Cuff-Links Gang

Late one afternoon last week Franklin Roosevelt drove out to Washington's Naval Hospital to see his oldest political adviser, Louis McHenry Howe, abed for a year with heart and lung trouble. The President visited his No. 1 secretary because Louis Howe is the foremost member of the Cuff-Links Gang. This organization is composed of friends who helped Franklin Roosevelt run for Vice President in 1920 and to whom he gave sets of cuff links in remembrance of that unfortunate political campaign. Of late years the Cuff-Links Gang has been getting together with the President to help him celebrate his birthdays.

That evening Franklin Roosevelt was 54 and the Gang, including White House Secretaries Marvin Mclntyre and Stephen Early, Thomas Lynch, Appraiser of the Port of New York, Stanley Prenosil, a Manhattan businessman and Kirke Simpson of the Associated Press, held private revel in the White House. So far as most of the U. S. was concerned, the President's real birthday party was divided into some 7,000 parts, scattered in some 5,000 U. S. cities and towns, attended by an estimated 5,000,000 guests and yielding a net profit of over $1,000,000.

In four birthday balls President Roosevelt had special interest. One was held in Georgia Hall, at Warm Springs Foundation, mainspring of the President's favorite charity. Another was held at Coral Gables, Fla. where Tycoon Henry L. Doherty, organizer of the birthday ball system, personally held sway. The third was a syndicate of birthday balls in Washington, to which 18,000 $2.50 tickets were sold entitling the bearers to visit balls at all or any of six hotels, to travel from ball to ball by free bus. Among the travelers were Guy Lombardo & orchestra, Cinemactress Ginger Rogers (who, though no member of the Cuff-Links Gang, dropped in at the White House) and Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt. Accompanied by a troupe of handmaidens including Nancy Cook, Marion Dickerman, Malvina Thompson Scheider and Marguerite ("Missy'') Le Hand, and wearing a necklace of tiger's claws, the President's wife went successively from the Raleigh to the Willard, to the Washington, to the Mayflower, to the Wardman Park, to the Shoreham Hotel where she cut a great cake into pieces flung as largesse to the crowd.

Fourth ball in which the President had a special interest was that attended by his mother (in black), his daughter Anna (in flame) and his son James in white tie & tails. With 3,500 other Manhattanites they paid $5 a head to dine, dance and see a pageant at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Not only were the President's favorite tunes, The Yellow Rose of Texas, Anchors Aweigh, Home on the Range, played by special appointment to the White House, but the celebrants enjoyed the President's favorite food to the extent of 7,000 scrambled eggs. Crowning event was the pageant: "Health, Wealth and Happiness." Central figure of "Health" was Charles Atlas, whose brawny biceps and leopard skin breechclout are familiar to all readers of pulp magazine advertisements.* He stood on a pedestal while below him paraded socialite ladies dressed as Sun, Air, Water, Bananas, Peaches, Carrots & Peas, Tomatoes, Milk, Coffee and Greens. Central figure of "Wealth" was Donna Marina Torlonia, gowned in gold sequins, before whom paraded more socialites representing Travel, Art, and assorted angels with gilded wings. "Happiness" was represented by the Court of Venus. The Goddess of Love was impersonated by Leonora Corona, onetime singer at the Metropolitan Opera. A Texas girl whose costume as Thai's when she appeared at the Cincinnati Zoo Opera three years ago shocked her audience (TIME, July 31, 1933), Miss Corona showed herself at the Waldorf in a shining little shift and neat metallic girdle, while before her paraded still more socialites as the great love-women of history. Finally in marched 54 debutantes, each bearing a giant candle, 18 maids of honor, a giant birthday cake borne by four chefs, and Oscar of the Waldorf. Franklin Roosevelt was much pleased, for the four balls which he attended by proxy were but samples of many others. They varied in size from the one held at Tacna, Ariz, (pop.: 7) to the one held in Philadelphia's Convention Hall attended by 15,000. They varied in expense from the 35-c- charged in Milwaukee to the $100 a plate charged at a dinner given at Manhattan's Central Park Casino by Mrs. Lucy Cotton Thomas Ament Hann Magraw, one-time actress (Up in Mabel's Room}. Mrs. Magraw found, however, that she could sell only two $100 tickets, to herself and her husband. So she refused to wear her tiara, did not use her gold plates, filled her table at $7.50 a head. The first Presidential birthday ball (1934) netted $1,015,000. The second (1935) netted $1,071,000. The third last week was expected to net anywhere up to $1,500,000. In fine fettle therefore was the President when he broke off his party with the Cuff-Links Gang, went to his microphone and thanked his 5,000,000 birthday guests, promising them that 70% of their contributions would be spent combatting infantile paralysis in their own communities, 30% sent to Warm Springs Foundation for its national program.

As a routine matter the President sent word to Congress that it would have to appropriate $2,249,000,000 to pay the Bonus, in addition to the $12,000,000 expense of distributing it. Then he called in his advisers to consider what taxes should be imposed to raise the money when Congress appropriates it.

In Manhattan, Austin Phelps Palmer, retired electrical engineer living on Park Avenue, pleaded guilty to writing the President the following letter last November:

"Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

"Communist and Destroyer of Private Business,

"Warm Springs, Ga.

"You --, I warn you if you destroy my business, I will strangle you with my own hands. May your soul be exterminated in Hell.

"C. R. Nelson."

Correspondent Palmer was sentenced to 90 days in the Federal House of Detention, alienists having found him "sane but eccentric."

To Congress President Roosevelt last week sent a message calling attention to a report of the National Resources Committee, entitled Little Waters. Said the President: "It is not suggested that we neglect our main streams and give our whole attention to these little waters, but we must have, literally, a plan which will envisage the problem as it is presented in every farm, every pasture, every wood lot, every acre of the public domain."

To Congress President Roosevelt sent a message advising repeal of: 1) the Bankhead Act, 2) the Kerr-Smith Tobacco Act, 3) the Potato-Control Act, which Washington has assumed would be found unconstitutional as soon as the Supreme Court got around to them. The President's reason for repeal: They are now useless having been "auxiliary" to the late AAA.

The U. S. Civil Service celebrated the 53rd anniversary of its foundation. In honor of it:

1) Victor Weybright wrote in the February Survey Graphic: "That 200,000 newcomers to the Federal service have been exempt from civil service in the past three years has alarmed critics of bureaucracy."

2) Lawrence Sullivan wrote in the February Atlantic Monthly: "The present administration has added roundly 235,000 persons to the direct full-time payroll of the Federal Government, but only one in 107 among the new personnel is under Civil Service."

President Roosevelt wrote to the League of Women Voters: "It matters not what political party is in power by the elective will of the people, the Government functions for all; and there can be no question of greater moment, or broader effect than the maintenance, strengthening and extension of the merit system, established in the competitive principles of the Civil Service Act."

*His life history as revealed in his current advertisement: "Have you Guts Enough to Gamble 30--for Proof in 7 Days that You Can Have a Body Like Mine? ... I was a sickly, skinny run-down weakling, weighing only 97 pounds. I finally got fed up with being bullied around and looked down on. THEN--I discovered my amazing secret of Dynamic Tension! This natural principle quickly developed me from a no-account runt to a perfect specimen who holds the international title 'The World's Most Perfectly Developed Man.' "

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