"Another Crisis"

History may record the name of W. Forbes Morgan as one of the great pillars of the Democratic Party. Last year Mr. Morgan, the Democrats' national treasurer, tried a new method of raising Democratic dollars. Last week that method was used again, to raise funds to reduce the $430,000 Democratic campaign deficit. From coast to coast 1,262 Victory Dinners were held. To every dinner where the price was $5 a plate or more, the Democratic Speakers Bureau dispatched a Senator, a Congressman or other notable Democrat, the rank of the speaker being roughly proportioned to the price of admission.

Thus a $10 dinner at Washington's Willard Hotel (for less opulent New Dealers) drew Senator Neely of West Virginia, Representative Maverick of Texas, and Mrs. Roosevelt. A $25 dinner at Detroit had Senator Elbert D. Thomas of Utah (Governor Murphy was ill). The $50 dinner in Chicago had Senators Duffy and Lewis and the same priced dinner in Manhattan had Herbert Bayard Swope. No less than 20 reliable Senators and over 30 Congressmen spoke hither & yon. How much all these dinners netted, Democratic statisticians had not yet calculated, but the gross take of the dinner-of-dinners at Washington was a matter of simple arithmetic: 1,300 dinners times $100 a plate equaled $130,000.

This dinner at the Mayflower Hotel was the top in more respects than price and profit. Franklin Roosevelt was its speaker. At its snowy tables were arrayed the immaculate bosoms of Cabinet members, of all loyal Senators and party wheel-horses who had not been sent into the field, of lobbyists to whom $100 is a mere flyspeck on the expense account, of timid-looking souls who may have been frightened by stern letters of invitation, of would-be office holders, of nobodies whose sense of importance was enlarged by attending a $100 dinner. Two noteworthy guests were Messrs. Walter P. Chrysler and William Green. Madam Secretary Perkins and Madam Director of the Mint Ross were among the very few women guests, for most Democrats did not put up an extra $100 to feed their wives.

General Hugh Johnson--who did his political duty by addressing a Victory Dinner at Newark, N. J.--best described the spirit of the occasion when he wrote that the dinners were "backed by a big enough election triumph to justify serving stewed elephants." The 1,300 Mayflower diners ate their way in triumph through terrapin soup, pompano, breast of capon, coupe nougat quarante-six (Maine & Vermont excepted). But when Franklin Roosevelt rose and began to speak, the levity ended. His first few words were spoken with his most studied earnestness. He was addressing the electorate far more than his Party, and the listeners in his presence soon toned down their convivial war whoops and whistling as they realized that here was one of the great orations of a great orator.

Said Franklin Roosevelt: "On this fourth of March, 1937, in millions of homes, the thoughts of American families are reverting to the March 4 of another year. . . . Now we face another crisis--of a different kind but fundamentally even more grave than that of four years ago."

Back to Epithets. "After election day in 1936 some of our supporters were uneasy lest we grasp the excuse of a false era of good feeling to evade our obligations. They were worried by the evil symptom that the propaganda and the epithets of last summer and fall had died down.

"Today, however, those who placed their confidence in us are reassured. For the tumult and the shouting have broken forth anew--and from substantially the same elements of opposition. This new roar is the best evidence in the world that we have begun to keep our promises, that we have begun to move against conditions under which one-third of the nation is still ill-nourished, ill-clad, ill-housed."

Before 1941. He told in his own words the anecdote which he gave to Correspondent Arthur Krock* fortnight ago:

"A few days ago a distinguished member of the Congress came to see me. . . . I said to him: 'John, I want to tell you something that is very personal to me-- something that you have a right to hear from my own lips. I have a great ambition in life. . . . John, my ambition relates to Jan. 20, 1941.'

