Rest & Roadwork

With the exception of ponderous William Howard Taft, who covered 114,000 miles during his four years in the White House, Franklin Delano Roosevelt has probably done more roadwork than any President in U. S. history. Up to last week, the Roosevelt mileage at home and abroad since 1933, totaled roughly 104,000. Last week appeared the likelihood of a trip that would considerably increase his mileage. Washington rumor for the past month has murmured that the President planned a cross country jaunt to Seattle, ostensibly to visit his son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. John Boettiger. Last week, Publisher Boettiger revealed what almost no one else except the President was in a position to know. In his Seattle Post Intelligencer he announced that the President definitely intended to make the trip "to secure first-hand information on the accomplishments' in this area under his administration."

Said the President's son-in-law's Post Intelligencer: "The President will visit Grand Coulee and Bonneville dams,* in which he is vitally interested and will study the progress of the projects and the effects on this district. . . ."

What the Post Intelligencer did not say was what everyone took for granted-- that the President would make the trip the occasion for a few major speeches en route, a personal investigation of the Northwest's reaction to the last few months of the New Deal. Closest thing to official confirmation of the Seattle Post Intelligencer'?, scoop that could be gotten last week was an admission that the trip was under consideration. But last week the President had no eastern appointments on his calendar after September 17, when he is scheduled for an outdoor Constitution Day speech in Washington.

If the President set out for the Coast in late September, he could still be back in ample time for the extra session of Congress which he had not yet quite made up his mind to call last week. One advantage of an extra session would be to give Congress a chance to study crop control legislation without one eye on the deadline of 1938 spring planting. Another would be to give it a chance to get a head-start on such important legislation as anti-lynching and wages & hours, which it should settle before adjourning next year in time for members to go home and campaign in their primaries. Major disadvantage was that Congress did not want an extra session and might therefore be less tractable than ever. That the President, still in a fighting mood, would let this possibility interfere with his program last week seemed unlikely.

As uncommunicative about his plans for Congress as about his plans for himself, the President packed up for a three weeks' rest at Hyde Park, longest vacation he has had since his South American trip last year. In Washington the President, wading into the accumulation of last minute legislation, signed the Tax Loophole Bill which the Treasury hopes will plug some $100,000,000 worth of holes in the income tax law, the $87.662.634 Third Deficiency Bill. He also signed Congress' ''promissory note" pledging to make farm legislation the first order of business in the next session, in return for which he had agreed to cotton crop loans.

He vetoed a bill preventing immigration of Philippine workers into Hawaii, as a "unilateral modification" of the Philippine Independence Act; another making it a Federal offense to transport stolen animals in interstate commerce, on the ground that Federal agents were too busy to round up chickens and sheep that had been spirited across State lines.

At his desk in Krum Elbow, the President dug into his briefcase, signed in short order a $53,716,525 appropriation for rivers and harbors; a $25,587,456 Army housing bill; a $34,177,000 flood control measure applying chiefly to the Ohio Valley; a bill authorizing appropriations up to $4,000,000 for a voluntary census of the unemployed, then economically vetoed a proposal to restore to a number of veterans' organizations the $294,852.97 they had contributed for the American Legion's Pershing Hall Memorial in Paris. Since any bill not dealt with within ten days after the close of the session automatically receives his pocket veto, the President had until Thursday to clear his desk.

P:Every day in Washington and Hyde Park brought a batch of letters inquiring and advising about a third term. Interviewed in Paris was 82-year-old Sara Delano Roosevelt, who observed: "I am sure my son does not want to run for a third term. . . . Surely there are other able men in the country. . . . Criticism does not seem to bother the President. It is no doubt discouraging but he loves his task and goes ahead with what he thinks is the best course."

*Gift of the week for the President was the pelt of a wolf, which Washington's Senator Lewis Schwellenbach explained was the one that "howled at everyone's door in 1932," presented by the City of Vancouver and inscribed with an invitation to attend the opening of Bonneville Dam.

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