The Coolidge Week

P: The mortgage was being foreclosed on a broken-down Indiana onion farm which President Coolidge was given "for an unrendered service to agriculture." There were bills to be signed--$6,792,000 for Army Housing, $125,000,000 for new Federal buildings throughout the land. People were already agitating about the next "Summer White House" and suggesting places as exotic as Hollywood, Calif., despite the President's known feeling that he should stay near Washington this summer. There was also the Jardines' dinner, which President Coolidge had to attend alone, Mrs. Coolidge not feeling well enough, after her cold, to go out of doors until three days later. There was a holiday trip to Alexandria, Va., to celebrate Washington's Birthday, and there was a new harbor, at Hollywood, Fla., to be blasted open by the touch of a button. Eclipsing all these there was Flood Control, around which the Coolidge week revolved.

P: The flood control bill reported to the House last fortnight called for estimated expenditures of $473,000,000 with no money levied from the States benefited. President Coolidge, whose recommendation had been for a $296,400,000 program with 20% borne by the States, began the week by calculating out loud that the Committee's bill, of which the provisions were so sweeping that they might apply to every stream between the Appalachians and the Rockies, would triple itself before the work was finished, costing the U. S. more than anything it ever undertook except the last War. After this attack, the President assumed a role of arbitrator between Congress and the Army engineers who had told the Administration what to recommend.

The author of the House bill, Representative Frank R. Reid, is from Illinois. Fortunately for the President, Chairman Martin Barnaby Madden of the House Appropriations Committee is also from Illinois* Mr. Madden was called to the White House for a conference with Mr. Reid, Chief of Engineers Jadwin and President Coolidge. He emerged as the Coolidge spokesman for a compromise.

This move took a lot of wind out of the next figure on the scene, who was none other than Mayor William Hale ("Big Bill") Thompson of Chicago, self-anointed savior of the Mississippi Basin. He blustered into town calling the Coolidge compromise plan "absurd," saying he had come (as chairman of the Thompson-invented Flood Control Conference) to put over the Reid bill. President Coolidge invited him to luncheon. When he heard about the Madden appointment and President Coolidge's willingness to waive the question of State-shared costs, except in principle, for the present, so that work might get started on the rivers below Illinois at once, Mayor Thompson's bluster vanished. He went back to Chicago saying he would work to draft Mr. Coolidge again for President. When Representative Reid next called at the White House he found that his large friend had made no dent in the Coolidge opposition to the Reid bill.

Chairman Jones of the Senate Commerce Committee waited on the President with a compromise bill--a $325,000,000 program reducing the amount payable by the States from 58 millions to 12 and resting responsibility for the work with a joint board composed of Army engineers, Mississippi River Flood Commissioners, and a civilian engineer appointed by the President. A statement by Secretary Hoover revealed that the President was willing to have the State contributions funded by the U. S., as suggested by Secretary of War Davis. Whether the President would direct Spokesman Madden to back the Jones bill in the House, remained to be seen.

P:President Coolidge's visit to Alexandria, Va., for which the Mayflower was used to ferry him down the Potomac, was flag-flown and festive, but nothing like the sort of thing suggested by the New York World in its vicious headline: "BOOTLEGGERS JOIN COOLIDGE'S PARTY." What happened was that some of the tickets admitting Alexandrians to the official handshaking enclosure, somehow fell into hands that were distinctly not F. F. V. The cynosure of the moment appeared to enjoy the situation as much as anyone, however, nor did he say anything severe when he learned that the special edition of the Alexandria Gazette, hawked by newsboys all around him, contained verbatim the 96 "regular" and three "voluntary" toasts drunk in alcoholics to George Washington at Alexandria on the last birthday he lived to celebrate (1799). Among the toasts were:

"The President of the United States--the political sheet anchor of all true Americans.

"The Vice President of the United States--May he abjure his present political creed or expatriate himself to that country best adapted to it.*

"Short shoes and long corns to the enemies of America.

"The American Fair--May we be chained with their charms and charmed with their chains--15 cheers.

"The Liberty of the Press--But legal restraints on calumny.

"Gen. George Washington--May the hand be palsied that attempts to pluck the laurels from his brow.

"The Fair Sex--Should their lovers be necessitated to leave them to our care, we promise to be religiously attentive to the charge."

P: When Sunday came, Mrs. Coolidge was feeling well enough to go cruising down the chill Potomac to Chesapeake Bay with President Coolidge and friends on the Mayflower.

P: Bishop William F. McDowell, Methodist Episcopal, of Washington and friends called at the White House to protest against the President's approving the Navy's plan to build 15 cruisers and aircraft carrier.

P: Among persons who called last week upon the present "sheet anchor of all true Americans" at the White House, were Dr. Otto Peltzer of Germany, champion foot-racer; Jay Ward, small mascot of the American Legion; and one Charles A. Julianelli, aged 20, of Union City, N. J. Julianelli, a shoe-factory worker, had drawn President Coolidge's portrait, using three photographs for models. He told about his visit, as follows:

". . . I had to wait while some Congressmen were in thanking the President for something he had done for their State. Then the secretary, Mr. Sanders, ushered me in.

"Well, when I first stepped into the President's office I was nervous. It looked like it was going to be harder than I had expected.

"But once we had shaken hands I felt all right. The President was very nice to me.

"I handed him my drawing and said, 'I hope you won't consider this flattering.' You see, I wanted to put him at his ease about it. I didn't want him to think the portrait looked any better than he looked.

"Well, he smiled and put the drawing on the desk and stood away to look at it. 'It's a good likeness,' he said. He asked me questions about myself and I guess I stayed in there about twenty minutes."

The President was drawn from life last week, for the third time, by Artist Samuel Johnson Woolf, of TIME the Newsmagazine.

*See the Congress. *Thomas Jefferson loomed in 1799 as the foe of Federalism, leader of Republicanism. Present day Virginians hail him as father of the Democracy.