Roadwork

Last week, 13 months before he was to defend his Presidential title against an as yet unnamed Republican challenger, Franklin Delano Roosevelt jogged out of Washington for a 3,000-mile stretch of political roadwork. The odds, while narrowing, still favored him. But just as all champions must go barnstorming to keep their names before the fans. Champion Roosevelt felt it was not too early for him. to go through his paces for the benefit of some 50,000,000 voters who will turn thumbs up or down on him in 1936. Simultaneously he could gauge the fitness and morale of his local handlers throughout the country. Before leaving Washington, Champion Roosevelt began getting himself in shape with an impressive four-day political workout.

In a stiff session with the Federal money bag, he passed out $322,000,000 worth of local work relief allotments among a crowd of favor-seekers who were frantic lest he depart on his four-week journey without taking care of them.

He gave an exciting exhibition of forensic footwork to 500 conferees of the 1935 Mobilization for Human Needs. Two months ago national charitarians had cried "Foul!" when, discussing the tax bill with newshawks, the Champion had scorned corporation gifts to charity as a crass method of buying public goodwill. With an artful shift, the Champion now declared that such donations "must come from all those whose developments have accentuated the congestion and the problems of community life."

If he was sure of anything, Champion Roosevelt could count on the National Association of Postmasters being in his corner a year from November. It was a routine prefight precaution for Postmaster General James Aloysius Farley, onetime chairman of New York State's Athletic Commission, to appear before the postmasters' Chicago convention last week and assure those loyal jobholders that slurs from the Republican camp against their man were "just plain politics."

From the Champion's quarters came two cordial invitations to Business to skip rope with him. It was announced that any industry which would like to try NRA again was welcome to apply to George L. Berry, longtime printers' unionist and onetime Blue Eaglet. The United Press also reported that the Administration was seven billion dollars behind its immediate spending program, would soon "issue a revised budget that will give a new, sharper and more glowing picture."*

During the Washington workout, the Champion's seconds made only one blunder, but it was an incredibly stupid one. At a Presidential press conference, it was made known that Mr. Roosevelt had broadcast an appeal to the nation's parsons asking for "counsel and advice," especially on "the new social security legislation just enacted." The replies were not expected before the President's return from "a short vacation." But in many a city many a preacher made public his reply even before the Presidential vacation began, and not all replies were characterized by pastoral calm. Most peppery comeback was released by Dr. David M. Steele, rector emeritus of swank Episcopal Church of St. Luke & the Epiphany in rich, Republican Philadelphia. His windup: "The only help I can render you or the American people is to vote for the next Republican candidate who, by the grace of God, shall be nominated."

Worse was yet to come. As soon as the President's letter-to-preachers came to light, it was discovered that in composing it some loafer in the White House secretariat had, in four paragraphs out of six, plagiarized almost word-for-word a similar appeal sent out to Wisconsin pastors last March by enterprising Governor Philip Fox La Follette.

En Route. When the President goes junketing to Hyde Park or Warm Springs, three cars usually take care of his whole party. But last week's journey was more than a junket. It took three of the train's ten cars to hold all the photographers, radiomen, reporters and Secret Service men. Together with Mrs. Roosevelt, a White House staff detachment twelve strong and an unusually heavy Secret Service detail, the Press was to accompany the President as far as San Diego. To take with him aboard the Houston on his cruise back East by way of the Panama Canal, the President had selected a pair of ill-assorted guests: PW Administrator Harold Le Clair Ickes and WP Administrator Harry Hopkins. Messrs. Ickes & Hopkins have for months been scrapping like a pair of tomcats over projects for which Federal relief money should or should not be spent (TIME, April 8, et seq.). As to why the President wanted these belligerents along on the section of his journey supposedly devoted to pure pleasure, observers offered a choice of three reasons: 1) the Presidential sense of humor will secretly be tickled by the spectacle of these two cooped up together on shipboard; 2) the President would rather take them along with him than leave them in Washington to raise Ned during his absence; 3) just as an Oriental potentate uses his viziers to scatter cumshaw to the multitude, the President could use his two prime Relievers to make his tour a happy one by promising Federal gold at strategic points en route.

Leaving Washington at night, the Presidential train crossed the Alleghenies in the dark. Next morning it was chuffing across Ohio. That few citizens turned out to greet the Chief Executive at service stops was attributed to squally weather. That did not displease Secret Servants Gus Gennerich and Russell Wood, in charge of the train guard. In contrast with the President's characteristic lack of alarm, the Secret Service had had the jitters about the Roosevelt trip ever since last month's political assassination at Baton Rouge. Col. Edward W. Starling, famed for his trigger finger, had gone to the mat with Postmaster General Farley about the number of Presidential appearances before crowds, had made unusually vigilant precautionary arrangements, kept confidential the exact itinerary of the Presidential party until the actual departure. Under his instructions, railroad police went over the train with flashlights every time it stopped. Ten State Police were aboard all the way across Indiana. The National Guard threw a picket line around the cars at every stop through Missouri and Nebraska. Having inspected every inch of the route, last week Col. Starling joined his Chief, William H. Moran, in Los Angeles, the President's last speaking stop before San Diego. Aware of Los Angeles' notoriety as a seat of eccentricity, they darkly announced: "We never disclose the nature of our preparations, but you may be sure they are as thorough in this case as human thought and experience can make them."

