Jam Cracked

NATIONAL AFFAIRS

Last week President Roosevelt let it be known that two of his favorite hymns were "Be Strong" and "Oh, Master, Let Me Walk with Thee." Whereupon, dropping the administrative lethargy which had spread gloom through Washington for weeks, and reasserting his political strength, the master of the White House persuaded the Senate to walk once more with him. His 4.88-billion-dollar Relief Bill was brought back from the purgatory of Committee, whither it had been sent last month after the addition of the McCarran "prevailing wage" amendment had made the measure wholly unacceptable to the President.

Voting down (50-to-38) a second introduction of the McCarran proposal to pay the wages of the private building industry to workers on public projects, the Senate substituted an amendment giving the President "discretionary control" of relief pay except on Federal building projects. The horse trade which effected this compromise was reported to have been made between the President and New York's Senator Wagner, who exacted in exchange the Administration's support for his Labor Relations Bill. Within a week observers expected that the Relief Bill would be on the President's desk and that the Congressional jam which has held up all important New Deal legislation for the past ten weeks would be definitely cracked.

P: Another indication of President resurgence was his slashing message to Congress on utility holding companies (see p. 64). Once again the gifted phrasemaker and champion of Reform, he cried: "I am against private Socialism of concentrated private power as thoroughly as I am against Governmental Socialism. The one is equally as dangerous as the other; and destruction of private Socialism is utterly essential to avoid Governmental Socialism."

P: The President set March 24 as the date of his departure for what has become his annual spring fishing trip in Florida waters with Vincent Astor on the Nourmahal. Before sailing from Miami he is scheduled to meet the honeymooning Duke & Duchess of Kent.

P: Because Secretary Louis McHenry Howe lay seriously ill of bronchial and heart trouble in the White House, the Roosevelts quietly celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary on St. Patrick's Day with a family picnic on the Maryland side of the Potomac. Mrs. Roosevelt announced that from now on she is going to live a "quiet life."

P: Dominic Mintola of Toms River, N. J. spent 68-c- to mail to President Roosevelt a 36-lb. log given him by the local relief agency. Dolee Mintola complained that the wood was swamp gum, "tough as rubber under the ax, exuded more moisture than a water-soaked grapefruit rind" and the pieces were too large for his stove.

P: The United Press asked William Randolph Hearst whom he would support for President in 1936. Answer: "Probably Mr. Roosevelt."

P: For an hour and a half the President deliberated with Secretary of State Hull and Ambassador-at-Large Norman Hezekiah Davis over Germany's rearmament (see p. 20). Considered was the advisability of lodging a protest, a logical move since the U. S.-German peace treaty contained the same military clauses as the treaty of Versailles. One result of last week's European developments: Congress was expected to speed passage of military budgets (see p. 14).

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