Not Forgotten

Last week long memories in Washington turned back to one chill morning in January, two years ago. That morning at Jersey City Franklin Roosevelt boarded a train to Washington to confer over War debts, a matter which the President--Hoover--thought of some importance. After he had eaten luncheon in his private car, Mr. Roosevelt's advisers gathered around the table. Of the five who were there to counsel him on the responsibilities he was to assume, several were quite obscure. There was a balloon-jowled professor, Raymond Moley, and a handsome but obscure young doctor (Ph. D.), Rexford Guy Tugwell. There also was a man with some reputation in business circles, the president of American Car & Foundry Co., Mr. William Woodin. One adviser whom the public might have recognized was Diplomat Norman Hezekiah Davis. The other member of the party was Rear Admiral Gary Travers Grayson, U. S. N., retired.

Admiral Grayson who had won his rank by sedulously tending Woodrow Wilson's health, had ceased to be an Admiral and gone back to his native Virginia to become a well-to-do squire and breeder of race horses. The reason he rode with the President-elect on that occasion was that Franklin Roosevelt knew of no one else who could manage his inaugural with better social grace and tact.

Two years passed and Franklin Roosevelt might never again have thought of asking the Admiral-Squire-Doctor-Socialite to take another job, but last week he had to pick a successor to the late John Barton Payne as head of the American Red Cross. Again the name of Admiral Grayson occurred to him. The President signed. The Admiral exclaimed: "It is a great honor. ... I want to serve humanity. . . ." And Franklin Roosevelt was pleased because he occasionally enjoys bestowing an accolade on the old Wilsonians of whom he once was one.

&182; One evening Franklin Roosevelt picked up his telephone and made one of the most significant telephone calls that he had made since taking office. He was calling to smooth the feathers of a very ruffled Democrat, asking the aid of Carter Glass to prevent the liberals of the Senate from forcing the New Deal considerably farther Left than Franklin Roosevelt was ready to go. When the President sent his $4,000,000.000 work relief bill to Congress he did not consult Senator Glass. When it got to the Senate Appropriations Committee, he did not confer with Chairman Glass. Instead he kept Senator Byrnes--sardonically referred to by Mr. Glass as "the real Chairman of the Committee"--running to the telephone to confer on Franklin Roosevelt's desires. But when the bill got in trouble, when the Committee liberals voted to boost the low relief wages which Franklin Roosevelt had planned ($50 a month) up to "the prevailing scale of wages" (i. e. in most cases union wages), President Roosevelt got crusty Conservative Glass on the wire to seek his aid. The liberal amendment would not only boost the expected cost of work relief 50% or more, it would make relief compete with industrial jobs, as CWA did of yore. The President asked, please, to have the amendment rubbed out.

&182; Woodrow Wilson was an ardent theatregoer. Franklin Roosevelt prefers to have movies in the White House, but one evening last week he dressed up and went out to see Walter Huston and Fay Bainter in Dodsworth. It was his second visit to the theatre since March 4, 1933.

&182; The President squiggled his signature to an order presented by Cartoonist J. N. ("Ding") Darling, head of the Biological Survey. The order: an amendment to Federal hunting regulations forbidding duck hunting with repeating shotguns capable of carrying more than three shells. Object: a better break for ducks.

&182; The cigaret code, lost in the White House office for days (TIME, Feb. 11), was found. Promptly the President signed it, bringing the big tobacco companies after 18 months' delay into NRA. Hardly had the President done so when William Green, who had just come off second-best in an argument with him, declared the A. F. of L. keenly disappointed that the minimum wage of the code was 25-c- an hour. One kick Mr. Green could not make: that S. Clay Williams, as head of NIRB and erstwhile president of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., had been partial to his former industry. The President announced that Mr. Williams had no part in making the code.

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