THE PRESIDENCY: Descendants & Ancestors

Herbert III and Peggy Ann are going back to the White House for a long visit. Last week they and Baby Joan were brought on from California by their mother. They stopped at Asheville, N. C., where their father is recuperating from tuberculosis. They planned to take him up to Washington for the presidential Thanksgiving dinner. Then Mr. & Mrs. Herbert Hoover Jr. would leave the children in Grandmother’s care, while together they went back to Asheville to live. The top floor of the White House was abustle last week with preparation for the grandchildren’s occupancy.

¶ There is a farmhouse in Ellerstadt, the Rhine Palatinate, where once dwelt a Huber family, forefathers of Herbert Clark Hoover. Last week the President commissioned an artist called Heinrich Lauer-Rossleben to paint a picture of the farmhouse and two other Ellerstadt scenes.

¶ Answering proposals that he reduce payments into the War debt sinking fund in order to retain last year’s 1% cut in income-taxes, the President last week said: “The Administration is opposed to any encroachment upon the statutory provisions for the retirement of the public debt.”

¶ The President laboriously shook hands with 3,000 delegates to his conference on Child Health & Protection. Then he made them a speech concerning which Newsboxer Will Rogers later commented: “. . . just about his best. . . . He has never posed as an orator, but he said a lot of things that an orator would like to have said” (see p. 38).

Last week the President also:

¶ Sent to the sixth annual New England Economic Conference at Boston a message that its “collective effort . . . makes strongly for success.”

¶ Left his desk to stand, shoulders thrown back, with smiling lips, while John Philip Sousa led the Marine band through the strains of his latest (140th) military march, “The George Washington Bicentennial,” a transcript of which the aging bandleader presented with pride to his President.

¶ Conferred with Chicago’s crusading Silas Hardy Strawn on Unemployment.

¶ Received a petition that he submit U. S. membership in the World Court to the Senate for ratification. Among many notable petitioners were: John Joseph Pershing, Julius H. Barnes, Roy Wilson Howard, Felix M. Warburg, Jane Addams, Newton Diehl Baker, Seward Prosser, Matthew Woll, Fred John Fisher, Edward A. Filene, Thomas Lincoln Chadbourne, Herbert Bayard Swope, Silas Hardy Strawn, Myron Charles Taylor, Admiral William Sowden Sims, Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr.

¶ Agreed to indite the introduction for a collected edition of the written works of George Washington, to be published in connection with the 200th anniversary of the First President’s birth.

¶ Announced he would buy a bloc of tickets to the Army-Navy football game for charity Dec. 13 (TIME, Nov. 24), but would not be able to attend. Forthwith 130 requests for the tickets piled up in the White House.

¶ By executive order, placed all future appointments in the government of the District of Columbia under the Federal Civil Service, on recommendation of the District’s commissioners and the Civil Service Commission.