Front Seat

Most of last week the real seat of U. S. Government was the front seat of President Roosevelt's specially-built Plymouth touring car. In it for hours at a time he drove along the dried clay roads around Warm Springs, Ga. carrying all problems of state under his soft felt hat.

While a secret service man and a secretary sat in the open tonneau, the President and his closest advisers held elbow-to-elbow conferences. He urged Secretary Ickes to get up steam behind the new Civil Works program. With General Johnson he discussed 25 codes which the NRAdministrator had brought from Washington to be signed. When Acting Secretary Morgenthau rode beside the President, the wind wobbling both their pince-nez, the talk was of the Administration's embattled monetary program. Toward sundown the President would drive his guests up to his tight little white frame cottage on Pine Mountain to continue their discussions over the dinner table.

P: Most important of more than two dozen codes signed by the President were 1) a cinema code containing "drastic provisions" against excessive cinema salaries; 2) a liquor code designed to "control the industry until . . . Congress shall pass suitable legislation" (see p. 53).

P: To the clamor sent up by anti-inflationists last week (see p. 12), the President answered in a radio address occasioned by Maryland's tercentenary. Tolerantly he observed: "It is a good thing to demand liberty for ourselves and for those who agree with us. but it is a better thing and a rarer thing to give liberty to others who do not agree with us."

P: Bright, bald-headed young William Christian Bullitt, first U. S. Ambassador to the U. S. S. R., went to Warm Springs for his last instructions before leaving for Moscow. He was told to go to his post, find a place to live, settle himself, return as soon as he discovered what sort of settlement of U. S. and Russian prerecognition claims the Kremlin would agree to.

P: The President enjoyed an amiable visit from Brown Derby Democrat John J. Raskob, a Warm Springs benefactor who had gone South to hear Trustee Roosevelt accept a new administration building and dining hall for the sanitarium.

P: Last week the President set up another potent governmental special bureau: the Executive Commercial Policy Committee. Purpose: to supervise negotiations of all commercial treaties, such as are now anticipated between the U. S. and Sweden, Portugal, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Russia. Personnel: Walter J. Cummings (Treasury); Assistant Secretary Dickinson and Dr. Willard Thorp (Commerce); Assistant Secretary Tugwell (Agriculture); General William I. Westervelt (AAA); Oscar B. Ryder (NRA); Commissioners O'Brien and Page (Tariff Commission). Chairman pro tempore is Undersecretary of State Philipps.

P: The Federal Mediation Board having failed to compose differences between Southern Pacific R. R. and 3.000 enginemen and trainmen who asked for shorter hours and more pay, the President proclaimed an emergency under the Railway Labor Act, appointed a special arbitration board of three, prohibited a strike for 30 days until the board could review the case.

P: "May we be grateful for the passing of dark days," declared the President's belated Thanksgiving proclamation.

P: When the National Farmers' Union, convened in Omaha, began disparaging the President and his agricultural program, up stood sun-bronzed Gus Sumnick, who entertained campaigning Franklin Roosevelt at his Nebraska farm summer before last (TIME, Oct. 10, 1932). "By golly, I won't stand for that!" blurted Farmer Sumnick. "Roosevelt is a friend of mine and, by golly, he's doing more good than anyone else could!"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.