Man At Work

No epic speech, no solemn act of President Roosevelt made the week memorable in history books. But the lull was not a rest. In Hyde Park, where at week's end the President applied himself to the private task of settling his mother's estate, he could count a goodly number of chores which he had put behind him.

> One of the less exciting details a President must attend to is signing his name to innumerable bills, notes and orders. Lend-Lease authorizations go to the President's desk in "books" of as many as 20 at once. Two copies of each order must be signed, one for the Lend-Lease administration, one for the Treasury. Last week Franklin Roosevelt got rid of this particular routine job--by designating white-haired, handsome Edward R. Stettinius Jr. a special assistant administrator (at $10,000 a year) with authority to sign the President's name to Lend-Lease orders. This authority gives Ed Stettinius no real increase in power, but it may save as much as a day in getting Lend-Lease orders through the Government mill.

>To Congress, President Roosevelt sent his second quarterly report on Lend-Lease allocations. Of the first $7,000,000,000 appropriation, over $6,250,000,000 has been allocated, over $3,500,000,000 has been legally committed. Only $324,000,000 has actually been transferred, however. In the six months Lend-Lease has been in effect, a bare $190,000,000 in cargoes has gone abroad.

In this record Scripps-Howard's astute Columnist Raymond Clapper found little to praise. "So far as the British are concerned," said he, "ours still is a popgun arsenal." Of the President's report, Clapper wrote: "The figures ... are large. In terms of deliveries they shrink like a pair of wool socks in the laundry. . . . For a time, 25% of the eggs we sent arrived in England unfit to eat. . . . Children are not receiving the milk their bodies need. . . . Shipments to the British Empire in July of last year were . . . more than those of July this year."

> The President asked Congress for another $5,985,000,000 in Lend-Lease funds.

> At the personal request of Franklin Roosevelt, Federal Loan Administrator Jesse Holman Jones signed a contract with Russia's Amtorg Trading Corp., pledged $50,000,000 in credits to the Soviet Union.

> In Collier's the President continued a series of articles defending his 1937 fight to reform the Supreme Court, his attempt to purge Congress in 1938. "These forces," wrote the President, "had tried stubbornly ... to stop our program of reform. They had failed. . . . Therefore, through the years of 1937 and 1938, their activities to impede progress and to bring about a repeal ... of the New Deal . . .were redoubled." At a press conference last week the President tartly rebuked a newsman for dragging party questions into the picture when the U.S. is in danger. But when it came to his own party problems, Franklin Roosevelt had neither forgiven nor forgotten.

> Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt an nounced that she will report for duty bright & early next Monday morning on her new job as an assistant to New York City's Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, chief of the Office of Civilian Defense. Franklin Roosevelt's lady will look out for the women in defense.

> The President signed his name to the biggest U.S. tax bill of all time.

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