New Plans for Old

Since last July a hot financial argument has been waged between U. S. bankers and RFC Chairman Jesse Jones. Mr. Jones demanded the bankers lend more freely to promote recovery. The bankers retorted that they would gladly lend but most would-be borrowers wanted medium or long-term capital advances, such as commercial bankers should not make. Last week President Roosevelt began to see the bankers' point. To his study he called Governor Black of the Federal Reserve, Secretary Morgenthau of the Treasury. With them he discussed the wisdom of setting up intermediate credit banks to lend to industry. What he wanted to know: How costly would such banks be? How badly were they needed?

Three months ago the President was turning a very deaf ear to all pleas for modification of the Securities Act. Last week he seemed to be swinging over to the idea of reasonable relaxations of the Act. Purpose: to encourage long term investment by private capital--investment that might put men to work for industry on much larger scale than the wheezy Public Works program.

P:The President intimated his desires to leaders in Congress on two other matters that indicated notable changes in Administration policy: 1) He declared himself in favor of continuance for another year of the present temporary bank deposit guarantee scheme. This scheme, which guarantees deposits only to $2,500 each, and imposes only a limited liability for losses on banks subscribing to the guarantee was originally accepted by the Administration only as a stop gap, to be succeeded July 1, by permanent deposit insurance at a cost of no man knew what. 2) He wrote letters to the Senate and House Committees on Agriculture in favor of compulsory cotton crop restriction by a ginning tax (TIME, Feb. 19), tacitly admitting that last year's voluntary crop restriction by paying farmers to reduce acreage was not effective.

P:The President put his signature to the newspaper code, at the same time making three points which showed he was not at all pleased, 1) He was "not satisfied'' with its child labor provisions permitting boys under 16 to sell and deliver papers outside of school hours between 7 a. m. and 7 p. m. He ordered a report made to him in 60 days on how this provision should be revised. 2) He requested newspapers with circulations of 75,000 or operating in cities of over 750,000 to put their newshawks on a five day, 40-hour week, and demanded a specific regulation on working hours be written into the code within 60 days. 3) Of the freedom of the Press clause, he said "it is pure surplusage. While it has no meaning it is permitted to stand merely because it has been requested and because it could have no such legal effects as would bar its inclusion. Of course, a man does not consent to what he does not consent to. But if the President should find it necessary to modify this code, the circumstance that the modification was not consented to would not affect whatever obligations the non-consenter would have. . . The recitation of the freedom of the Press clause in the code has no more place here than would the recitation of the whole Constitution or of the Ten Commandments."

P:Because Congress requested the Administration to submit a list of river and harbor improvements, graded according to merit, the President appointed the Secretaries of War, Interior, Agriculture and Commerce to study waterway improvements, flood control, soil erosion, reforestation, retirement from cultivation of submarginal lands. Immediate object: to provide worthier successors to present Public Works projects. Ultimate object: to work toward the creation of a non-political national planning commission which would develop a systematized program of public improvements to be carried out year after year.

P:One afternoon the President's car left the White House followed by a cortege of automobiles. Accompanying the President were his daughter, Mrs. Dall, Henry Morgenthau Sr. & Jr., Secretaries Louis McHenry Howe and Marvin Mclntyre. They drove straight to the Union Station where they were met by Budget Director Lewis Douglas, Jesse Jones and Myron C. Taylor. Then escorted by President Carl R. Gray and Chairman W. Averell Harriman of the Union Pacific they made a 15-minute inspection of that railroad's 110-mile-an-hour streamlined train. The President declined to make an excursion on the train to Baltimore and back, but sent Secretary Howe.

P:Gus Gennerich, bodyguard and personal attendant of the President, last week got a 55-ft. steel box installed in the east basement of the White House, as a range for pistol target practice by Secret Service men and members of the Roosevelt family, including Mrs. Roosevelt who is a good shot.

P:By order of Mrs. Roosevelt squirrels on the White House grounds will henceforth be regularly fed, not dependent for sustenance on the vagaries of visitors.

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