THE PRESIDENCY: Man of Letters

By last week, the list of Franklin Roosevelt’s forthcoming literary works had begun to assume the proportions of Dr. Eliot’s five-foot shelf. Announced last summer were the President’s State Papers, edited by Judge Samuel Rosenman, in five volumes. Three weeks ago, the President announced sale of the prefaces to the Papers to Liberty Magazine, of notes on the Papers to United Feature Syndicate. Last week, it developed that Liberty was also going to publish stenographic transcriptions of Presidential press conferences, also included in the State Papers. What total price the President received was not officially revealed, but it was reported about as much as his annual salary—$75,000.

If the President had announced his intention of selling his radio fireside chats to an advertising sponsor, it could scarcely have caused more outraged bowlings than his spring publication list. The New York Herald Tribune found it “so . . . steep a descent for a President as to give the whole nation pause.” In the House, Michigan’s Republican Clare E. Hoffman accused the President of “using his … office as his advertising agency,” and retaining a monopoly. Circulated in Washington was the story that when offered a fat contract for a series of daily broadcasts. John Nance Garner had replied: “What Jack Garner thinks isn’t worth a nickel and what the Vice President thinks is not for sale.”

Whatever the propriety of Franklin Roosevelt’s literary deal, it set two precedents: 1) It made Roosevelt II the first President to earn a substantial sum as an .author while still in the White House; 2) For the first time a President’s words to reporters had been judged of resale value.

The syndicate series will start March 23; the Liberty series starts this week with a 4,500-word article called President Roosevelt’s Own Story of the New Deal. Excerpts:

“A frank examination of the profit system in the spring of 1933 showed it to be in collapse; but substantially everybody in the United States, in public office and out of public office, from the very rich to the very poor, was as determined as was my Administration to save it.

“A frank examination of the social system showed that it, too, was in collapse; but in this case there was not such unanimity. The vast majority of our people, but by no means all, wanted to build it up on sounder foundations and on sounder new lines.

. The task of today is to see to it that our democracy is kept equipped . . . to keep pace with quick . . . changes. . . .”

¶Early this year, Franklin Roosevelt firmly declared he would take no sides in this year’s State elections. Last week, he broke this high resolve not of his own accord but because the principals in Pennsylvania’s row about the Democratic gubernatorial nomination (TIME. Feb. 28) came to him for counsel. To the White House went Governor Earle, State Democratic Chairman David Lawrence. Publisher David Stern of the Philadelphia Record and Senator Joseph Guffey, presumably to get endorsement of a candidate. Said Governor Earle when the party emerged: “The President had only one suggestion. He said he needed Joe Guffey in the United States Senate and he requested that we leave him there.”

¶As the first step toward counteracting the effects of German and Italian propaganda broadcasts to South America, the President last week named an 11-man interdepartmental Committee (headed by Frank McNinch, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission) to study the subject of international broadcasts. Job of the Committee will be to decide: 1) how best to use the four Pan-American frequencies which the FCC temporarily allocated to World-Wide Broadcasting Corp. and the General Electric Company February 1; 2) whether the U. S. Government should broadcast to South America and if so over private networks or aproposed new network for the exclusive use of the Federal Government.

¶Between 1932 and 1937 Congress directed Reconstruction Finance Corp. to make “loans” totaling $2,500,000,000 to other Government agencies for relief and similar purposes. Unlike most of RFC’s loans, made on a business basis to private industry, everyone knew these would never be paid back. Last week, the President signed a bill whereby, to simplify its bookkeeping, RFC was directed to write them off as “unrecoverable.”

¶Dressed in a not particularly natty new uniform, Lieut.-Colonel James Roosevelt, commissioned on Nov. 13, 1936, flew to Puerto Rico to start a fortnight’s active ship-&-shore training as a Marine Corps Reserve officer, his first active military training since he was commissioned. Setting out from Washington with Lieut.-Colonel Joseph Fegan in a Marine Corps plane, he stopped off in the Dominican Republic. Thence he radioed to San Juan that he would be a day late arriving for maneuvers. His reason: he and Lieut.-Colonel Fegan were “besieged by hospitality” in the Dominican Republic.