Politics

Early one sunny afternoon last week the Coast Guard cutter Potomac finally brought a bronzed and beaming President back to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., from a 16-day fishing holiday. For three days while tornadoes had been uprooting towns through the South, killing over 400 citizens, the Potomac, warned of possible hurricanes at sea, had been dodging from cay to cay rather than risk crossing the open channel between Florida and the Bahamas. Gaily Franklin Roosevelt told waiting newshawks how only an hour before while the Potomac was steaming at ten knots, he had caught a bonito, trolling over the stern rail.

Few days before, James Roosevelt had gone ashore by plane from the cutter with the news that his father was playing politics with his naval aide, Captain Wilson Brown, his military aide, Colonel Edwin M. Watson. The Press now wanted to know who had won. Franklin Roosevelt looked blank until someone explained they meant the dice-and-pin game called "Politics" (TIME, Feb. 3).

"Oh yes!" roared the President. "Pa Watson was elected!"

"Elected to what?"

"Elected President."

"On what ticket?"

"Oh, we didn't bother about tickets," grinned the President shrewdly. "He just got elected."

From the instant the Potomac touched shore, the President plunged into the real game of politics. Waiting for him at Fort Lauderdale were Governors McNutt of Indiana and Sholtz of Florida. Next day at Warm Springs, Ga. his political business was with Archibald D. Lovett and Marion H. Allen, anti-Talmadge leaders in Georgia.

Few hours later, as his special moved north he saw out of the window more & more evidence of the storms which harried the South earlier in the week. He met the real disaster late at night when his train halted for half an hour at Gainesville where a tornado had devasted the main square of the town. There he appeared on the back platform around which 2,000 silent townspeople were grouped. "My friends," declared President Roosevelt, "I hope to come back some day at a less tragic time. . . . I shall always be very proud of the spirit you have shown."

With the President back in Washington, the business of the U. S. once more got under way with a Cabinet meeting. Governor Brann of Maine, who threatened to quit the Democratic ticket, had to be seen and conciliated. General Johnson ("stage money") Hagood had to be seen and given command of the Sixth Corps Area at Chicago in place of the Texas command from which he was ousted two months ago.

In Baltimore before 10,000 Young Democrats, the President confounded those who had predicted that until election day he would abandon attacks on business, would soft-pedal talk of new reforms. Said he of industry:

"Industry can contribute in great measure to the increase of employment if industry as a whole will undertake reasonable reductions of hours of work per week, while, at the same time, they keep the average individual's pay envelope at least as large as it is today. . . .

"The best that the captains of the country could do for you before the Depression was not good enough then, and it is not good enough today."

Of reforms to come: "Our working population increases every year. . . . These increases raise the question as to whether it is not possible and right to limit the active working ages at both ends. . . .

"The period of Social pioneering is only at its beginning. . . ."

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