Big Kitty

Sitting up in bed with his morning paper, President Roosevelt found a nasty story glaring him in the face. At a crossing just outside Washington a Baltimore & Ohio express train had whipped into a school bus, scattered the corpses of 14 youngsters over 200 yards of right-of-way (see p. 32). That news provided him with a jumping-off spot for a new task: the job of "personally" spending $4,880,000,000 on work relief. Same day he announced that $200,000,000 would be spent in eliminating grade crossings on main-line tracks.

The announcement disposed of less than 5% of his spending job. He had already indicated he would spend $600,000,000 on CCC, doubling the size of the Conservation Corps. And Administrator Harry Hopkins took over $113,000,000 for April relief (of which Georgia was assigned none and Pennsylvania only a half share because both States failed to contribute on a scale that Mr. Hopkins thought was fair). That left the President with an embarrassment amounting to not quite $4,000,000,000.

Though the problem of how he could effectively use this big kitty might not trouble him, many a citizen was ready to trouble the President for a small donation. First help of this kind was offered by a delegation of mayors, headed by New York's LaGuardia, who marched in to say that they did not want to borrow any of the President's relief money but did want a large share of it as an outright gift because most of the unemployed live in cities.

P: Delegations of Cotton Senators from the South and Textile governors from New England also called at the White House to ask the President to use relief funds to pay cotton benefits and the processing tax on that troublesome commodity (see p. 16).

P: To the Press, which inquired whether he had returned from his vacation a "tough guy," as he did a year ago, Franklin Roosevelt replied: "Even tougher." But he did not proceed to get really tough with Congress, despite the fact that the legislation waiting for his signature was pitifully meagre: the War Department Appropriation Bill increasing the enlisted strength of the Army from 119,000 to 165,000 (TIME, March 25); a bill conferring the Distinguished Flying Cross on Italian Air Marshal Italo Balbo and on General Aldo Pellegrini for their flight to the Century of Progress in 1933; the repealer of income tar publicity (pink slips).

P: The President called Speaker Byrns and Representative Doughton to the White House to give them advice on how to get action on his Social Security Bill (seep. 14).

P: At the Gridiron Club banquet at which 400 places were laid in honor of the Club's 50th Anniversary, the President, speaking at his best and off the record, endeared himself once more to his newshawk friends.

P: This week the Federal Housing Administration had the biggest day of its career, insuring $750,000 in modernization loans, $1,260,000 in mortgages. FHAdministrator James Andrew Moffett called at the White House to present the good news in person, report on FHA's accomplishments to date: $351,000,000 worth of building business generated, 750,000 jobs created. His report made, Administrator Moffett handed President Roosevelt his resignation, effective in a fortnight.

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