The Roosevelt Week

Swarms of sand flies and mosquitoes penetrated President Roosevelt's cabin as he sailed down the Potomac in the U. S. S. Sequoia last weekend. The pesky insects annoyed the President almost as much as the knowledge that U. S. Industry was lagging behind his recovery program (see p. 12). To plan ways & means of curbing downright refusal by Industry to cooperate with the Government, should such a situation arise, the President had taken along Attorney General Cummings. What, if any, legal tactics were decided upon remained beneath their respective hats. But the President spared no praise in congratulating cotton textile manufacturers on their "faith, courage and patriotism . . . and the example they have given," when, back in the White House Sunday, he approved the first and so far only industrial code to be put through the Recovery Administration's impatient mill.

If there had been any the week before, there was no doubt last week that the Administration was not to allow any foreign consideration to interfere with domestic recovery. Economic nationalism was now Washington's watchword. But the President put in many an hour discussing the world situation with Bernard Mannes Baruch, Norman Hezekiah Davis, Federal Reserve Governor Eugene Black, and many another who marched in & out of the White House. By cable and telephone the President kept in constant touch with Secretary of State Hull at the World Economic Conference in London.

Into the Conference vacuum, created when the President forcibly removed the issue of immediate currency stabilization, the Administration was evidently trying to insert a world program of industrial control, increases in wages and commodity prices similar to its domestic plan. To what level domestic or world prices should be raised, the White House would not say. But at his first postvacation Press conference, the President intimated under his breath that a desirable domestic price level would be that of 1924-25, much to the surprise of observers who understood that 1926, a bit more prosperous, had been picked as the key year.

P: To Stockholm, via London, President Roosevelt last week sent New York's Laurence Adolf Steinhardt, nephew of famed, orchidaceous Lawyer Samuel Untermyer who was once a Tammany braintruster. While U. S. Minister at the court of King Gustaf V. Mr. Steinhardt was expected to set up the liaison which might bring Soviet Russia recognition from the U. S. (see p. 30).

P: Last week President Roosevelt pardoned Representative Francis Henry Shoemaker of Minnesota, Farmer-Laborite who, convicted in 1930 of libeling a banker by addressing him as "a robber of widows and orphans," served a term in Leavenworth Penitentiary. Also pardoned was. his secretary. "Not only am I the only ex-convict in Congress," boasted Mr. Shoemaker, ''but I am the only man to emerge from the White House with two pardons as well."

P: By executive order last week the 15% Federal pay cut was extended from June 30 to Dec. 31. Reason: There had not yet been any material rise in the cost of living. C. Secretary of the Interior Ickes at the President's command became Administrator of Public Works, replacing acting Administrator Donald H. Sawyer. Secretary Ickes kept his Cabinet job.

P: Last week President Roosevelt and Citizen Herbert Hoover found themselves in cooperation. From the White House the President pressed a key which closed an electric circuit which exploded some dynamite which broke the ground for the projected San Francisco-Oakland Bay ("World's Greatest") Bridge. On Goat Island, in the middle of the bay, Citizen Hoover shoved a golden spade into the ground.

P: The President said he was going to reduce 7 Ib. (see p. 29).

P: General Motors built for and last week delivered to President Roosevelt a Pontiac roadster entirely operable by hand, which will carry the President about his Hyde Park estate when he goes there the end of this month.

P: Among visitors to the White House last week were Helen & Addie Nickel, two young girls in striped trousers. They had bicycled up from Florida to present the President with a key to Jacksonville beach.

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