"Watch Mrs. Roosevelt"

In eight years the U. S. has had plenty of time to put together a lifelike picture of Eleanor Roosevelt. Some of the pieces were missing--part of the time Mrs. Roosevelt herself was missing--but the outlines were clear: an incredibly busy, indefatigable housekeeper who was forever scrubbing out dark corners of her domain, worrying over the welfare of the poor people across the tracks, clucking disapproval of dust in Oklahoma and mud tracked into the living room by soil erosion. Some citizens were annoyed, some were puzzled.

World War II quaked her world, as all worlds. Fissures cracked labor; Communism split youth movements; wrath against aggressors blotted up pacifism. Some time ago Mrs. Roosevelt quietly resigned from the Spanish Rescue Ship Mission, withdrew from the American Youth Congress, apparently determined to withdraw from all Communist-tainted organizations. But Mrs. Roosevelt still had a smile for organized Labor. She spoke to a mass meeting of strikers of the Leviton Mfg. Co. plant in Brooklyn, said: "I am afraid I agree with you," thus helping to rouse a new surge of strike enthusiasm.

This First-Ladylike act set off U. S. journalism's Angry Man: freckly, scowling Westbrook Pegler, who straightway attacked Mrs. Roosevelt as "a cunning and indefatigable conspirator against the rights and independence of the individual American," said her ultimate goal was "some scheme containing the most binding elements of Communism and Hitlerism"; denounced her "innocent, wholehearted, humane enthusiasm" as "only a disguise." To Mrs. Roosevelt's defense leaped the smart-chart New Yorker, which has social sensibilities if not a social sense. After a mixed tribute to the Pegler prose ("a nice combination of ginmill epithet and impeccable syntax"), The New Yorker deplored "discussing the First Lady as if she were a crooked wrestling promoter."

Mrs. Roosevelt had become more than a phenomenon: by last week she was a portent. With U. S. industry beginning to hit its stride in the production of everything, with thousands of men going back to work, and consumption zooming, Mrs. Roosevelt warned housewives to start thinking about doing without new automobiles, aluminum kitchen utensils, etc., warned housewives' husbands to change those items on the family budget into Government securities. For once, Washington and Wall Street winced as one. The Wall Street Journal voiced a shadowy but growing fear: "Mrs. Roosevelt is increasingly active; watch her for tips on policies. Her discernible influence on the President is indirect but important. She talks to officials . . . has been calling on bigwigs . . . gave the first hint of the Lease-Lend Bill."

Wall Streeters, already snowed under by dope-sheets, star-gazing reports and the auguries of expertly gloomy sibyls, added My Day to their long list of required reading.

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