Neighbors

My old friends and all my neighbors of old Dutchess County! . . . It is, I think, just 23 years ago that I chanced to be in Poughkeepsie on a very hot Saturday morning in August. In front of the courthouse I ran across a group of friends of mine. . . . They kidnapped me--one of the first cases of deliberate kidnapping on record--and took me out to the policemen's picnic. On that joyous occasion of clams and sauerkraut and real beer I made my first speech and I have been apologizing for it ever since. . . .

We have been extending to our national life the old principle of the local community, the principle that no individual man, woman or child has a right to do things that hurt their neighbors. . . . In the old days it was unfair to our neighbors to allow our cattle to roam on their land. When we got into great cities it became unfair to maintain a pigsty on Main Street. It became unfair to our neighbors if we sought to make unfair profits from monopolies in things that everybody had to use. . . . It was not fair to our neighbors to let anybody hire their children when they were little bits of things.

Now the extension of the idea of not hurting our neighbors is recognized as no infringement of personal liberty. It is no more a restriction to tell a man that he must pay adequate wages than it is to tell him he must not hire child labor.

We in Washington are seeking definitely to increase the purchasing power of the nation. We are definitely succeeding. The downhill drift of America has definitely turned and become the upward surge of America. . . . The people, through government, are extending as a permanent part of American life--and not just for one year or two--their insistence that individuals and associations of individuals shall cease doing many things that have been hurting their neighbors in bygone days. . . . That all ties in with the old theme of good neighbors. What is good for my neighbors is good for me. . . .

Thus did President Roosevelt address some 5,000 of his Dutchess County neighbors gathered on the Vassar College campus at Poughkeepsie last week. Stubbornly Republican, most of them had voted against him in the Presidential election. Now they more than made up for it by welcoming him home with warm enthusiasm, cheering him again & again. P:Son Elliott, 22, joined the "Writing Roosevelts" last week when in Los Angeles he became aviation editor at $200 per week for William Randolph Hearst's Universal Service. No flyer, Hearstling Roosevelt has puttered around airplane engines, briefly managed a dinky air line in Southern California before getting his divorce. Of aviation he wrote as a layman to laymen, amateurishly twanging the Hearst harp for larger U. S. air defenses. P:Swallowed up in last week's hurricane was the sloop Postscript manned by three young Manhattan neighbors of President Roosevelt. Out of Manasquan, N. J. for Nantucket had sailed Pierre Irving, 21, great-grandnephew of Washington Irving, and the Niles Brothers, John, 23. and Charles, 16. sons of Dr. Walter Niles who lives around the corner from the President on East 64th Street. The seagoing President ordered the Coast Guard specially mobilized to search for these neighbors. P:Secretary of the Treasury Woodin was an overnight guest at Hyde Park. He assured newshawks that currency inflation was not even being contemplated at present. Another Presidential visitor was Budget Director Douglas who was instructed to keep regular 1935 government costs below $2,500,000,000. A third caller was Governor Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, escorted by Governor Harrison of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Last week Britain ceased pegging the pound. P:To speed up his National Recovery Program President Roosevelt directed R. F. C. Chairman Jesse Jones to plan a temporary extension of Federal credit through the banks to NRA members to tide them over the period between increased overhead and increased income. Chairman Jones hustled back to Washington to work on the proposal.

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