THE PRESIDENCY: Roosevelt to the Legion

From Hyde Park to Chicago went President Roosevelt on a moment’s notice last week to defend his $300,000,000 cut in veterans’ pensions before the 15th annual convention of the American Legion. His friends advised him not to make the trip because: 1) resentful legionaries who had borne the brunt of his Economy Act might subject him to an indignity; 2 ) letters had turned up in the White House mail “daring” him to show his face at the convention; 3) Chicago was such a notoriously bad city in which to guard a President that none had visited it since the early days of the Coolidge administration. Brushing all such objections aside the President ordered a special train and departed on his first sally into the Midwest since his election.

The Legion gave him an uproariously warm welcome. Donning an overseas cap to show his membership in the organization, he stepped up amid a cyclone of cheers to the same Stadium rostrum where 15 months prior he had accepted the Presidential nomination. His easy manner, his smiling charm softened his sternest critic in an audience of 30,000. He drew loud laughter when he interjected: “My, you’re a young looking bunch.” National credit based on national unity was the theme of his speech. In defense of his pension cuts he declared:

“We laid down two principles which directly affected benefits to veterans—that the Government has a responsibility for and toward those who suffered injury or contracted disease while serving in their country’s defense; that no person, because he wore a uniform, must thereafter be placed in a special class of beneficiaries over and above all other citizens. The fact of wearing a uniform does not mean that he should receive a pension because of a disability incurred after his service. . . .

To carry out these principles will not bankrupt your Government. It is my hope that in so far as justice concerns those whose disabilities are, as a matter of fact, of War service origin, the Government will be able to extend even more generous care than is now provided. . . .

“There are many veterans to whom disability and sickness unconnected with War service has come. . . . Only if his own community and his own state are unable to care for him. then and then only should the Federal Government offer him hospitalization and care.”

The Legion accepted this Roosevelt doctrine with good grace. It realized that its demands for prepayment of the Bonus and an over-generous pension policy had caused it to lose caste. Now, in its own words, it was out to “resell itself to the country” as a good citizen.

¶ In Manhattan where he spent the night at his town house the President gave a farewell family dinner for his son James who, with his wife, sailed at midnight on S. S. Europa for a European vacation.

Next day President Roosevelt motored to his mother’s estate at Hyde Park, pausing in White Plains to participate in that town’s 250th anniversary. At Hyde Park he attended the wedding of Miss Alida Douglas Robinson, granddaughter of his dead half-brother James, to Kenneth S. Walker; stood as godfather to nine-month-old Katherine Looker whose father, Author Earle Looker (The White House Gang), used to play with the T. R. children at the White House; spoke briefly on “spiritual values” from the pulpit of the Methodist Episcopal Church at its centennial (see p. 38).

¶ In his Hyde Park study, President Roosevelt and Federal Relief Administrator Hopkins worked out a large-scale scheme for this winter’s direct aid to 3,500,000 needy families. At the President’s order Mr. Hopkins will organize a non-profit corporation to buy and distribute some $330,000,000 worth of food, clothing and fuel. These purchases will be made from surplus commodity supplies as part of the Government’s price-raising campaign. States are expected to spend matching amounts for their destitute.

¶ Next phase of NRA: a national “Buy Now” campaign starting next week, to expand consumer purchasing. Keynote: prudence in the face of rising prices.

¶ President Roosevelt transferred the forthcoming negotiations in Washington on the British War Debt from the State Department to the Treasury. Undersecretary of the Treasury Dean Acheson was sent out to the firing line to meet Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, Chief Economic Adviser to the British Government. Final decision on a settlement, if any, will remain with the President who was determined to keep extraneous political factors out of the bargaining.

¶ To a British suggestion that the U. S. hold up its cruiser construction program pending further efforts at arms limitation President Roosevelt had the State Department reply that “the American Government cannot see its way clear to alter its delayed naval construction program or to suspend the laying down of any projected ships.”

¶ While all but he were speculating about the imminence of currency inflation, President Roosevelt pushed his credit expansion program ahead a couple of notches. In Manhattan he asked Henry Bruère, president of Bowery Savings Bank (America’s biggest), to serve as his credit coordinator, pulling together under one command the disjointed efforts of Reconstruction Finance Corp., the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the Public Works Administration, the Farm Credit Administration and Home Owners Loan Corp. Mr. Bruère pondered the offer. Meanwhile Comptroller of the Currency O’Connor announced approval of plans whereby 375 closed national banks, with $400,000,000 in frozen deposits, can be reopened. The plan calls for local subscription to additional capital and purchases by R. F. C. of new preferred stock in each bank. On the President’s instructions, R. F. C. will buy preferred stock paying 4% instead of 5%. To help all banks get shipshape for Federal deposit insurance Jan. 1 will cost R. F. C. about $700,000,000.