The Roosevelt Week

The goldfish-like life of the President of the U. S. bothers Franklin D. Roosevelt-less than it has many of his predecessors. Last weekend, however, he felt the need of some real privacy. Accompanied only by Mrs. Roosevelt, her friend Miss Lorena Hickok, his personal secretary Marguerite Le Hand, he boarded the Government yacht Sequoia and cruised down the Potomac to meditate on one of the Administration's major problems: how to get the wheels of heavy industry turning and employ the workers of heavy industry who in spite of PWA and NRA still remain idle.

Back in Washington, President Roosevelt sent to Congress his long-delayed message on housing: "May I," he asked, "draw your attention to some important suggestions for legislation which should tend to improve conditions for those who live in houses, those who repair and construct houses, and those who invest in houses?"

The President did not propose to build or repair anyone's house with Federal funds. What he did propose was to stimulate private enterprise to spend hundreds of millions on construction and renovation. This was to be accomplished by the Government's assuming a share of the risk of financing. A Government corporation would be set up, under his plan, to stand a portion of any losses which banks and other lenders might suffer by making loans to home owners for renovation. New construction would be promoted by a Government-sponsored system of guarantee to enlarge the market for new mortgages.

Insurance underwriters of Lloyd's in London revealed that they had found a profitable new business in writing policies on the life of President Roosevelt for worried businessmen. The rates:

5% a year against the President's assassination.

71% a Year against his death from natural causes.

12% a year against his being totally incapacitated for duty.

The rates implied that, on the average, a President of the U. S. is assassinated once every 20 years, that there are about four chances in five of Franklin Roosevelt's living out his present term, about two chances out of three of his still being a well man in January 1937.

Signing the sugar control bill (TIME, April 30), the President ordered the duty on Cuban sugar cut from 2-c- to 1 1/2-c-a lb. with the proviso that the processing tax imposed should not exceed the tariff cut. Also signed was the Revenue Act of 1934.

The President imposed his fifth, sixth and seventh vetoes on bills: 1) to grant an honorable discharge from the U. S. Navy to John Thomas Simpkin, twice convicted of overstaying leaves of absence; 2) to grant a year's pay ($8,000) to the widow of William Holt Gale, a foreign service officer; 3) to allow the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa Indians to sue the Government for claims which they renounced for consideration of $1,000,000 in a treaty made 30 years ago.

Before the Trustees of Warm Springs Foundation in the East Room of the White House, Rear Admiral Gary T. Grayson presented the President with a check 3 ft. long by 18 in. wide, for $1,003,030.08 -- receipts for the President's "birthday balls" last January. The amount was half a million dollars smaller than Warm Springs had confidently hoped for but the President waved the check triumphantly aloft, before handing it to Trustee Arthur Carpenter. "Just for five or ten seconds, Carp," said the President, "I wouldn't trust you longer with it. No danger was there of defalcation, however. The check was never meant to be honored, merely to be framed and hung in Georgia Hall at Warm Springs. Actually the funds it represented already stood to the credit of the Foundation in seven Manhattan banks. The President promised that the money would not be used to repay advances to the Institution. Of the $1,003,000, $100,000 was designated to be used "to stimulate coordination" of infantile paralysis work, $650,000 for "research and study" at Warm Springs, the remaining $253,000 for building and maintenance at the Institution.

Dinner guest of the President was vacationing Novelist H. G. Wells.

Mrs. Roosevelt took time out from travel and the President from work to make a cinema which will be shown, on large screens, at next week's reopening of Chicago's Century of Progress. When the First Lady (on the screen) makes an imperative gesture, spotlights will be turned on a great fountain. When the President finishes speaking all the lights of the Fair will blaze up.

While the President was busy deciding what message he would send to Congress on War Debts, the State Department was busy telling foreign diplomats about what would constitute "default." Attorney General Cummings interpreted the Johnson Act to mean that in the past token payers were not in default, because the President in accepting tokens had said they were not. Secretary Hull made it clear that token payments in the future would not save debtor nations from being technically in default. Questioned by newshawks, the President merely answered that whether a token payment constituted payment or default was a point he would decide on the merits of each case as it arose.

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