For Creatures of Habit

"The American public and American newspapers are certainly creatures of habit. It is the warmest night I have ever seen in Washington. And yet this talk will be referred to as a 'fireside' talk."

So began Franklin Roosevelt last week in one more of his unfailingly intimate, persuasive radio heart-to-hearts with the nation. The sarcasm of his opening crack was a key to his mood. A second key, politics, was in his fifth sentence: "As part of the democratic process, your President is again taking an opportunity to report ... to the real rulers of this country--the voting public."

On the whole, he reported, in its last session the 75th Congress had done better than any Congress "between the end of the World War and the spring of 1933": It had failed him on Reorganization and on helping the railroads, but it had passed much excellent legislation, notably the Wages & Hours Bill. Here came crack No. 2. "Do not let any calamity-howling executive with an income of $1,000 a day, who has been turning his employes over to the Government relief rolls in order to preserve his company's undistributed reserves, tell you--using his stockholders' money to pay the postage for his personal opinions--that a wage of $11 a week is going to have a disastrous effect on all American industry. Fortunately . . . that type of executive is a rarity."

He harked back to his defeated Supreme Court plan and crowed: "In one way or another . . . the ends I spoke of--the real objectives . . . have been substantially attained. The attitude of the Supreme Court toward Constitutional questions is entirely changed."

"Copperheads."Never in our lifetime has such a concerted campaign of defeatism been thrown at the heads of the President and Senators and Congressmen as in the case of this 75th Congress. Never before have we had so many Copperheads--and you will remember it was the Copperheads who, in the days of the War Between the States, tried their best to make Lincoln and his Congress give up the fight, let the nation remain split in two and return to peace--peace at any price.

"This Congress has ended on the side of the people. My faith in the American people--and their faith in themselves-- have been justified. I congratulate the Congress and the leadership thereof and I congratulate the American people on their own staying power."

Mistakes. "It makes no difference to me whether you call it a recession or a depression." But Depression II was not like Depression I. The national income, having risen from 1932's low of 38 billion dollars to 70 billions in 1937, was now, he hoped, going down only to around 60 billions. ". . . Banking and business and farming are not falling apart like the one-hoss shay as they did in the terrible winter of 1932-33." Then Franklin Roosevelt made an ingratiating admission: "Last year mistakes were made by the leaders of Private Enterprise, by the leaders of Labor and by the leaders of Government--all three." The Government's mistake, he quickly explained, was in assuming Business and Labor would not make mistakes.

But co-operation was a talisman. He mentioned U. S. Steel Corp.'s price cut without a wage cut, announced that day. That gratified him--but he soon went on, to deride all those who had been plaguing him "to do something, to say something, to restore confidence."

"Confidence." With fine rhetorical reiteration he made mock of those who have repeatedly asked him to restore confidence. "It is my belief that many of these people . . . are beginning today to realize that that hand has been overplayed, and that they are now willing to talk co-operation instead. . . . In simple frankness and in simple honesty, I need all the help I can get--and I see signs of getting more help in the future from many who have fought against progress with tooth and nail."

"Liberals." In raising and waving the banner of "Liberalism." Franklin Roosevelt offered his own definition of what "liberal" means: "Roughly speaking, the liberal school of thought recognizes that new conditions throughout the world call for new remedies.

"Be it clearly understood . . . that when I use the word 'liberal' I mean the believer in progressive principles of democratic, representative government and not the wild man who. in effect, leans in the direction of communism, for that is just as dangerous as fascism."

"Conservatives." The opposing or conservative school of thought, as a general proposition, does not recognize the need for government itself to step in and take action to meet these new problems. It believes that individual initiative and private philanthropy will solve them--that we ought to repeal many of the things we have done and go back, for instance, to the old gold standard, or stop all this business of old-age pensions and unemployment insurance, or repeal the Securities and Exchange Act, or let monopolies thrive unchecked--return, in effect, to the kind of government we had in the twenties."

"I Have Every Right." Having repeatedly given the impression, while Congress was sitting, that he was going to keep hands off primary elections this year, Franklin Roosevelt finally made it plain that those of his advisers who have been urging him to "purge" the Democratic Party of men not sympathetic to his program, had definitely won him over.

"As head of the Democratic Party . . . charged with the responsibility of carrying out the definitely liberal declaration of principles set forth in the 1936 Democratic platform, I feel that I have every right to speak in those few instances where there may be a clear issue between candidates for a Democratic nomination involving these principles or involving a clear misuse of my own name.

"Do not misunderstand me. I certainly would not indicate a preference in a State primary merely because a candidate, otherwise liberal in outlook, had conscientiously differed with me on any single issue.* I should be far more concerned about the general attitude of a candidate toward present-day problems and his own inward desire to get practical needs attended to in a practical way."

Frown for Hague. Before he concluded, with a Chinese homily, Franklin Roosevelt did something his "liberal" friends have been wishing he would do for some weeks. Indirectly yet unmistakably, he frowned on the Vice Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Boss Frank Hague of Jersey City, whose suppression of C. I. O. and Communists has earned him national fame as a foe of civil liberties. Said the head of the Democratic Party:

"And I am concerned about the attitude of a candidate or his sponsors with respect to the rights of American citizens to assemble peaceably and to express publicly their views and opinions on important social and economic issues. . . . The American people will not be deceived by any one who attempts to suppress individual liberty under the pretense of patriotism."

Chinese Story. "Two Chinese coolies were arguing heatedly in the midst of a crowd. A stranger expressed surprise that no blows were being struck. His Chinese friend replied: 'The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.'

"I know that neither in the summer primaries nor in the November elections will the American voters fail to spot the candidate whose ideas have given out."

*Perhaps to illustrate this, the President last week personally urged Congressman Hatton Sumners of Texas, bitter foe of the Supreme Court Plan, to serve on the Monopoly Investigation, chairmanned by Senator O'Mahoney, another Court Plan foe.

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