THE PRESIDENCY: The Roosevelt Week: Sep. 23, 1935

Ambassador Robert Worth Bingham dropped in for a talk on the Ethiopian crisis before returning to his London post. Secretary Roper arrived to discuss his Commerce Department’s budget. Harold Ickes and Harry Hopkins appeared to row over relief policy (see col. 2). But at the close of Squire Roosevelt’s second vacation week at Hyde Park House, his visitors had left only one resignation behind. That came from New York City’s Works Progress Administrator Hugh Samuel Johnson. “It ain’t gonna be any more pro bono publico,” declared the grinning General. “I’ve got to get out and make me some money.”

¶ A fairly frequent visitor to the White House in the early days of the Administration was Rev. Charles Edward Coughlin, the plump radiorator from Royal Oak, Mich. He subsequently split with the President over Inflation, the Bonus, the World Court. Recently, however, Father Coughlin shut up his Washington lobby, conceded: “President Roosevelt enunciates the clearest, most effective and beneficial principles of social and economic justice of any living American political economist.” That Franklin Roosevelt had taken a potent critic into camp seemed to be confirmed last week when Chairman Joseph P. Kennedy of the Securities & Exchange Commission rolled up to Hyde Park with Father Coughlin in tow. So discreetly was this reunion between President and Priest handled that the Press did not know about it for 24 hours. Even the nature of the meeting or its results were kept a dead secret by both parties.

¶On the train with Father Coughlin as it sped East was Mrs. Roosevelt bound out of Detroit. There she had dedicated a slum clearance project, spent a morning at her brother Gracie Hall Roosevelt’s cottage on Brown’s Lake near Jackson, Mich., while neighbors with field glasses ogled the First Lady disporting herself on the beach in shorts.

¶To supplement a Press conference, the President gave his annual Hyde Park picnic to correspondents. There was bobbing for apples, a game called “musical bumps,” other Roosevelt family games without names, community singing. The feast included roast ham, salad, pie, coffee. On a little charcoal grill placed before him, the President prepared the picnic frankfurters.

¶The President took a day away from Hyde Park to visit Lake Placid, Saratoga and Whiteface Mountain, attend local shindigs in behalf of forest conservation and public works.