Remember Firpo

A jovial President Eisenhower last week sliced into a 3-ft. birthday cake modeled after the White House (with a putting green on the roof) and said he was happy to be 64. Explained Ike to a Denver birthday-luncheon: "Considering the year I was born, if I weren't 64 I'd be dead."

Cash from the Neighbors. The President's spirits were high all week, even though he was ending his Denver vacation. At Denver's Cherry Hills Country Club, he shot a 77 (off short tees), his best golf score since the inauguration. At week's end, he boarded the Columbine and flew to Indianapolis, where he had scheduled a major farm speech. There were low, dark clouds and light rain in Indianapolis, and the President found that the weather fitted the mood of Indiana Republicans, who warned that there was a strong possibility that they would lose two of the ten congressional seats they now hold. It was the same kind of gloomy talk that Ike had been hearing for the past several weeks, and he had a comment to make.

He told 600 Hoosier Republican leaders that he had noticed a letdown in G.O.P. spirits since the 1952 landslide. He was reminded of Luis Angel Firpo, the South American heavyweight, and Firpo's bout with Jack Dempsey in 1923. Said Ike: "In the first round he knocked Dempsey so far out into the audience that he broke two or three typewriters for the newspapermen. But Dempsey crawled back in the ring and whipped the tar out of him. Now, I don't think the Republican Party has any idea of being a Firpo."

Help from the G.O.P. After the ten-minute talk, the President drove through rainy, almost deserted streets to deliver his farm speech to a lively audience of 16,000, plus a nationwide radio hookup. Boys and girls from Indiana 4-H Clubs gave him a four-tiered birthday cake, and he joined the crowd in singing Back Home Again in Indiana.

The President reviewed the entire range of his Administration's accomplishments, then turned to a defense of flexible price supports. Said Ike: "The truth is, this vital problem of markets and surpluses has never been faced head on. Two wars had postponed the day of inevitable reckoning." The G.O.P. farm bill finally faced the problem. Said he: "We have a farm program geared not to war but to peace--a program that will encourage consumption, expand markets and realistically adjust farm production to markets."

Ike went on to tick off a long list of other benefits farmers had received from the 83rd Congress, ranging from surplus-disposal laws to drought relief. Argued the President: "To continue the advance along the course charted 21 months ago, we need a legislative and an executive department both guided by leaders of the same general political philosophy . . . Our national welfare will be best served by a Republican-led Congress."

That night the President flew on to Washington, where he faced a deskful of preliminary work on the new budget and the State of the Union message.

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