Grim Queen

At the White House luncheon table one day last week Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt faced a plain, rather grim little woman who spoke only Russian. Officially the two were equals. The guest was young Paulina Semionova Zhemchuzhina, wife of President Molotov of the Council of People's Commissars of the U. S. S. R., a position technically but by no means actually outranking Joseph Stalin's rank of Secretary-General of the Communist Party. Furthermore, Mme Molotov is herself founder and head of the Soviet cosmetics trust, Tezhe, which last year turned back to the State a profit of $84,000,000. Mrs. Roosevelt's admiration for businesswomen made Mme Molotov fittingly the first wife of a Big Red ever to be received at the White House.

The Soviet Cosmetics Queen was, however, in the U. S. on business, traveling under the incognito of Olga Karpovskaya. Up to 1934 her cosmetics were unfashionable in bread-hungry Russia, and Moscow newsorgans sharply ridiculed the cosmetics trust without mentioning the fact that its head was wife of the President of the Council. In those dark days Mme Molotov used no cosmetics herself, dressed in knitted caps, dark suits and belted raincoats. Last week, Joseph Stalin's views on Fun-for-the-Masses having been changed by better times, Mme Molotov could cheerfully tell U. S. newshawks through an interpreter: "No, I will not have to buy American cosmetics. I have brought quite enough pure Russian cosmetics to last me until I get back to Moscow."

Before and after her luncheon at the White House, the Cosmetics Queen visited U. S. cosmetics factories with a view to buying some $100,000 worth of factory equipment. The traveling belts on which the jars of powder and perfume rode from worker to worker, floor to floor, particularly fascinated her. "Our women," she said, "can afford to pay as much for cosmetics as American women. Even our men are shaving more regularly and taking up the use of toilet water."

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