Monday, Oct. 10, 1932

"Krum Elbow" & Mortgages

On his Western campaign trip Governor Roosevelt frequently introduced himself to rural audiences as a Hudson River Valley "farmer." His reference was to the agricultural operations carried on at "Krum Elbow," his mothers 1,000-acre estate at Hyde Park, N. Y. Roiled by such talk, Henry Field, Iowa's Republican Senatorial nominee, last month blurted out: "At Krum Elbow there is no hog lot but there are a polo ground and tennis court. What appears to be a silo is an elevated water tower for care of the lawn and the sunken garden. What looks like a henhouse is really a glass-enclosed hot-house."

Last week the Democratic National Committee rushed to the defense of ''Krum Elbow" as a real farm. Westmoreland Davis, onetime Governor of Virginia, now publisher of Southern Farm Magazine and proprietor of a 2.400-acre estate near Leesburg, had just returned from Hyde Park. Through the National Committee he declared: "On my visit I found a herd of Guernsey cattle, dairy and horse barns, poultry houses, a silo filled with corn ensilage, farm horses, hogs and over 600 laying hens. The fields were in corn, alfalfa and pasture. There's no pseudo silo and sunken garden. These are on an adjacent place owned by the family of the late J. R. Roosevelt, a kinsman."

The Democratic nominee had ironically declared that President Hoover "for the first time has discovered that there is such a thing as a farm mortgage." Shot back Secretary of the Treasury Mills last week from St. Louis:

"Let me remind my lifelong friend and neighbor, Governor Roosevelt, whose country estate on the Hudson, which became his 'farm' overnight, is not mortgaged any more than is my 'farm,' only six miles away [1,700 acres near Staats-burg]--that Herbert Hoover knows the meaning of 'farm mortgage' as few men in high position do. He was born on an Iowa farm. The ominous word 'mortgage' must be among his earliest recollections. It was burned into his memory and he has not forgotten it."

While Mr. Mills was speaking there was assembling in Chicago, at the President's order, a meeting on farm mortgages attended by Secretary of Agriculture Hyde, two R. F. C. directors and many an insurance man and joint stock land bank official. Upshot of much talk was that all hands would be as lenient as possible on farm foreclosures, that R. F. C. would be a liberal lender to private institutions which refrain from putting the screws on the "honest farmer who tries to pay his debts."

In Washington, the President announced that the Government will collect from some 200,000 wheat growers only 25% of their total crop production loans ($24,000,000), grant a moratorium on the balance until Congress can extend the time for repayment.

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