm bill which grants broad authority to the President's Secretary of Agriculture. Dr. Moley helped draft the currency inflation bill which strips Congress of most of its constitutional power to regulate the value of money. Soon Congress is expected to be asked to pass over to the White House, under this Moley device, its authority over tariff rates and War Debt payments. In two months Political Scientist Moley has found a way to concentrate in the hands of the President greater executive power than ever before in U. S. history. That fact alone explains why Professor Moley is viewed with alarm on Capitol Hill.

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