THE PRESIDENCY: Do It We Will

When Secretary Steve Early announced last Friday morning that at President Roosevelt’s regular press conference that afternoon an important statement would be issued, every man in Washington who had a press pass prepared to attend. In Georgia and South Carolina, 4,000 striking cotton workers had snarled Labor’s section of the march toward Recovery. Police engaged in pitched battle with rioting silk workers in New Jersey. Rival coal mine unionists were killing each other in Illinois. Angered by falling commodity prices, disgruntled farmers were getting ready to embroil the Midwest in an agricultural strike (see p.11). Rural agitation for inflation had raised an issue from which the Administration had been dancing away for weeks. But by noon the newshawks knew that the President’s announcement would concern none of these things. The United Press, by querying Moscow, had scored a great “beat”‘ on the Russian recognition story.

At 4 p. m., a page boy opened the doors of the President’s office to let in the biggest jam that had attended any Roosevelt press conference. Some of the last men in had to be pushed forward by guards. The President leaned back in his desk chair, puffing at a cigaret in a yellow bone holder. “All in?” he cheerfully inquired. “Then shut the doors, and nobody leaves until the conference is over. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be fair to those close to the desk.”

Copies of two messages were then read. One was from U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to President Michail Kalinin of the U. S. S. R.’s Central Executive Committee (see p. 11 and p. 14), one from Kalinin back to Roosevelt.

The Roosevelt message was cordial, but burned no bridges: “Since the beginning of my Administration I have contemplated the desirability of an effort to end the present abnormal relations between . . . the U. S. . . . and Russia. It is most regrettable that these great peoples . . . should now be without a practicable method of communicating directly with each other. The difficulties that have created this anomalous situation are serious but not, in my opinion, insoluble. . . . I should be glad to receive any representatives you may designate to explore with me personally all questions outstanding between our countries. Participation in such a discussion would, of course, not commit either nation to any future course of action, but would indicate a sincere desire to reach a satisfactory solution of the problems involved. . . .”

Comrade Kalinin circumspectly replied: “I have always considered most abnormal and regrettable a situation wherein, during the past 16 years, two great republics . . . have lacked the usual methods of communication and have been deprived of the benefits which such communications could give. . . . I shall take the liberty further to express the opinion that the abnormal situation . . . has an unfavorable effect not only on the interests of the two States concerned, but also on the general international situation. . . . The Soviet Government will be represented by Mr. M. M. Litvinov, People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, who will come to Washington at a time to be mutually agreed upon.”

Here was news perfectly timed to take domestic problems off the front page, give the Administration a breathing spell. Scurrying off to file their stories, the correspondents did not forget to credit the President with a major stroke of political strategy.

¶ In his fourth Sunday night radio-side talk with the nation, President Roosevelt began with a tally of the Administration’s accomplishments to date. He reported that the C. C. C. was employing 300,000 young men, that 4,000,000 people (out of 10,000,000) had been put back to work, that the Government had allocated $2,100,000,000 out of its $3,300,000,000 public works fund, that “during the course of the year 1933 the farmers of the U. S. will receive 33% more dollars for what they have produced than they received in the year 1932.”

“I am not satisfied,” the President continued, “either with the amount or the extent of the rise. . . . It is definitely a part of our policy to increase the rise and to extend it to those products which have as yet felt no benefit. If we cannot do this one way, we will do it another. Do it we will.” President Roosevelt squared off at critics of his recovery program like Keith Neville of Nebraska (see p. 11). “Ninety per cent, of complaints come from misconception. For example, it has been said that NRA has failed to raise the price of wheat and corn and hogs. . . .” He reminded people that the “pillars” of recovery were the NRA for industry, the A. A. A. for agriculture. Another pillar, “the money of the country in the banks of the country,” was the subject of his unexpected, newsmaking conclusion. He promised a “sound managed currency” based on the equivalent of an exchange equalization fund. “I am authorizing the Reconstruction Finance Corp.,” said he, “to buy gold newly mined in the U. S. at prices to be determined from time to time after consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the President. Whenever necessary to the end in view, we shall also buy or sell in the world market” (see p. 10). Next day he called in R. F. C.’s Jesse Jones, Undersecretary of the Treasury Acheson and Farm Credit Administration’s Henry Morgenthau Jr. to discuss putting this new monetary policy into practice instanter.

¶ The Retail Code which President Roosevelt signed last week differed in two major respects from the one which General Johnson had brought to his desk. Replacing the section which forbade sales at less than manufacturers’ net invoice cost plus 10% (the section opposed by President Percy Straus of R. H. Macy & Co. and by consumer organizations— TIME, Oct. 16), the President inserted a provision merely prohibiting sales at less than cost. This, General Johnson explained, was to prevent farmers from complaining that the NRA arbitrarily raises the prices of the things they buy. In the draft the President signed, almost one-third of the nation’s 1,500,000 stores, those stores employing fewer than five persons in towns of 2,500 or less, were exempted from the re-employment agreement.

¶ The cotton textile industry took a new departure when it decided to regulate production from within by delegating to NRA the power to register all manufacturing equipment, to grant permission to any manufacturer who wished to install additional productive machinery.

¶ Liquor importers let out discouraged moans when President Roosevelt clapped an embargo on further “medicinal” importations of wines & spirits.

¶ In the New York Herald Tribune, Pundit Walter Lippmann wrote an editorial-of-the-week called “The Pace of Things.” “In our domestic affairs,” said he, “we have indulged heavily in calendar-worship. In Washington, for example, the administration of the NRA has been beset by a kind of breathless anxiety that certain definite results had to be achieved on a particular day. There had to be x million men at work by Labor Day. There had to be x million more by the New Year. . . . Even the Dictatorships, where everything is done so lickety-split. have allowed themselves, in the case of Russia, five years, in the case of Germany, four years. . . .”

In an extemporaneous speech at Chestertown, Md., where Washington College gave him an LL. D., President Roosevelt seemed to have the Lippmann criticism in mind. He said: “Some countries which have Dictatorships have laid down five-year plans and ten-year plans. However, I believe that in this country, which has not got a Dictator, we can move further in a shorter period without naming a definite length of time. . . . We have attained much within the past few months, but we cannot accomplish all in a few months.”