"I could feel just what horrid thoughts my friend was thinking. So in order to relieve his anxiety, I went on to say: 'My great ambition on Jan. 20, 1941, is to turn over this desk and chair in the White House to my successor, whoever he may be, with the assurance that I am at the same time turning over to him as President, a nation intact. ... I want to get the nation as far along the road of progress as I can. I do not want to leave it to my successor in the condition in which Buchanan left it to Lincoln.' "

Three-Horse Team. "Democracy in many lands has failed for the time being to meet human needs. People . . . have forgotten the lessons of history that the ultimate failures of dictatorships cost humanity far more than any temporary failures of democracy. ... As yet there is no definite assurance that the three-horse team of the American system of government will pull together. If three well-matched horses are put to the task of plowing up a field where the going is heavy, and the team of three pull as one, the field will be plowed. If one horse lies down in the traces or plunges off in another direction, the field will not be plowed."

"You Know Who." The Agricultural Adjustment Act testified to our full faith and confidence that the very nature of our major crops makes them articles of commerce between the States. ... By overwhelming votes, the Congress thought so too!

"You know who assumed the power to veto and did veto that program.

". . . the Democratic Administration and the Congress made a gallant, sincere effort to raise wages, to reduce hours, to abolish child labor, to eliminate unfair trade practices. . . .

"You know who assumed the power to veto and did veto that program.

"Soon thereafter the nation was told by a judicial Pronunciamento that although the Federal Government had thus been rendered powerless to touch the problem of hours and wages, the States were equally helpless; and that it pleased the 'personal economic predilections' of a majority of the Court that we live in a nation where there is no legal power anywhere to deal with its most difficult practical problems--a no man's land of final futility."

Ignorant River. "With only two of its nine projected dams completed there was no flood damage in the valley of the Tennessee this winter.

"But how can we confidently complete that Tennessee Valley project or extend the idea to the Ohio and other valleys while the lowest courts have not hesitated to paralyze its operations by sweeping injunctions?

"The Ohio River and the Dust Bowl are not conversant with the habits of the Interstate Commerce clause. But we shall never be safe in our lives, in our property or in the heritage of our soil until we have somehow made the Interstate Commerce clause conversant with the habits of the Ohio River and the Dust Bowl."

Current Affairs. "Here is one-third of a nation ill-nourished, ill-clad, ill-housed --now!

"Here are thousands upon thousands of farmers wondering whether next year's prices will meet their mortgage interest-- now!

"Here are thousands upon thousands of men and women laboring for long hours in factories for inadequate pay--now!

". . . If we would keep faith with those who had faith in us, if we would make democracy succeed, I say we must act-- now!"

Admiring Friends. When it was over, the President's friends were jubilant. They believed that he had turned the tide of public sentiment in favor of his plan, which he did not directly mention in his oration, for adding six members to the Supreme Court. He reported the telegrams he received afterward were 7-to-1 in approval. At least his friends were sure that his eloquence would stop defections from his Court plan in the Senate. Said Senator O'Mahoney: "The greatest speech he ever made." Said Postmaster Farley: "One of the greatest addresses ever delivered in this country." Said Secretary Wallace: "It will make the farmers think more than ever about the problems we face in trying to help them." Said Senator Herring of Iowa: "They will eat it up where I come from."

Attentive Critics. Senator Norris of Nebraska was one of those who praised the President's eloquence but dropped the acid of analysis upon the oration's actual contents. "The President has still to discuss the details of his program," said Senator Norris. The New York Times, favorable to President Roosevelt during the last campaign but suspicious of the "cleverness and adroitness" of his Court-packing plan (TIME, Feb. 15), now said:

"The whole structure of the President's argument . . . rests on the premise that this country is faced by a 'crisis' so acute that it cannot wait upon the adoption of a constitutional amendment to give the Government whatever wise and necessary authority it may need. It is important, therefore, to consider when this crisis arose and what form it has taken.

"On the basis of the President's own testimony, offered to the country in the last campaign, there is no reason to believe that the crisis arose before election day. . . . The President's chief appeal for votes was based on the claim that he had met a crisis rather than postponed one. Speaking at Denver, he declared that the Government had 'sought and found practical answers to the problems of industry, agriculture and mining.' ... If the country now faces a crisis, it is a constitutional crisis, and it is of the President's own making."

