Greatest Curse

Day before leaving Warm Springs last week President Roosevelt drove down to the railway station to meet his military aide, Lieut. Colonel Edwin Watson, who was to accompany him to Chicago. "Come on, Pa," said the President, welcoming the colonel into his car. They tootled through the Foundation grounds, to the wooded hillside where the Presidential Marine guard was tenting. Pointing, the President said: "There's your tent, Pa. It's been pretty chilly lately but I think you'll be all right with a good army blanket. The stove is a bit rusty but the boys will build a fire in it and if the water freezes in your bucket you can thaw it out enough to shave." "That's fine," declared the colonel enthusiastically. "Eighty per cent of my service was spent under canvas and I don't see much of it on this White House assignment."

Disgruntled at the failure of his joke, the President drove his aide back to the commodious quarters waiting for him in one of the Foundation buildings.

Next morning it was drizzling as Franklin Roosevelt climbed the ramp to his private railroad car. At the top he turned and shouted "Oh, Henry!" Manager Henry Hooper of the Foundation scurried up. "Henry, I forgot to tell you: I left two bags of seeds, one walnut and one pine. I wish you would plant them in the nursery." Up went the gangplank. Off went the train. When the special stopped at Chattanooga, the President quit work on his speech, went out to the rear platform. "I don't have to tell you," he declared to the station crowd, "of my interest in this State and in this section of this State, because in the Tennessee Valley the nation as a whole is conducting--I hate to call it an experiment because it has got beyond that stage --but it is conducting a great humanitarian work which because of"--the train began to move--"its already proven success is going to mean much for the country in the days to come.'' The train was pulling out and Franklin Roosevelt, grasping tight the arm of Gus Gennerich, pitched the microphone into which he had been speaking over the railing to its owners on the platform. Following morning the Presidential train was parked in the Chicago Union Stockyards. Nearby, in the International Amphitheatre, Franklin Roosevelt stood looking down on 18,000 delegates to the annual convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Into their ears Farmer Roosevelt poured his justification of AAA. Excerpts:

"I knew enough of the problems of the men and women who were partners with the soil to realize the depth of their suffering and the extent of their need back there in 1932 and early 1933. I knew the pangs of fear and moments of rejoicing that come to the farmer as the harvest frowns or smiles. . . . "One of the greatest curses of American life has been speculation. I do not refer to the obvious speculation in stocks and bonds and land booms. . . . The kind of speculation I am talking about is the involuntary speculation of the farmer when he puts his crops into the ground. How can it be healthy for a country to have the price of crops vary 300% and 500% and 700%--all in less than a generation? . . .

"And yet we have shrugged our shoulders when we have seen cotton run up & down the scale between 4 1/2-c- and 28-c-; wheat run down & up the scale between $1.50 and 30-c-; corn, hogs, cattle, potatoes, rye, peaches--all of them fluctuating from month to month and from year to year in mad gyrations which, of necessity, have left the growers of them speculators against their will. . . . We sought to stop the rule of tooth & claw that threw farmers into bankruptcy or turned them virtually into serfs, forced them to let their buildings, fences and machinery deteriorate, made them rob their soil of its God-given fertility, deprived their sons and daughters of a decent opportunity on the farm. To those days, I trust, the organized power of the nation has put an end forever. . . .

"The relative purchasing power of the farmer had fallen to less than 50% of normal in early 1933. I promised to do what I could to remedy this, and without burdening you with unnecessary figures, let the record say that a relative purchasing power of below 50% has now moved up today to better than 90%. . . .

"Only a few days ago I noted an item in the papers which I thought very significant. It told of increased activity in the textile mills. One reason, said the newspaper account, was the demand for textiles in the manufacture of automobiles. There you have the complete chain. The cotton-growing South, with more money to spend, buys new automobiles. The automobile makers buy more cotton goods from manufacturers in the Northeast and these manufacturers in turn go into the market for more cotton. . . . "Lifting prices on the farm up to the level where the farmer and his family can live is opposed chiefly by the few who profited heavily from the Depression. It is they and their henchmen who are doing their best to foment city people against the farmer and the farm program. It is that type of political profiteer who seeks to discredit the vote in favor of a continued corn-hog program by comparing your desire for a fair price for the farmer to the appetite of hogs for corn. . . . "The nation applauds the efforts of its agencies of Government to deal swiftly with kidnappers, gangsters and racketeers. That is Justice. The nation applauds the efforts of its agencies of Government to save innocent victims from wildcat banking, from watered stocks and from all other kinds of 'confidence games.' That is Justice. The nation applauds the efforts of Government to obtain and to maintain fair reward for labor, whether it be the labor of the farmer or the factory worker or the labor of the white collar man. That is Justice. The nation applauds efforts, through, the agencies of Government, to give a greater social security to the aged and to the unemployed, to improve health, and to create better opportunities for our young people. That, too, is Justice. . . .

"We who strive to dispel the bitterness and the littleness of the few who still think and talk in terms of the old and utter selfishness, we are working towards the destruction of sectionalism, of class antagonism and of malice."

Two hours later President Roosevelt was on his way to South Bend, Ind., to receive an LL.D. from University of Notre Dame. This honor was extended to him in gratitude for the independence of the Philippine Islands, a Catholic country. Realizing that he stood on delicate ground as a result of his turndown of Catholic pleas on Mexico, the President spoke but little and that mostly in praise of Filipinos.

Next stop: Washington and work.

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