"Our Man"

A bevy of Dry women laid down the law to President Hoover at the White House last week. They represented the Women's National Committee for Law Enforcement. Mrs. Henry W. Peabody marched them into the executive offices. Mrs. Peabody is so Dry she moved out of Massachusetts when that State went Wet (TIME, Nov. 17, 1930). President Hoover shook hands with his callers, stood silently before his desk while Mrs. Peabody took the floor. She read him quotations from his own past speeches and remarks in which he endorsed Prohibition. She demanded more rigid enforcement. She suggested that U. S. Ambassadors be ordered to stop drinking abroad. She warned that her followers would cut any man who ran as a Dry on a Wet platform because "we could not trust the sincerity of any candidate willing to lend himself to such a plan." President Hoover smiled, said nothing. "Mr. Hoover is our man," exclaimed Mrs. Peabody going out through the lobby. "We trust the President but we don't trust some of the members of his party."* Asked what W. N. C. F. L. E. would do if the G. 0.P. renominated Mr. Hoover and adopted a Wet platform at Chicago, the tall white-haired lady pointedly replied: "The President would have to take the consequences. That's all." This White House visitation prompted Rollin Kirby to produce for the New York World-Telegram a cartoon of the kind that made him famous: Mr. Hoover, hot and worried in his shirt sleeves, at an old fashioned tub scrubbing "Anti-Saloon Linen" while a severe old woman, her arms crossed, stands by to keep him at his job. Title: "Our Man!" P:The temperature rose to 78DEG in Washington one day last week. The air-conditioning machine was turned on at the White House. P:Thirty-five newspaper editors spent two hours talking things over with the President in the Lincoln Study. P:New York's Senator Wagner took Fannie Hurst, writer, to the White House to meet the President. Thirty minutes later Cinemactress Dorothy Mackaill arrived for the same purpose without a political escort. The President saw her, too. P:President Hoover declared again for better homes. Endorsing "Better Homes Week" (April 24-May 1) he said he wanted to see kitchen designs improved.

*Last week the entire Hoover Cabinet was reported to be in favor of resubmitting the 18th Amendment to the people.

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