Roosevelt & Power

New York's Democratic Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt last week placed a whacking veto, resounding with such adjectives as "absurd," "unjust," "impracticable," upon a prime Republican power bill. The bill dealt with a state policy of valuation of utility properties for rate-fixing purposes. Governor Roosevelt stoutly reiterated the Democratic tenet, voiced clearly before now by such Democrats as Alfred Emanuel Smith and Owen D. Young, that the rate-fixing basis should be actual cost of plants and not the replacement cost thereof.

Immediately Montana's Democratic Senator Burton Kendall Wheeler, than whom none has more bitterly flayed the Republican "reproduction cost" principle, arose at a Jefferson Day dinner in Manhattan to propose Governor Roosevelt for the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination. He specified two issues: 1) Tariff; 2) Power. Said he: "If the Democrats of New York will re-elect Franklin Roosevelt Governor, the West will then demand his nomination for President and the whole country will elect him in 1932." Others last week thought other things about Governor Roosevelt and Power.

Thus opened the season of informal presidential nominations. The Washington reaction to Senator Wheeler's speech: Democratic bigwigs (other Senators) said they suspected (hoped) that Governor Roosevelt, however ambitious for the presidency, would deem it wise to repair his crippled legs further by treatments at Warm Springs, Ga., between serving as New York's Governor and running, in 1936 instead of 1932, for the presidency.

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