THE PRESIDENCY: Toothache

It started Monday evening, kept Franklin Delano Roosevelt awake all night. On Tuesday, Commander Arthur H. Yando, official White House dentist, diagnosed its cause as an abscess in a lower right molar and the President stayed in bed. By Wednesday, Franklin Roosevelt had a temperature and it looked as though the molar would have to be extracted. On Thursday, Commander Yando yanked it out. Friday the President was recuperating. After the weekend, his temperature was normal but the President still felt poorly enough to stay in Washington and rest instead of going to Warm Springs, Ga. for Thanksgiving.

Such last week was the clinical history of a sensationally severe toothache which, complicated by an attack of indigestion caused by the squab chicken he ate at the National Press Club dinner last fortnight, caused Franklin Roosevelt to cancel all engagements for four days. The engagements included two press conferences, a speech at Mt. Vernon which Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace delivered in his stead, a conference with utility company heads which was postponed to this week. It did not cause him to cancel a chat with Acting Budget Director Daniel Bell, which took place in his private quarters in the White House. Early this week he called in Vice President Garner, Senate Majority Leader Barkley, Speaker of the House Bankhead and House Majority Leader Rayburn to discuss Congressional developments.

Franklin Roosevelt’s executive actions last week consisted mainly of a letter to the Federal Trade Commission’s Chairman William Augustus Ayres, requesting the Commission to investigate a “marked increase in the cost of living . . . attributable, in part, to monopolistic practices and other unwholesome methods of competition.” The Commission promptly promised to deliver to the President “as early as practicable” a reportwhich observers guessed would be part of the groundwork for new anti-trust legislation in Congress’ regular session this winter.

By cracking down on his old enemy, Monopoly, the President did not do much to strengthen the theory that his attitude toward Business has changed markedly in the last six weeks. To Business, however, there was encouragement in the rumor at week’s end that he planned soon to announceplans for starting a nationwide housing program financed by private capital and that the plans would include naming an outstanding capitalist, someone like U. S. Steel’s Edward Stettinius Jr. or General Electric’s Gerard Swope, to head the drive.

¶ To the White House went a stack of the 85,000,000 unemployment cards which were distributed all over the U. S. last week.

¶ In New York, the new edition of the Social Register revealed that Franklin Delano Roosevelt no longer belonged to the Tory Knickerbocker Club, that Mrs. Roosevelt no longer belonged to the swank Colony Club.