Westbound

In 1934, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt crossed the continent from West to East, he had to pass through intolerable drought, heat, dust. Last week the uncomfortable feature of his East-to-West journey was the 17th annual convention of the American Legion at St. Louis. At one time the President had tentatively agreed to address the Legionaries. He now had changed his mind. So he arranged his itinerary with formal speaking stops only at Boulder Dam and the San Diego Exposition, after which he planned to go home by way of the Panama Canal on a cruiser. To put the best face on this reversal, the President left Hyde Park last week after a 22-day sojourn, sped to Washington for a four-day session of "desk work," calculated to keep him busy until the Legionaries cleared out of his westward way.

Since his western trip was to be in the nature of a political reconoissance for the 1936 campaign, the President summoned to his mother's house last week some of his ablest advisers. Among those to pull up chairs in the Presidential study at Hyde Park were Postmaster General Farley, Democratic Pressagent Charles Michelson, Publisher Julius David Stern of Philadelphia, and Charles C. Pettijohn. the cinema lawyer who last year directed California's Stop-Sinclair movement.

P:The President named eight men to sit on the National Bituminous Coal Commission and Bituminous Coal Labor Board, shortly before a coal strike they were powerless to prevent broke (see p. 14). P:Turning in his commission as Chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission, Joseph Patrick Kennedy of Boston prepared to sail with his wife to put one of their sons in the London School of Economics, a daughter in a Paris convent. He said he was "out of politics . . . for the rest of my natural life." On the President's say-so, the other SECommissioners elected as Chairman Kennedy's successor James McCauley Landis who helped frame the Securities Act of 1933 while serving on the Federal Trade Commission.

P:When Ambassador-at-Large Norman Hezekiah Davis emerged from the Presidential study at Hyde Park, all he would say was: "The President and I did discuss new naval agreements, but we're not like rabbit dogs, expecting to get one right now."

P:Opening the 1935 Mobilization for Human Needs, the President addressed 500 welfare workers on the White House lawn, urged restoration of private giving to 1929 levels.

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