Rock & Whirlpool

On the bleak March day three years ago when Franklin Roosevelt stepped up and took the oath of office, he was a national hope. A month later he was a national hero. He had won the heart of a frightened nation by the height at which he held his head, the breadth to which his smile expanded, by self-confidence that seemed almost Olympian. Seldom since then had his self-confidence failed him. It enabled him to propose and get Congress to approve frank experiments. It gave him courage to ask Congress for sums of money that no other peacetime President had ever dared to ask. It made it easy for him to make light of his opponents. It never wavered even when he gradually learned that his policies had aroused the antagonism of a large portion of U. S. Business. And it gave him throughout a benign assurance that he was certain of re-election in 1936

There is still no sign that Franklin Roosevelt's great confidence has begun to crumble. Nevertheless there were ample signs last week that he felt the necessity of reconsidering his position in preparation for the November election. When he delivered his budget message only six weeks ago, it breathed assurance that his financial policies would be sound political ground on which to stand for reelection. He said: "Our policy is succeeding. The figures prove it." The figures he produced indicated a net deficit for fiscal 1937 of only $518,000,000, exclusive of work-relief expenditures. They promised rising revenues, falling expenditures, dwindling deficits. While his budget message was being read, the Supreme Court handed down its AAA decision depriving the Government of $547,000,000 annually in processing taxes. Within three weeks Congress authorized a Bonus expenditure of $2,250,000,000 over his unemphatic veto. Franklin Roosevelt therefore faced the probability of a Federal deficit exceeding any other of Depression.

In the straits of Election Year, between the Rock of Taxes and the Whirlpool of Deficit, he realized last week that it would require serious effort on his part to find a safe political passage. Secretary Morgenthau conferred with him nearly every day. Budget Director Bell, Secretaries Wallace and Ickes, Assistant WPAdministrator Williams, RFChairman Jones, Rexford G. Tugwell, Chester Davis, Housing Administrator McDonald came & went. It would be safer to steer a little toward the Rock of Taxes, for the Congressional current would suck him back anyway to the Whirlpool. Hence he confirmed the fact that he would ask about half a billion in taxes to pay for his AAA substitute. On Bonus taxes he still remained silent. Meantime he took two steps to reassure the public that he was steering toward Economy:

1) He told his press conference that several hundred million dollars, perhaps a billion of appropriations for various Federal lending agencies, would be canceled. This would not mean a saving in cash so much as a saving in morale, for such organizations have virtually completed their work. The money that they were not going to spend will not be spent.

2) He announced that when WPA uses up the sum of nearly $1,300,000,000 allotted to it out of the $4,000,000,000 work relief fund, instead of seeking new appropriations to carry WPA to June 30, he will transfer to it unspent funds allotted to other Departments--Army, Navy, Labor, Commerce.

P: Only in the U. S. does the President of a great nation attend such a party as Franklin Roosevelt attended last week. The occasion was the annual official dinner given by Vice President Garner at the Hotel Washington. Sharing honors as guests and guffawing together were such notables as Chief Justice Hughes, Speaker Byrns, Senators Connally, Sheppard, Robinson, House Majority Leader Bankhead, Alice Longworth, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Alfred Chigi, Corinna Mura, Jack Powell. Loudest guffaw from the President and Chief Justice came when Drummer Powell, rolling his drum sticks on the china, the tables, the chairbacks, ended with a tattoo on the bald spot of the Speaker of the House.

P: At 6:45 one evening, before sitting down to dinner. President Roosevelt went to his microphone. He began: "Again we celebrate our birthday, this time the 26th. ... I am proud. ... I am especially happy. ... I am delighted. . . . I extend to you one and all this word of personal greeting, this hope that the year ahead of us will be one of the most successful ever celebrated by our great organization, the Boy Scouts of America."

P: The President holds five great receptions at the White House each year. The chairman of virtually every state's Democratic Central Committee is invited for one or another of these routs. Last week brought the third reception, for the Departments of the Treasury, Post Office, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Interstate Commerce Commission, Civil Service Commission, Veterans' Administration, District of Columbia Alley Dwelling Authority et al. One invited guest was absent. He was Chairman Elmer B. O'Hara of Michigan's Democratic Committee. Said he in Detroit last week: "I did not solicit the invitation. I would be less than human if I did not appreciate the high honor which it confers. To question the gracious and hospitable motives which actuated the invitation is beneath me. I disdain to answer those who would suggest otherwise. I am sure I would be most welcome."

Democrat O'Hara did not attend President Roosevelt's fashionable evening party because he and 25 other Michigan citizens were on trial for falsifying a ballot recount after the 1934 election. Two days later Mr. O'Hara, who was found guilty of bribery last year, was convicted of vote frauds along with 17 fellow-Democrats. Said the judge: ". . . One of the blackest pages in Michigan history . . . 13,700 citizens . . . disfranchised by a group of vote manipulators." In Wayne County Jail, a Republican sheriff assigned the guilty Democrats to Cell Block No. 308, ordinarily reserved for prisoners convicted of rape.

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