THE PRESIDENCY: Mind & Momentum

From the vast sounding board that is the White House, headline after headline boomed last week across the land. Their substance was furnished by conference after conference within the executive offices where sat President Hoover busily engaged in trying to stabilize Big Business (see p. 35). A major experiment on the mass-mind of the country was in progress as President Hoover sought to transform public psychology from a state of economic apprehension and uncertainty to one of faith and reassurance. To Industry he would give a new momentum to carry it over the aftermath of the stockmarket crash.

Into the Cabinet Room marched nine of the most potent presidents of eastern railroads. Next came 22 industrial tycoons, who promised not to cut wages if Labor would not demand increases. Afterward they circulated about the White House lobby, gave newsmen their views on the soundness of business, their confidence in its future. Henry Ford, in a shrewd burst of economic optimism, announced he would raise all his workers’ pay.

Master builders came next to the White House with an impressive chorus of plans and projects.

Next the President sent telegrams to all state governors, urging them on to an “energetic, yet prudent, pursuit of public works” as a means of absorbing unemployment.

Finally came husbandmen to pledge their aid to the President in stabilizing business, to devise means of increasing their purchasing power, to applaud enlarged plans for rural road building.

¶ Snow covered the rear grounds of the White House one morning last week. Out through the falling flakes ran President Hoover. Behind him trotted Secretaries Wilbur and Hyde, Solicitor-General Hughes, Farm Board Chairman Legge, six others. When they came to their level, shrub-guarded playground behind the White House, they briskly began passing their 8-lb. medicine ball back and forth. They kept it up for a half-hour, then walked back to the White House to have their morning coffee indoors instead of out for the first time this year. Thus came Winter to Washington.

¶ Into the East Room, curtained, flower-banked, walked President Hoover alone. Down into a metal casket set near the wall he gazed for silent sorrowful minutes into the face of his dead friend and Secretary of War, James William Good. After the President returned, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court, Senators, Representatives, army officers, foreign envoys stood by for the simple funeral service. The President sat motionless, with bowed head, in a damask-covered gilt chair. His eyes followed the casket as it was borne away from the White House to the beat of muffled drums for its last journey to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Social engagements at the White House (including the Cabinet dinner and the Diplomatic reception) were cancelled for 30 days. The President ordered all flags half-staffed, broke an ancient tradition by having the White House flag lowered halfway to mourn the death of one other than a U. S. President.*

¶ Completed last week was the U. S. delegation to the five-power naval conference at London next January. To join Statesman Stimson, and Senators Reed and Robinson (of Arkansas), President Hoover appointed Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams, Ambassadors Charles Gates Dawes (Britain), Hugh Gibson (Belgium), Dwight Whitney Morrow (Mexico). Likewise he smoothed out a case of hurt pride when he induced Rear-Admiral Hilary Pollard Jones, retired, to accompany the U. S. delegation to London as a “naval adviser.” Admiral Jones, a full-fledged delegate to the fruitless conference of 1927 at Geneva, was represented as feeling he should go to the London parley in the same capacity or at least authorized to veto any agreement which he felt did not protect the U. S. Navy. He did not accept his “advisory” role until he heard that his chief, Secretary Adams, was to be a delegate. C.

¶ “I have slept over and across the roots of most varieties of trees from Canada to the Mexican Border.” Thus, and in many another passage of her prolific writings, has Mrs. Mary Roberts Rinehart expressed her fondness for and knowledge of her native soil. President Hoover appointed her to the Public Lands Commission. First woman ever so honored, she attended her first meetings last week at the Interior Department.

¶ Last week President Hoover proclaimed: “It is the duty of every person to answer all questions on the census. . . . Any person refusing to do so is subject to penalty. . . . No person can be harmed in any way by furnishing the information required. . . . The census has nothing to do with taxation, with military or jury service, with the compulsion of school attendance, with the regulation of immigration. . . .”

*Not all flags were lowered throughout the land. Some people forgot, as, for example, the Chicago Tribune, whose flag flew at the peak while Chicagoans were reading notice of the public mourning in Tribune columns. Some people had other plans, as, for example, Sinclair Consolidated Oil Co. The flag flew high on the Sinclair Building, Manhattan, that day. It was the day Harry Ford Sinclair got out of jail (see p. 14).