Cup & Lip

Biggest week in a President's year is the one in which Congress adjourns. Franklin Roosevelt sensed that last week was the week. The fumes of adjournment, like the fragrance of a steaming cup of coffee, ascended into his nostrils, and he was the essense of amiability as he kept business shuttling over his desk in anticipation of the pleasurable moment when the cup would touch his lips, when the first session of his second Congress would pass into history, having given him virtually everything he asked, denied him nothing important save the World Court.

In spite of a hundred activities he held his usual press conferences, grinned cheerfully at correspondents, told them nothing. In one day he thrice tossed off appropriate sentiments as he accepted credentials from new and old diplomats. Nor was he too hurried to sign a letter of birthday congratulations to the 98-year-old widow of Poet Thomas Buchanan Read, author of "Sheridan's Ride."

To Boy Scouts, whom, but for a nearby epidemic of infantile paralysis, he would have been reviewing in Washington, he found time to say by radio: ''When you go out into life, you will come to understand that the individual in your community who always says "I can't' or 'I won't'--the individual who by inaction or opposition slows up honest, practical, far-seeing community effort--is the fellow who is holding back civilization and holding back the Constitution of the United States. . . . You are having opportunities to fall in love with and understand the great outdoors. Do not ever fall out with Nature and her wide-open breathing spaces. . . ."

Cheerfully he signed a resolution naming Sept. 17, 1937 as the 150th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution and saying: "The importance of the Constitution has grown continually." Into his office trooped Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau, Governor Eccles of the Federal Reserve, Chairman Crowley of Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., President Hecht of American Bankers Association, Comptroller of the Currency O'Connor, R. F. C. Chairman Jones, Senators Fletcher and Glass, Representative Steagall to witness the signing of the Banking Act of 1935.

"Has anybody in the room read the text of this bill?" asked the President puckishly.

"I have," said Carter Glass, "but I'm the only one in the room who has." For his quip Senator Glass got a pen that made the law.

As the rush of final business grew heavier, the time came for Franklin Roosevelt to say farewell to his best friend and fondest admirer, Louis McHenry Howe. Secretary Howe was sufficiently recovered not to need his oxygen tent any longer, but is still too ill to be bothered with serious political news. Mrs. Roosevelt drove Invalid Howe from the White House to the Naval Hospital while the President returned to his work, appointed Raymond Bartlett Stevens of New Hampshire, one-time adviser to the Siamese Government, a member of the Tariff Commission; addressed the State directors of National Youth Administration; wrote Senator Harrison asking him during the autumn to see if anything could be done about reviving NRA; appointed the new Social Security and Labor Relations Boards (see col. 3).

Once in the press of business Mr. Roosevelt knocked over his wastebasket, thought nothing of it. Two minutes before he was scheduled to press a telegraph key to open the new Cummings Highway over Tennessee's Lookout Mountain, "Doc" Smithers, White House telegrapher, went into the President's office to see whether everything was in order. It was not. The wastebasket had broken the telegraph wire. Hastily "Doc" Smithers crawled under the desk, held the broken ends of the wires together while the President, grinning, pressed the key.

The "last day" came. Mr. Roosevelt spent a large part of it preparing a radio speech to the Young Democrats in Milwaukee (see p. 10); saw a delegation of Congressmen about some bills that were failing; signed a bill appropriating $25,000 for the purchase of the late Wiley Post's plane, Winnie Mae, for the Smithsonian Institution; named Robert E. Freer of Ohio to the Federal Trade Commission; signed the AAAmendments; appointed Laurence J. Martin of Virginia Acting Administrator of NRA's skeleton; approved an order to the State Department to crack down on Russia for permitting the Third Internationale to conduct subversive activities in the U. S. (see p. 19). Word arrived from the Capitol that both Houses had passed a resolution to adjourn at midnight. Joyfully, Franklin Roosevelt sat down to do his final duty, dictated:

"The Honorable John Nance Garner "President of the U. S. Senate "My Dear Mr. President: "If the opportunity presents itself will you be good enough to extend my greetings to the members of the Senate. . . . Sincere congratulations upon the work which they have accomplished. . . . Historic session. . . . Well earned rest."

Then he went for his afternoon swim, got dressed. His personal secretaries and Secretary Morgenthau sat down with him to dinner. Afterwards he went up to his study, talked to the Capitol by telephone. At 9:30, with an array of microphones before him on his desk, he spoke to the Young Democrats of America. When he finished he called the Capitol again. The news of adjournment was not so good. It got worse. In the Senate the matter of cotton loans was the slip that had come between cup and lip.

When adjournment was postponed the President could only go philosophically to bed. Sunday morning he awoke without the light-hearted feeling he had a right to expect. Instead of voyaging down the Potomac on the Sequoia he stayed at home talking with upset Congressmen by telephone. On Monday, two conferences with Chairman Buchanan of the House Appropriations Committee having failed to turn any means of untangling the snarl, the President decided to compromise. He offered to up the cotton loans from 90 to 100, make subsidy payments quicker and easier (see p. 131. The jaded legislators clutched at this as the way to get home, passed a hard & fast resolution to adjourn at midnight. But as twilight set in the President learned that an unpleasant fly was buzzing in his adjournment cup-- Huey Long. The Senator from Louisiana was roaring that the poor farmers had been betrayed, said he would keep roaring until midnight, killing the $93,000,000 deficiency bill for Social Security, which had been caught in the cotton battle (see p. 10). He kept his word. A little after midnight, the President was working at his desk. Secretary Stephen T. Early rushed in to say that Congress had adjourned. Franklin Roosevelt nodded, a little wearily, went on working.

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