Trip to the Woods

Special trains can go special places. One afternoon last week five sleek Pullman cars backed into the little West Shore R. R. town of Highland, N. Y. Late that evening President Roosevelt, crossing the Mid-Hudson Bridge from his Hyde Park estate, boarded the train and it sped down the river to Weehawken. In the dead of night, under heavy police escort, the five Pullmans threaded their rumbly way through mazy miles of freight yards which had not seen a passenger train, much less a Presidential special, in 40 years. They finally emerged on the Baltimore & Ohio tracks beyond Jersey City and at dawn the sleeping President was rolling through Washington, on across the Potomac and down a Southern Ry. branch line to the Virginia town of Harrisonburg. There, after breakfast, he detrained, climbed into an open car with Secretary of the Interior Ickes and set out to have his first look at some Civilian Conservation Corps camps.

Five camps were visited up & down the Shenandoah Valley. His guides wanted to show the President the oldest and best but he was more interested in seeing the newest and least dressy. At Big Meadows he stopped to lunch with the woodsters. Menu: fried steak, string beans, mashed potatoes, iced tea. tomato salad, apple cobbler. Declared the President: "All you have to do is to look at you boys to see that the camps are a success. I wish I could take a couple of months off and live here myself. The only difficulty would be that you men have put on an average of twelve pounds each since you got here, while I am trying to take off about twelve pounds."

Some one put down on the board table near the President one of the blue C. C. C. camp kits, the irregular purchase of which caused a Senate investigation (TIME, June 12). When the President saw it he roared with laughter. "Do those razor blades work, boys?" he asked. "Yes, Sir!" chorused the happy woodsters.

P: Consumer Blue Eagles were posted up on the White House doors last week. Once more in his own office. President Roosevelt took his recovery program in hand in an attempt to break the jam on steel, oil. lumber and coal codes. He was told that the NRA campaign was going into its most crucial phase. To him were made confidential reports of the precarious labor situation in the coal fields growing out of last week's bituminous code hearing (see p. 9). Though the Pennsylvania mines were again manned, the temper of the miners was still dangerously explosive. If the final coal code should go against union labor, an outbreak of such bloody violence was feared that nothing short of Federal troops could restore order. P: President Roosevelt began to appoint special boards around the country to review veterans' cases of presumptive military disability, trim bogus claims off the pension rolls. The American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars were liberally represented on most boards. P: Cuba last week occupied a large part of the President's attention (see p. 15). After the coup d'etat he ordered three U. S. destroyers to Cuban waters "to protect the lives and persons of American citizens," announced that his Government had no intention of intervention. P: President Roosevelt transferred another career diplomat when he appointed white-crested Charles Stetson Wilson, now Minister to Rumania, to be Minister to Jugoslavia. P: After a week in Washington, President Roosevelt planned to return to Hyde Park to finish his vacation. Over Labor Day week-end he would cruise back to the Capital aboard Vincent Astor's big white Nourmahal.

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