The Pledge

World-wide was last week's interest in the Depression's wage scale. At Rome, Prime Minister Mussolini, boastful of how all Europe had followed his policy of scaling wages down to meet retail prices, announced that, for Italy, a limit for such cuts had been reached "beyond which the antidote may become a poison" (see p. 19). In London, figures were collected which revealed that 1,500,000 British workers, including some of the most militant unions, had last month accepted deep pay cuts with quiet resignation. And in Washington, despite ominous news from his Department of Labor (see p. 17), President Hoover expressed satisfaction with the way in which U. S. Industry is fulfilling its pledge of November 1929 at the White House to maintain Prosperity's wage scale through the economic storm.

Like all other chiefs of state, President Hoover receives influential men of business unofficially and without formal appointment to hear their private reports on industrial conditions. Of late these callers have been confiding to the President their difficulties in maintaining his wage scale while commodity prices were falling. Outside the White House they repeated their laments in the hearings of newshawks. Last week in so reliable a Republican print as the New York Herald Tribune President Hoover was depicted as waging a stiff backstage "struggle" to uphold his pay policy "in the face of a strong movement in financial circles" to cut wages. His visitors came away with the impression that the President thought that if wages could be maintained for another 60 days, a business turn for the better would then come.

With Democrats clamoring for identification of the wage-cutting "financial interests," President Hoover next day put a bright face on the situation. He did not deny pressure by individual industrialists on him to sanction reductions. But he did deny the existence in the land of any "organized movement to cut wages." He was "thoroughly satisfied" that the "leading industries" were keeping faith with the White House.

P: "There is a boy worth knowing," declared President Hoover as he read of how 13-year-old Bryan Untiedt had saved all but five of 21 children from death-by-freezing when their school bus was marooned 36 hours in a Colorado blizzard (TIME, April 6). What impressed the President most was the way Bryan had stripped off his own clothes to wrap around his shivering schoolmates; how he had kept the youngsters from falling into a frozen sleep. Last week Bryan lay in a hospital bed at Lamar, Colo, painfully recovering from frozen hands and feet (they will not have to be amputated) when President Hoover invited him to the White House as an overnight guest. Bryan's doctors said he would be well enough to go in two weeks. Tears filled the boy's eyes. "Gee," he exclaimed, "won't that be great! Certainly is nice of President Hoover. I never expected anything like this." Bryan had his 13th birthday party in the hospital, was nominated for a Carnegie Medal.

P: By the President's order one Chili Fish, an Oklahoma Seminole, was last week given a one-day commission as chief of all that Indian nation. During that day Chief Chili Fish will sign Government papers relating to Seminole lands in Oklahoma, transact other tribal business, collect $10 in wages, $5 in expenses. When Florida's Seminoles heard about the appointment, they telegraphed President Hoover they would refuse to recognize Chili Fish's jurisdiction in their councils.

P: Because Easter is the height of the tourist season in Washington, President Hoover last week broke a 30-year custom by throwing open to visitors for 90 minutes each day the rolling parklike South Grounds behind the White House. "Glad to see you here!" he called in welcome to those who flocked past his portico. Despite his bothersome little cold he and Mrs. Hoover attended a sunrise service (it was cold and cloudy) at the amphitheatre in Arlington National Cemetery, later went to the Friends Meeting House. As usual on Easter Monday eggs were rolled, cracked, squashed and eaten by hundreds of ordinary Washington children on the South Grounds while Grandchildren Peggy Anne and Herbert III ("Peter") were privately entertaining 200 youngsters from official families.

P: Last week President Hoover lost another secretary when French Strother resigned his post as the White House's literary researcher, to take up fiction writing.

P: Last week President Hoover appointed Captain Edmund Spece Root, U. S. N., to be Governor of Guam, succeeding Captain Willis W. Bradley.

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