Roosevelt Week

President Roosevelt had a mild stomach ache last week when the stockmarket took its first bad tumble of the New Deal. His ailment was not due to the sudden shriveling of security values but to an excess of cherries and bottled "pop" which he had consumed during a visit to Maryland's Eastern Shore. His indisposition started crazy rumors around brokers' offices that he was gravely ill, that he had suffered a stroke of paralysis, that he was already dead and laid out (see p. 45). "Look at me!" he grinned to newsmen when he returned to his office after four days spent in his upstairs study at the White House.

Gyrations of the stockmarket had made Coolidge the saint of prosperity and Hoover the scapegoat of hard times. Their Democratic successor professed to be completely indifferent to stocks' ups & downs. In fact President Roosevelt seemed almost glad about last week's shoot-the-chutes. He felt that values had been climbing at an abnormally rapid rate, with speculators whooping up prices for quick easy profits. This rise had hampered the progress of the New Deal. Industries, beguiled by "prosperity" stock quotations, were reluctant to submit recovery codes to Washington. A thoroughgoing deflation of overspeculation seemed wholesome and proper to the President.

Tumbling grain prices on the Chicago Board of Trade, however, were another matter. When September wheat slid 26-c- in two days, President Roosevelt grew alarmed lest his whole farm relief program be endangered. If agricultural purchasing power, up 80% since March, was to be maintained, farm prices must be protected from wild speculative slumps. Secretary of Agriculture Wallace was summoned to the White House for a heart-to-heart. Board of Trade officials put their heads together in Chicago. Upshot was Government sanction of new rules which fixed minimum prices for grain (wheat, 90-c- per bu.; corn, 46-c- per bu.; oats, 35-c- per bu.; rye, 69-c-), limited daily fluctuations to 5-c- for wheat and other grains in proportion (see p. 45).

P: On a week-end cruise down the Potomac aboard the Sequoia President Roosevelt wrote out in long hand the radio speech he delivered Monday night to start his nation-wide re-employment campaign (see p. 11).

P: In 1930 President Hoover sent a special diplomatic delegation to Addis Ababa for the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie I, King of Kings of Ethiopia, the Conquering Lion of Judah, Elect of God, Light of the World. Last week the Abyssinian sovereign royally returned the courtesy when his mahogany-colored son-in-law, Ras (Prince) Desta Demtu arrived in Washington in all his African splendor. Told off to escort him was the State Department's Jefferson Patterson. Only with the greatest difficulty had an Ethiopian flag (green, yellow, red) been dug up to deck the Mayflower Hotel, the Ethiopian national anthem orchestrated for the reception by the Army band at the Union Station. The bowlegged little Prince with curly whiskers first called at the White House wearing a two-foot shako of lion's mane. A large crowd awaiting General Italo Balbo cheered him by mistake. Day later, wearing a pith helmet, he returned to lunch with the President. His soft Amharic had to be interpreted. In the Blue Room before the meal he flipped open a box and drew forth as royal presents for the President two lion skins and a photograph of his father-in-law in a gold frame. (President Hoover had sent the Emperor his autographed photograph for a coronation gift.) The meal that followed was a difficult one. President Roosevelt's stomach was still bothering him. The Ras, a Coptic Christian, could eat no meat, milk or butter that day. Mrs. Henry Nesbit, White Housekeeper, served clams, fish, three vegetables, fruit salad, water biscuits, pineapple ice. The Prince passed up the clams. Next day was Emperor Haile Selassie's birthday. The President cabled him: ". . . My most hearty congratulations and best wishes. . . . It has been indeed a gratification and a sincere pleasure to receive His Highness the Ras Desta Demtu. . . . This visit will do much in cementing the firm bonds of friendship between Ethiopia and the United States."

P: Another black man who made news last week was Robert L. Vann, publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier, graduate of the Pittsburgh Law School. Publisher Vann broke away from the traditional Republicanism of his race to support Franklin Roosevelt last year. For his political services he was appointed a special assistant to Attorney General Cummings in charge of the Department of Justice's claims division. No Democratic precedent could be found for this appointment.

P: In Brussels, Demain printed President Roosevelt's horoscope. It found: an excess of idealism, a desire for too rapid evolution, great good judgment, troubles ahead for this month. After 1941 he would be in danger of accidents.*

* If re-elected President Roosevelt would go out of office Jan. 20, 1941.

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