The Roosevelt Week

Franklin Roosevelt last week prepared for the Republican National Convention. One candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination was Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, who two months ago scored a telling point against the New Deal by making Secretary Wallace admit that several big sugar producers had collected around $1,000,000 each in bounties. Accordingly, the President now took the opportunity to write Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney of Wyoming, sponsor of a stop-gap sugar control bill to succeed the late AAA:

"... I believe that the principle of graduated payments might well be incorporated. Large corporate organizations, whether in industry or agriculture, in the past have obtained from the Government certain advantages which oftentimes have enabled them to profit to an unusual extent. ... I would ask your most earnest consideration of the advisability of applying the same principle to the sugar payments by means of an amendment [to the proposed bill] which would provide for payments at rates for large operating units lower than those applicable to family-size farms."

Thus the sting was drawn from one Republican criticism before it could be drafted into the platform at Cleveland. Lest the extraction of the sting should be missed, the President expounded at his press conference his idea that all big farmers should have their benefit payments restricted.

C. In his anxiety to get off to Arkansas and Texas this week, Franklin Roosevelt canceled all ordinary engagements for the last half of last week so he could give his attention to steering the bills he wished to pass Congress, blocking the bills he wanted dropped. Then Death laid a finger on Speaker Byrns (see col. 3) and all President Roosevelt's plans changed. Instead of going on to the Capitol on Saturday to sign last-minute bills, he went there Friday to the Speaker's funeral, traveled to Nashville for the Speaker's interment. At Nashville he was more than three-quarters of the way to Arkansas, where he opens his speaking tour this week, but lest he be accused of mingling obsequies and politics in one trip, he backtracked 724 mi. to Washington. Not wasted, however, were his 38 hours on the train. In his air-cooled car, with two stenographers, he drafted his speeches for this week. At Washington he spent 30 hours cleaning up odds & ends, then started off again.

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