THE PRESIDENCY: The White House Week: Dec. 14, 1925

¶The winter season of entertaining opened at the White House last week with a dinner and musicale for the Vice President and Cabinet. Pink and white chrysanthemums nodded benignly on the assembled guests: Vice President and Mrs. Dawes, all the members of the Cabinet and their ladies (except Secretary of the Interior and Mrs. Work), Director of the Budget and Mrs. Lord, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Mr. and Mrs. Henry White, Mr. Richard Washburn Child, Mr. and Mrs. John Hays Hammond, President and Mrs. James R. Angell of Yale, Mr. Frank A. Munsey, Mr. and Mrs. Frank W. Stearns, Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Sabin, Mrs. Edward B. McLean and others to the number of 50. After dinner in the East Room, Madame Schumann-Heink and Mischa Elman furnished music.

¶Paul A. McDuffey, six-foot strapping White House policeman, off duty one night when his family was out of town, had a sudden longing for pigs’ feet. In quest of this delicacy he went to South Capitol St., was set upon by three sailors, doped, seriously wounded.

¶Six little Armenian girls in Syria spent ten months tying 4,404,247,000 knots depicting an even gross of animals, and completed a rug for Calvin Coolidge’s Christmas. He wrote to the Vice Chairman of the Near East Relief, Dr. John H. Finley:

“The beautiful rug woven by the children in the orphanage in the Lebanons has been received. This, their expression of gratitude for what we have been able to do in this country for their aid, is ac-cepted by me as a token of their goodwill to the people of the United States. The rug has a place of honor in the White House, where it will be a daily symbol of good-will on earth.”

¶Upon receipt of the report of his Air Inquiry Board (see ARMY & NAVY), the President declared: “The President wishes to acknowledge the distinguished public service rendered by the members of the Aircraft Board, which has just completed its report. He believes that the thanks of the entire country go out to those eminent citizens who so promptly responded to his call on Sept. 12.

“They dropped their important personal affairs and for nearly three months devoted their talents and energies to a ‘study of the best means of developing and applying aircraft in national defense.’

“The report of the Aircraft Board gives to the public a clearer un-derstanding of all the problems involved than any statement hereto-fore issued.”

¶¶The St. James High school football eleven of Haverhill, Mass., champion team from New England, appeared at the White House and was shaken by the hands. Then it was photographed with the President—a privilege which has been denied to most White House visiting elevens. Next day it was beaten 13 to 7 by Gonzago High School, champions of the Capital.

¶The President and Mrs. Coolidge, attended by the President’s secretary, physician, aides and secret service detail, took train in Washington one afternoon and traveled westward through Maryland and Pennsylvania across the Alleghenies and on to Chicago to address a convention of the American Farm Bureau Federation. The Presidential party rode as the second section of a regular train, not in an ordinary Pullman drawing room as on his trip to Chicago a year ago to attend the annual Live Stock Exposition.

¶At Chicago the President and his party were met at the station by an escort of 100 uniformed policemen, and whisked away to the Hotel Sherman Annex. There they were quartered in a two-story bungalow just completed on the roof of the hotel, 300 feet above the street, on the 27th story, with a garden, fountain, dining room, reception hall and four bedrooms. The bedrooms were of no great use to the President, because he arrived early in the morning, went to the bungalow for a couple of hours, addressed the Farm Bureau Federation in the ballroom of the hotel at 11:00 a.m., lunched with the leaders of the Federation while Mrs. Coolidge was entertained by Mrs. Oscar E. Bradfute, wife of its President, and promptly took train again for Washington.

The President said in his speech:

“No matter how it is disguised, the moment the Government engages in buying and selling farm produce, by that act it is fixing prices. Moreover, it would apparently destroy co-operative associations and all other machinery, for no one can compete with the Government. . . .

“Government control cannot be divorced from political control. The overwhelming interest of the consumer, not the smaller interest of the producer, would be sure to dominate in the end. . .

“While the Government ought not to undertake to control or direct, it should supplement and assist all efforts in this direction. The leaders of the co-operative movement, with the advice of the department of agriculture, have prepared what is believed to be an adequate bill embodying these principles, which will be presented to Congress for enactment. I propose actively and energetically to assist the farmers to promote their welfare through co-operative marketing. . . .

“For a more orderly marketing calculated to secure a better range of prices, the co-operative movement promises the greatest success. Already the co-operatives are handling $2,500,000,000 of farm produce, or nearly one-fifth of the annual production. …”