Control of Congress

One night last week five men filed softly into the White House and sat down with President Roosevelt for a secret talk. They were his legislative lieutenants at the Capitol--Vice President Garner, Speaker Rainey, Senate Leader Robinson, House Leader Byrns and Senator Pat Harrison. There had been in the month past many such night conferences at the White House whence participants had returned to Congress with their Presidential orders. But this one was different. The five Democrats emerged with their lips sealed. Not until the next day did the meeting become generally known and even then other Senators and Representatives could pry nothing out of the conferees. Speaker Rainey tried to divert the Press's interest by outlining a legislative program for the next two months which required no tip-toe visit to the White House to ascertain.

One result of the White House conference was to increase the crop of rumors to the effect that President Roosevelt was dangerously close to losing control of Congress. Without White House sanction the Senate had passed a 30-hour work week (see p. 12). Under the mistaken notion that it was "emergency legislation" from the President, the House had whipped through a censorship bill that outraged the Press. Committee chairmen balked at sponsoring important White House measures. Democratic Senators could be privately heard muttering about "a President who thinks he always has to be doing something, right or wrong." The college professors President Roosevelt had taken into high office were scorned as "second-raters." Complaints were made that the bills sent up from the White House were messily drafted, always had to be redrawn. The House had got into the habit of railroading major legislation through one day a week and blowing off political steam the other five. Its committee discharge rule was stiffened as a precaution against revolt. The President had been five weeks in the White House and yet his brand of magic had not yet produced a boom. The cry for currency inflation grew louder.

But the true temper of Congress was not to be accurately judged by such backstage talk. There were some hurt prides in House and Senate but the President still held the whip hand over the Capitol. The pressure of public opinion was as strong as ever in his favor. Party patronage had yet to be distributed in a big way. The swift tempo of the first few weeks was over with the passage of emergency legislation but the change in Congressional pace did not signify a change in spirit. Most observers were agreed that the President could get anything he wanted throughout the special session.

The preponderant effect of the Roosevelt program to date has been drastically deflationary. Four billion dollars was tied up in closed banks. Public savings curtailed private spendings. Even the psychological advantage of a balanced budget failed to offset this downward trend. Last week, however, the President's larger program became more clear. The budget was to be balanced so that the Government could borrow fresh billions and thereby prime the pump of U. S. business! Credit inflation on a colossal scale loomed ahead. Only if it failed to produce results would the White House lend an ear to the moonlit baying for currency inflation.

P:Last week President Roosevelt laid before Congress his Tennessee River-Muscle Shoals project as his first great piece of national planning. He called for a Tennessee Valley Authority--"a corporation clothed with the power of Government but possessed of the flexibility and initiative of a private enterprise . . . charged with the broadest duty of planning for the proper use, conservation and development of the natural resources of the Tennessee River drainage basin." Declared he in his special message: "The Muscle Shoals development is but a small part of the potential public usefulness of the entire Tennessee River. Such use transcends mere power development; it enters the wide fields of flood control, soil erosion, reforestation, elimination from agricultural use of marginal lands and distribution and diversification of industry."

P:So pleased was President Roosevelt with the work of Homer Stifle Cummings as his Attorney General that last week he decided to keep him on as his chief law officer instead of sending him to the Philippines as Governor General. For the Manila post the President picked Frank Murphy, 40, the redheaded, hard-bitten bachelor Mayor of Detroit. He was an early and ardent pre-convention Roosevelt supporter. An A. E. F. veteran, a lawyer who did post-graduate work at Lincoln's Inn, London, Mayor Murphy has stoutly carried out a liberal relief program in Detroit. So generous was the Mayor with public funds that he will turn his office over to Frank Couzens, president of the Common Council and 31-year-old son of Michigan's Senator, with the municipal treasury badly deflated.

P:Other appointments made by the President last week: John Dickinson of Pennsylvania to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce; Lawrence Wood Robert Jr. of Georgia to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.

P:The President sent the Treasury his personal check for $843.75--a voluntary 15% deduction from his March salary.

P:White House visitors last week included President Richard Whitney of the New York Stock Exchange, Board Chairman Myron Charles Taylor of U. S. Steel, Elder Statesman Bernard Mannes Baruch.

PP:President Roosevelt flexed 50% off the tariffs on hay forks, four-tined fertilizer forks, hand hoes and rakes. The duty on shovels and spades was left unchanged.

P:To the Hoover camp on the Rapidan President Roosevelt motored with family & friends for a Sunday picnic luncheon. He made part of the trip in Mrs. Roosevelt's roadster. It was his first full day outing since March 4.

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