Trade & Tariff

Press of business has kept President Roosevelt, a year in office, from acting on what has for decades been a prime tenet of his party--revision of Republican tariffs. Last week he finally got down to the problem of devising a tariff and foreign trade program for his Administration. To his office he called George N. Peek, once head of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Secretaries Hull, Wallace and Roper; Robert Lincoln O'Brien, chairman of U. S. Tariff Commission, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Tugwell, Assistant Secretary of Commerce Dickinson, Assistant Secretary of State Sayre, Harry F. Payer, foreign trade adviser to RFC, Stanley Reid, RFC counsel and Oscar B. Ryder, chief of the Imports Division of RFC.

Upshot of the meeting was 1) a decision to inaugurate two more Government banks to finance foreign trade, like the Export-Import Bank formed last month to facilitate trade with Russia. Mr. Peek --who had brought to the meeting a man-sized plan for the creation of a Foreign Trade Administration--accepted the presidency of the three banks. 2) A tariff message from the President is expected to be sent to Congress this week.

P: The President last week, finding himself bracketed with Joseph Stalin in the will of the late Leon Grant McBurney of Long Beach, Calif., ordered an investigation by the Solicitor General. McBurney, aged 72, died last December leaving $1,000 each to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin, cut off his six children with $1 each. An attorney for the children requested both big beneficiaries to waive their claim. No reply had last week been received from Legatee Stalin, but it was indicated that Legatee Roosevelt would yield his $1,000.

P: The President signed a bill providing $40,000,000 as seed loans for farmers, but took the opportunity of pointing out to the Press that of last year's $100,000,000 loans only $73,000,000 had been repaid by Jan. 1. Said he: "This 1934 loan by the Government should be considered as the tapering-off loan and should be the last of its kind."

P: To Congress the President sent a special message recommending that a Federal Communications Commission be set up having power over telegraph, telephone and radio similar to the powers which the Interstate Commerce Commission has over railroads, the Federal Power Commission over electric companies. Said he: "In the field of communication, there is today no single Government agency charged with broad authority.

"It is my thought that a new commission such as I suggest might well be organized this year by transferring the present authority for the control of communications of the Radio Commission and the Interstate Commerce Commission.

"The new body should, in addition, be given full power to investigate and study the business of existing companies and make recommendations to the Congress for additional legislation at the next session."

P:President Roosevelt, who has given up the handshaking habits of his predecessors, made an exception, shook the hands of 140 grand masters of Masonry.

P: Visitors to the White House included: Dr. & Mrs. Nicholas Murray Butler, as overnight guests; General Johnson, to have tea when snow kept the President indoors all day; William H. Charlton. a Manhattan NRA administrator, to present a plan for the foundation of a "national theatre" as a commercial venture; lumber producers to confer on the President's pet plan to keep 400,000,000 acres of private land in a permanent commercial forest reserve, planting new trees as timber is cut.

P: Nine years ago there was a great stir over the news that Herbert Hoover had secured transfer of the Bureau of Mines from the Department of Interior to the Department of Commerce. Last week President Roosevelt quietly issued an executive order transferring the Bureau of Mines from the Department of Commerce to the Department of Interior.

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