• U.S.

THE PRESIDENCY: Presents

3 minute read
TIME

The patriarch in Franklin Roosevelt surges to the fore at Christmas. Last week the scenes at the White House were magnificently and typically Rooseveltian— swarms of children, hundreds of presents, a reading of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol by the paterfamilias, a parade of family & guests to his bedside early Christmas morning to open stockings. Presents ranged from the soap and toothbrush traditionally stuffed in Franklin Roosevelt’s stocking, to paperweights with the Presidential seal for all the office staff (to match paper cutters and ash trays he gave them in other years).

Finest present of all was reserved for the President’s admired friend, Harry Hopkins, who with his daughter. Diana, 6, was a house guest. Supreme Court Justice Reed came over Christmas Eve, Mrs. Roosevelt supplied a black morocco Bible, and in the presence of about 50 high officials in the President’s study, Harry Hopkins was sworn in as Secretary of Commerce.

Knowing well that he would be roasted to a turn in the Senate for his tax-spend-elect slogan, but expecting to be confirmed eventually by about a 2-to-1 vote, Mr. Hopkins dived at his new job with all speed. He announced he would retain “Uncle Dan” Roper’s impressive Business Advisory Council, most of whose many members are “close personal friends.” He asked his specially close friend, W. Averell Harriman, board chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad Co. and also of the Advisory Council, to come to Washington as soon as convenient. He hired able Political Correspondent Victor Sholis of the Chicago Times to handle the press relations of what will now be the most conspicuous, instead of the most obscure, Roosevelt department.

> Speaker Bankhead of the House called on the President to discuss legislation, emerged to say that the emphasis will be on national defense, especially in the air. Another report led the New York Times to publish the headline of the week:

PRESIDENT TO LET

CONGRESS ITSELF

DRAFT NEW LAWS

Meaning: Executive departments will only suggest, instead of actually write, the bills they want, leaving the literary composition to drafting committees of the Congress.

>In his Christmas address to the world, Franklin Roosevelt said: “. . Let us hope that the boon of peace which we in this country and in the whole Western Hemisphere enjoy under the providence of God may likewise be vouchsafed to all nations and all peoples. We desire peace. We shall work for peace. We covet neither the lands nor the possessions of any other nation or people. …”

>To replace Harry Hopkins at the head of WPA, the President elevated Colonel Francis Clark (“Pinky”) Harrington, whose political coloration is neutral to the point that he boasts of never having voted (see p. 8). To replace Miss Mary Dewson, 64, resigning from the Social Security Board because of physical exhaustion, the President named Mrs. Ellen S. Woodward, fortyish, director of women’s and professional activities in WPA.

>To Franklin Delano Roosevelt was awarded the 1938 American Hebrew Medal “for outstanding service in promoting Better Understanding between Christians and Jews.” Worse understanding between Americans and “Aryans” was the immediate result: the Nazi press flayed the President as a tool of Jewry (see col. 3).

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