THE PRESIDENCY: Fat Lady’s Feet

One evening last week President Franklin D. Roosevelt of Georgia Warm Springs Foundation simultaneously celebrated his tenth year’s attendance at the spa, the eighth annual trustees’ meeting and Thanksgiving by presiding at a turkey dinner for all resident patients. He & wife sat at the head of the head table with 13 crippled children chosen by lot. For the fifth year Mrs. Eliza Manry, 97, of Lamar County, Ga., supplied a 40-lb. gobbler which required three men to bring it in from the kitchen. Afterwards a tenor rendered “Home on the Range” and on the second chorus the mellow Rooseveltian baritone was heard joining in with the rest of the happy group. Then Trustee Roosevelt made a little speech.

He recalled his first trip to Warm Springs in the autumn of 1924. As there were no doctors in attendance at the obscure Georgia resort in those days, he had to figure out his own aquatic exercises. Gradually the word began to pass around, and there was great excitement when one day two paralytics were carried off the train. Mr. Roosevelt reported that he “undertook to become doctor and physiotherapist all in one.”

“I taught plenty of people to swim and play in the water.” reminisced Trustee Roosevelt. “I remember one lady patient of large proportions. She could not get her two feet down to the bottom of the pool. I would seize one large knee [Mr. Roosevelt began an elaborate pantomime of his story] and gradually force it down until the foot hit the bottom. ‘Have you got it?’ I would say. ‘Yes.’ the lady would reply. Then I would seize the other leg, and try to get it toward the bottom. But no sooner would I let go of the first leg than it would fly up again. This went on for a half-hour at a time. But before I left in the spring, the lady could get both her legs down.”

¶In his small touring car in the Warm Springs pool, in the living room of his white cottage, President Roosevelt held hourly conferences on the state of the nation with his aides, advisers, visitors.

Relief was the problem discussed with Executive Director Donald Richberg of NEC, Under Secretary of Agriculture Rexford Guy Tugwell and FERAdministrator Harry Hopkins.

With Senators Harrison of Mississippi and Robinson of Arkansas, the President plotted next year’s tax bill (“no increase”), pondered means of holding the whopping Democratic Congressional majority in line.

A graceful justification for Federal Housing Administrator James A. Moffett’s presence at Warm Springs was readily found. Mr. Moffett is a Warm Springs Foundation trustee. “We trusteed and trusteed and trusteed,” reported the President after the board meeting. In private with Trustee Moffett, the President put the finishing touches to patching up the rift over housing between Messrs. Moffett and Ickes.

¶A nonofficial conference was held between Mr. Roosevelt and Otis Moore, overseer of the President’s nearby 1,700-acre farm. On his hilly, meagre land the President turned loose 35 head of scrub cattle and two thoroughbred bulls five years ago. The breed improved, and last spring his herd of 100 dropped 50 calves. Since his feed crop could only winter 100 head, it was decided to market 50. Last week Overseer Moore reported that the best price to be had was 2½ cents a lb. As he and Mr. Roosevelt agreed that this was “terrible,” they postponed their plans to sell.

“Maybe,” suggested a pert newshawk, “you had better write Washington about it.” The President got a big laugh, but serious Otis Moore was at pains to point out to reporters that, for fear of embarrassing the President, he had sought no government agricultural benefits. Said he: “I will not even let the Negroes who live on the land apply for relief.”

¶Presidential appointment of the week: Katharine F. Lenroot, daughter of one-time Republican Senator Irvine L. Lenroot of Wisconsin and assistant chief of the Labor Department’s Children’s Bureau since 1922; to be the Bureau’s chief vice Grace Abbott, resigned.