Southern Hospitality

A man and his wife rolled out of Atlanta early one morning last week in a borrowed Ford sedan. By 10 a.m. they had traveled 75 miles southward over some of Georgia's better highways and pulled up before the house of old hometown friends whom they were visiting. An hour later their friends, Mr. & Mrs. Lynn Pierson of Detroit, were taking them through Warm Springs Foundation. Whom should the visiting husband meet in the glass-enclosed pool-house but the President of the U. S. taking his morning dip. "By the way," said Franklin Roosevelt, grinning up from the water, "you and Mrs. Ford are having dinner with us tonight." Thus just a year after General Hugh Johnson had heatedly announced that neither the Ford Motor Co. nor anyone else could safely defy his Blue Eagle, Mr. & Mrs. Edsel Ford were warmly welcomed by the chieftain of the New Deal. To newshawks who clustered around him in the street, Edsel Ford reiterated that the Ford Company had not signed certificates of NRA compliance, reiterated that it was living up 100% to NRA requirements. All was forgiven if not forgotten, for the Government had just sanctioned the purchase of a Ford for the first time since the great quarrel a year ago.* The President and Edsel Ford had met in the glass pool-house given to Warm Springs by the Fords.

The same day the President made public a letter to S. Clay Williams, head of the National Industrial Recovery Board, ordering him to survey the possibility of stabilizing employment in the automobile industry. Said Edsel Ford to reporters: "That is exactly what we believe. Our men are working on an average of 36 hours per week per year. Regular employment should be the goal of every manufacturer."

P: Extension of Southern hospitality was the chief occupation of the President's week. Chief beneficiary was Under Secretary of Agriculture Rexford Guy Tugwell whom the President, driving his own car, met at the railroad station, took home for luncheon, took for a swim, conferred with at length. A jolly time they had together, and on the second day of the Tugwell visit the President drove him and Mrs. Roosevelt to see an erosion control project on his 1,700-acre farm at nearby Pine Mountain.

P: Other guests who partook of the hospitality of the white cottage among the murmuring pines: Nelson Cheney, New York State Senator, a Republican but an old friend; Eugene R. Black, onetime Governor of the Federal Reserve (see p. 53); Chairman Frank McNinch and Vice Chairman Basil Manly of the Federal Power Commission; David Lilienthal of TVA; Morris L. Cooke of the National Resources Board; Governors-elect Bibb Graves of Alabama and Olin D. Johnston of South Carolina; Governors Talmadge of Georgia and Sholtz of Florida; Senators Robinson of Arkansas and Harrison of Mississippi, who after a four-hour conference jointly declared against the Bonus, for a balanced "normal" budget, with no new taxes next year; President Rudolf Hecht of the American Bankers' Association (see p. 53) who spoke enthusiastically of "co-operation between Government and business," said: "I told the President I didn't think it would be long before he had a touchdown and kicked the goal to recovery."

P: The President seized his long distance telephone at Warm Springs, called Washington to shush a fine squabble between PWAdministrator Ickes and NHAdministrator Moffett (see p. 15).

P: In Washington it was announced that William H. Plummer & Co., Manhattan's biggest glass and china store, had been awarded a contract for ten dozen service plates, ten dozen dinner plates, ten dozen bread & butter plates, ten dozen coffee cups & saucers, ten dozen teacups & saucers, ten dozen after-dinner coffee cups &saucers, ten dozen bouillon cups & saucers, not to mention oyster plates, oatmeal bowls, ramekins, etc.--1,720 pieces for $9,301.20, delivered at the White House. This, the first full dinner set ordered for the White House since Wilson's day, will be cream-colored Lenox china, with rims of gold, a cobalt blue band bearing 48 stars, roses and feathers (from the Roosevelt coat of arms), and the President's seal on the rim. Delivery is promised in time for the Cabinet dinner on Dec. 18.

P: J. Edward Jones, head of the National Petroleum Council, wrote President Roosevelt demanding the removal of Secretary Ickes as Administrator of the Petroleum Code. Mr. Ickes was accused of being ''incompetent, inexperienced, unqualified, temperamentally unfitted, unfair, biased . . . lacking in a proper conception of real government functions." Said the Jones letter: "He exhibits a poor and ridiculous management of the industry's affairs and plays upon public opinion by frightening the people about false issues such as an impending and imminent oil shortage, waste and war. . . ."

P: President Roosevelt got a new right hand to manage one of the New Deal's most grievous problems: code enforcement. Sol Ariah Rosenblatt, 33-year-old Harvard graduate, formerly NRAdministrator in charge of the Amusement Code, was put in charge of all NRA enforcement officers in the U. S., given the job of passing on code violations. Thus he became in effect No. 2 man of the Recovery Administration.

*A half-ton truck bought from Northwest Motor Co., Ford dealer in Bethesda, Md. Although he furnished a certificate of his own compliance, the dealer's previous bids on similar contracts were rejected because Ford would not sign a similar certificate.

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