The President's assertion that "substantially the same elements" oppose his Court proposal as opposed all his liberal program, moved the genteel Times to use its equivalent for a four-letter word: "This statement is not in accordance with demonstrated facts." The Times and others pointed at 20 or more loyal Democratic Senators, at liberals such as Norris, Wheeler, Nye, at many pro-Roosevelt newspapers which now oppose the Court proposal. Senator Edward R. Burke of Nebraska, leader of the pro-Court wing among Senate Democrats, declared: "If the President thinks that . . . those 'defeatist lawyers'.. . are the only ones ... he is sadly mistaken. The most bitter opposition to the plan is from people who wholeheartedly supported the President last November."

Other critics made other points:

P:That there was no truth in the President's charge that the Courts prevented flood control. For generations Congress has built flood control works without interference. The TVA decision to which the President referred, he admitted in press conference, was an injunction controlling only TVA's power activities, did not interrupt work on its dams. Said Raymond Moley: "I should welcome the opportunity to speak to the man of whom we heard Thursday evening, to the man who, in the sweat of his brow, piles sand bags on the levee at Cairo. And if I spoke to him I would say that there is no evidence whatsoever that the Supreme Court has ever placed obstacles in the way of flood control. I would tell him, too, that there is no evidence whatsoever that the Supreme Court stands or has stood in the way of the efforts of the Federal Government to provide work for the unemployed, to protect home owners and farm owners from foreclosure, to guarantee the safety of bank deposits, to expand credit or restrict it, to protect the small investor on the Stock Exchange, to adjust the value and nature of the currency or to do any one of many other things in the interest of the little fellow."

P: That only one important New Deal law, the Wagner Labor Relations Act, is now in danger in the Courts; that the Administration apparently has a courtproof substitute for AAA in the present Soil Conservation Law, which is adequate to deal with the Dust Bowl; that the biggest project which the Supreme Court will not allow the New Deal is another NRA, and six new judges could not make that constitutional for the Supreme Court was unanimous upon it.

P:That if the all important social measures are now in jeopardy they were just as much so last June. Said Senator Wheeler: "The Democratic platform, dictated by the President himself, provided for meeting New Deal reforms by constitutional process. The conditions which exist in the Ohio River Valley and the Dust Bowl are identical with those which prevailed when the platform was adopted."

P:That the President, by apparently abandoning his original arguments for Court reform, had now confessed that they were a mere disguise. The man who four months ago was Republican nominee for Vice President was last week so wrought up by Mr. Roosevelt's change of tactics that he wrote and signed an editorial in his Chicago Daily News which expressed the peak of Republican apprehension. Excerpts:

"The MASK is OFF ! . . .--The President's speech last night left no twilight zone of doubt or uncertainty as to his meaning. He tossed aside with contempt the cloak of specious argument with which he dressed his initial proposal of judicial reorganization. Last night heard no plea for the expediting of judicial business, no claim for swifter-footed justice more accessible to the poor man, no proposals for the relief of senility on the Federal bench.

"With a brutal frankness that leaves the country aghast, President Roosevelt demands a Supreme Court, that, regardless of the Constitution, AGREES WITH HIM! . . . "FRANK KNOX"

*At a press conference, Correspondent J. Fred Essary of the Baltimore Sun asked the President about the interview he gave to Mr. Krock (TIME, March 8). Looking embarrassed, the President said he would lay his head on the block, asked the newshawks to forgive him because it was the first time in four years he had given one of their number an exclusive story. Because the President was believed to have "inspired" the Krock story, even read its proof, some newshawks wondered whether the "John" of the anecdote should not have been "Arthur." Others suggested it was John Nance Garner, John Bankhead, or perhaps John Doe. Secretary Stephen Early said he did not know who "John" was.

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