Psychology and Switches

Psychologists are nowadays in general agreement that the way to make a boy bad is to tell him that he is a bad boy. Four years ago. Franklin Roosevelt began telling businessmen that they were bad. Businessmen were not long in reciprocating. Each has become steadily worse in the eyes of the other. More recently, Franklin Roosevelt began telling the Press that it was bad.

Last February, the President denounced as "false" and "hostile" an unfounded report that he was planning to stump the country for his Court Plan. In his fireside chat last October, he referred to "five years of information through the radio and the moving picture"--and the Press did not fail to notice its omission. What Santa Claus is supposed to bring particularly bad boys in lieu of toys is a bundle of switches. Last week. Franklin Roosevelt presented the Press with something very much on that order. In his last conference with reporters before Christmas, he flatly accused the Press of adding to the country's fear psychology and urged reporters to make a note of the charge. Asked what the Press had to gain by so doing, the President replied: "That is what I have been wondering--and most of the country has too."

For Business also the President last week had somewhat thorny holiday greetings. He led up to his remarks about the Press with a discourse about conditions in general, in the course of which he told reporters about two businessmen who had called on him recently. Both, said he, had expressed themselves as strongly in favor of New Deal principles until he had suggested that they tell the country their views over the radio; each had expressed horror at this proposal because their directors, stockholders and friends would disapprove.

The President also gave more specific account of his conversations last week with two utilities heads--Frank Phillips of Pittsburgh's Duquesne Light Co. and William H. Taylor of Philadelphia Electric Power Co. They had, said Mr. Roosevelt, agreed with him that a large portion of Business' fear was caused by a small minority who were trying to create the impression that the Government was waging war on the utilities. Having thus called the boy bad several times more, Franklin Roosevelt settled back again to see whether the results would be any better.

P:His comments on Business were extended a few days later by his friend, fishing companion & adviser, Assistant Attorney General Robert Houghwout Jackson, who is now concerned with outlining New Deal anti-trust legislation. Broadcasting from Washington, Bob Jackson declared that the country is "not running into a major Depression." that the Government will protect it "against the cruelties of any temporary recession we have to face." The blame for Recession, he put just where the President put it: on Business for trying to "skim all the cream off recovery for itself."

P:After charging the Press with creating fear, Franklin Roosevelt later in the week made a tacit exception in his indictment. Following his annual custom of broadcasting his greetings to the nation while lighting Washington's Community Christmas Tree, he chose, instead of making a speech of his own, to read aloud, as the most appropriate expression of his own feelings, a parable by Scripps-Howard Columnist Heywood Broun, which had appeared in the Washington News the day before. Its gist: A dispirited dominie is cheered on Christmas Eve by remembering that at the Last Supper, Christ offered the wine to Judas Iscariot.

P:Like many other normally healthy U. S. families, the Roosevelts have an inconvenient way of falling ill at Christmas time. Last year, Mrs. Roosevelt spent the day at the sickbed of her son Franklin who was recuperating from sinus. Last week, Franklin visited the White House, where his father and brothers distributed presents to the White House staff and guests, but Eleanor Roosevelt was absent again, this time in Seattle, where her daughter Anna was recuperating from a "minor operation," nature undivulged. Boarding a plane three days before the holiday, Mrs. Roosevelt was forced down twice by storms, finally reached her daughter's home after an overnight train ride from Portland.

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