"It's Candy'

Last week President-elect Roosevelt was back at his home-away-from-home, Warm Springs, Ga. There he was to pick his Cabinet before going off on Vincent Astor's Nourmahal for a fishing trip in Florida waters. The shank of February was to be spent either at Hyde Park or in the Capital itself at the Townsend home on Massachusetts Avenue. After that--the Inaugural, plans for which had grown so lavish last week that it was going to take General Pershing to lead the parade.

The President-elect's arrival at Warm Springs climaxed an arduous and eventful week. In Manhattan he had watched Socialite Artist Natalie Van Vleck, who went to work in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce, dab the finishing touches to his portrait. By going 16 hours at a stretch, he had kept as many appointments as 50 per day. He had found time to address retiring President Abbott Lawrence Lowell and "the Harvard family" at the University's club. He had endorsed the back-to- the-farm movement and Secretary of State Stimson's reiterated Far Eastern policy of nonrecognition of governments established by force. Then President-elect Roosevelt made a final trip to his dentist, found his favorite (fishing rod and was bidden Godspeed at Jersey City's Communipaw Terminal by Mayor Frank Hague as he left for Washington and his second knee-to-knee conference with President Hoover.

Over the luncheon dishes in his private car, Mr. Roosevelt conferred with four advisers: Norman Hezekiah Davis, who, some think, will be the next Secretary of State, and others, the next Ambassador to the Court of St. James's; American Car & Foundry's William Hartman Woodin whom some dopesters put into the Treasury; the "brain trust," Professors Moley & Tugwell. Also aboard was Rear Admiral Gary Travers Grayson, who took President Wilson's stomach pump ; way and made him exercise, to discuss the inauguration plans.

In a White House Fierce-Arrow, the President-elect was whisked to Washington's Mayflower Hotel where he was shot up the back elevator and helped along velvet-roped corridors to Room 776. First off, Secretary Stimson, who had arranged the White House meeting at Hyde Park week before, was ushered in to tea. He stayed 70 minutes, emerged ironically to tell reporters that among things he and Mr. Roosevelt did not discuss were Prohibition and the Domestic Allotment plan.

Then the visiting began in earnest. Western legislators arrived to plead remonetization of silver. An Ohio delegation came to get a Cabinet job. Republicans packed the Roosevelt levee as well as Democrats. Oregon's McNary came because he is chairman of the Senate's Agricultural Committee. He heard Mr. Roosevelt's wish that the Domestic Allotment plan be limited to wheat, cotton, hogs and tobacco, that it be enacted by this session in time to be effective for the 1933 crops. Cultured Senator Bronson Cutting of New Mexico came because he was a boyhood friend. Hiram Johnson was there out of Republican cussedness. The Press-as smiled off with the comment that its questions were "very intelligent and very embarrassing." At this point occurred the journalistic event of the day.

Down the hall stomped flushed, truculent Senator Huey Pierce ("Kingfish")

Long, fresh from a nine-day Senate filibuster. "I'm going to talk turkey with Roosevelt," he shouted at by-standing reporters. "I am going to ask him, 'did you mean it or didn't you?' Goddam it, there ain't but one thing I'm afraid of--and that's the people."

He marched up to the President-elect's door, pounded on it. Nothing happened. To oblige cameramen, he repeated his impertinent performance. Half an hour after he was admitted he reappeared, a big smile on his face. He reported his interview thus:

"He's the same old Frank . . . just like he was before the election ... all wool and a yard wide. ... I come out of this room happy and satisfied.

"I walked into the room and the first thing he said was. 'Hello. Huey.' I says to him, 'This is the Kingfish.' and then I said, I want a post office.' He said to me, I think you have a fair chance of getting one if you are right.' Well, I'm always right.

"Then I said. 'I want an Ambassador-ship.' He asked me then, 'How much money has your candidate got?' I told him. 'He hasn't got any money; that's the reason he wants a job.' and he said, 'Well, he can't have it,' and that is the reason he ain't agoin' to get it.

"Crack down on me? He don't want to crack down on me. I come out of this room happy and satisfied. He told me,

'Huey, you're going to do just as I tell you,' and that is just what I'm agoin' to do."

When patrician Senator Glass emerged from his Roosevelt conference he was asked if he and the President-elect had discussed the Long filibuster against the Glass banking bill. "I never discuss trivialities," snapped the little Virginian. Most outsiders believed that Senator Glass had been offered the Secretaryship of the Treasury.

At midnight Mr. Roosevelt wound up his conferring for the day. A model White House was on the table before him. He touched it, tasted his finger. "It's candy," grinned the President-elect.

At 11 sharp next morning another Presidential car drove him to the White House (see p. 11). At 12:35 he returned to his hotel to talk with Senate Leader Robinson about speeding through the bankruptcy reform bill recommended by President Hoover for debtor relief. At 2:30 p. m., accompanied by a platoon of Congressional leaders from Tennessee and Alabama, Mr. Roosevelt used a special nickel-railed ramp to board the train that took him to Muscle Shoals.

At Florence and Sheffield, Ala., he promised cheering hundreds full-time operation of the nearby government-owned power and nitrate plant virtually idle since construction. As he turned from surveying the $150.000,000 Wartime white concrete elephant, he put his hand on the shoulder of Nebraska's insurgent Republican Senator Norris, who wants to see Muscle Shoals made a model for the federalization of electric power. "This should be a happy day for you, George," said Mr. Roosevelt.

Tears filled the eyes of the wrinkle-faced Nebraskan. "It is, Mr. President," he replied, "I see my dreams come true."

Before making his last sleeper jump to Warm Springs, the President-elect stood on the portico of Alabama's Capitol at Montgomery on the spot where Jefferson Davis took the oath of office as President of the C. S. of A.

"My fra-ainds and neighbors," Mr. Roosevelt began, his head wagging from side to side, "it is a great privilege to stand on this sacred spot. ... I can remember troubles in families caused by the [Civil] War. As some of you may remember, one of the Roosevelts married a lady from Georgia.-I recall that two distinguished gentlemen who served in the Confederate Navy visited New York and there were Roosevelts who regarded these two distinguished officers as pirates. I am sure that my daughter, who is here with me, and the others of my families would laugh heartily at any such manifestation of feeling. ... I am glad as one who is to occupy another White House that I had opportunity as I turned the corner to enter the Capitol to see the 'White House' of the Confederacy. . . ."/-

Arrived at Warm Springs, the President-elect immediately took up the familiar routine of conferences and treatments, treatments and conferences. His smiling good cheer never seemed greater and if the awful problems lying ahead troubled him at all, nobodv was able to detect it.

*Theodore Roosevelt's mother was Martha Bullock of Roswell, Ga.

/-The Jefferson Davis "First White House" is across the street from Alabama's Capitol.

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