In spite of all precautions, somebody was close enough to the President, as he stepped out on the rear platform at Chillicothe, Ohio, to toss a chrysanthemum at him which the First Lady promptly pinned in her husband's lapel. At Cincinnati there were no bouquets either from Ohio's Democratic Governor Martin Davey, at outs with the New Deal, or from Democratic Governor Ruby Laffoon, whose Kentucky lies just across the Ohio River. Governor Laffoon was still pouting over his faction's gubernatorial primary defeat by Lieut.-Governor Albert Benjamin ("Happy") Chandler (TIME, Sept. 23), sulked in Frankfort while "Happy" Chandler did the honors at Cincinnati. To avoid crowds, the Presidential special skirted St. Louis. At Omaha, next morning, the President got down to political business in earnest, made a great show of greeting the Gus Sumnicks, whose farm-cooked chicken dinner to Candidate Roosevelt in 1932 probably got him as many rural votes as his promises of agricultural relief. The extent to which he had redeemed those promises was the text of the President's first set address at Fremont, Neb. that afternoon.

First Address. Before a station crowd of 15,000 (expected: 100,000) the President managed at one & the same time to parry the recent attacks of Constitutionalists, state a lawyerlike brief in defense of the 600-odd suits now pending against AAA and make a strong bid for 1936 Farm support when he declared: "I like to think that agricultural adjustment is an expression, in concrete form, of the human rights those farmer patriots sought to win when they stood at the bridge at Concord, when they proclaimed the Declaration of Independence and when they perpetuated these ideals by the adoption of the Constitution. Methods and machinery change, principles go on; and I have faith that, no matter what attempts may be made to tear it down, the principle of farm equality expressed by agricultural adjustment will not die." (Scattered cheers).

At Cheyenne the President knew he was getting into the Real West when a delegation of citizens climbed aboard to present him with a saddle of antelope. At Salt Lake City he spoke of forthcoming Philippine Independence as "a mighty good thing for all the world," neatly took advantage of this opportunity to say a good word for a hometown boy now in the official family by reminding Salt Lake Citizens that Secretary of War George H. Dern is representing the President next month at Philippine President Manuel Quezon's inaugural.

The Presidential party rolled into the yards at Boulder City, Nev. at cock crow. After breakfast all hands turned out for an inspection of huge Boulder Dam, which Herbert Hoover had started but which Franklin Roosevelt had helped along with a $38,000,000 PWA grant and was now about to dedicate.

In Address No. 2, the President was out to defend Federal spending for Public Works and the principle of Government-in-the-power-business, two more issues he has presented to his 1936 Republican opponents. After paying homage to the dam's 726-ft. height, its 115-mi. lake, its potential 1,835,000 h. p. of electrical energy, he declared:

"Throughout our National history we have had a great program of public improvements, and in these past two years all that we have done has been to accelerate that program. . . . No sensible person is foolish enough to draw hard and fast classifications as to the usefulness or need. Obviously, for instance, this great Boulder Dam warrants universal approval because it will prevent floods and flood damage, because it will irrigate thousands of acres of tillable land and because it will generate electricity to run the wheels of many factories and illuminate countless homes. But can we say that a five-foot brushwood dam across the head waters of an arroyo, and costing only a millionth part of Boulder Dam, is an undesirable project or a waste of money? Can we say that the great brick high school, costing $2,000,000 is a useful expenditure but that a little wooden school house project, costing $10,000, is a wasteful extravagance? . .

"These great Government power projects will affect not only the development of agriculture and industry and mining in the sections they serve, but they will also prove useful yardsticks to measure the cost of power throughout the United States. It is my belief that the Government should proceed to lay down the first yardstick. . . ."

After the dam ceremony, while motoring to Las Vegas, Nev. to re-entrain for the coast, Senator Pittman suggested driving up nearby Mount Charleston. The gravel road, just built by CCCsters, winds around sheer shoulders with room for only one car. Ten miles up there was a hair-raising moment as the President's car was turned around, with the President in it and only a foot to separate him from a yawning precipice.

*Four days after the President left Washington the Budget Bureau released his "supplemental" budget message, in which he predicted that the national deficit for fiscal 1936 would fall $1,246,526,110 below his estimate to Congress last January. "The prevailing rate of recovery," cheerily chirped the President, "points to the speedy decline of Federal expenditures for emergency activities. The 1937 budget is now being prepared with a view to sharply decreasing the spread between income and outgo. Thus it is clear to me that the Federal Government . . . will not need new taxes."

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