No Quorum

Feeling more like a parson than a President, last week Mr. Roosevelt bundled up warmly and set off in his limousine to make a succession of sick calls. Through sleet and along roads as slick as glass, he first drove to the Naval Hospital. There he found Secretary Ickes propped up in bed attended by a skeleton staff from the Interior Department, trying his best to disregard a fractured rib sustained when he fell on an icy pavement. Oil Administrator, Public Works Administrator, a holder of five extra-cabinet jobs, Mr. Ickes knows that he and Secretary Wallace are the two men on whom the President depends most. It had taken much bullying from tall Mrs. Ickes, Illinois legislator, to pack him off to the hospital when he limped into his office after his fall.

With Secretary Ickes. the President put in an hour's work, several minutes' heavy kidding before leaving for the home of Secretary Swanson. But the Navy's old Virginian had a bad cold, was too sick to see his chief.

Walter Reed Hospital was the next stop. Bern of War, laid up with an ocular infection, was sitting up but he could not do any business. With Secretary Hull in Montevideo, Postmaster General Farley in Europe, two clays later the President discovered that for the first time in his Administration he could hold no Friday Cabinet meeting. There was no quorum. P:Lewis Douglas went to the White House to talk Budget. He figured the Government would take in 3 1/2 billions next year, disburse 2 1/2 billions normally, have a billion left over to reduce the national debt for the first time in five years (TIME, Dec. 4). The President talked about a five-billion budget, spending another 2 1/2 billion on public works. Mentally Mr. Douglas, who believes in a "pay-as-you-go" policy, clucked his tongue, aware that if further emergency expenditures are undertaken, the only alternative to the Government's going further into the red is sharply increased taxation. Even though he might choose to ignore the demand of bright young Senator Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin for a ten-billion dollar public works outlay, the President faced countless demands for government money. In deciding what budget position to take between the Douglas and LaFollette extremes, President Roosevelt would make his most important decision for the next step of the New Deal. P:The President let it be known that he had no intention of stabilizing the dollar soon or of abandoning his gold buying. RFC Chairman Jesse H. Jones let it be known that the Federal Government had bought $35,000,000 worth of gold abroad since Oct. 26, would purchase $25,000,000 more in the near future. And while the National Grange (farmers) plumped for greenbackery, the Brookings Institution, famed economic researcher, let it be known that in its opinion the President's monetary policy is dangerous and is impeding recovery.

P:To be Minister to Persia, President Roosevelt chose William Harrison ("Bill") Hornibrook of Utah, Minister to Siam under President Wilson. The Administration owed quiet, erudite Mr. Hornibrook, publisher of the Salt Lake Times, a double debt. A militant Democrat but no Mormon, he published last year a tract called "Thirty Reasons Why Smoot Should Be Defeated." Onetime Senator Smoot admits the pamphlet defeated his reelection. By substituting Senator James Watson's name for Smoot's, the tract was also used to good effect in the Indiana Senatorial campaign.

P:A state dinner at the White House ended the Supreme Court's preholiday session. The Justices and their ladies found the table decorated with pink chrysanthemums, ate a bit of cheese for National Cheese Week, were entertained by Pianist Josef Hofmann and Soprano Frieda Hempel afterward.

Most newsworthy decision of the Court's session was one of the last. A North Carolina Prohibition agent had been convicted of assisting bootleggers. His wife had twice been prevented from giving evidence in his behalf. In an opinion reversing the lower court's decision, Associate Justice George Sutherland, considered one of the Supreme Court's conservatives, smashed an ancient precedent in common law by recognizing a woman's eligibility to testify in a criminal case concerning her husband.

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