Scene of Peace

A year ago this week Franklin Roosevelt sent his New Deal to the country to be tested in a Congressional election. A year hence this week the President will probably be going to the country himself as a candidate for reelection. Last week, halfway between these two political events, he was rusticating amid scenes of peace at Hyde Park while local elections popped and fizzled throughout the land.

A twelvemonth ago inferior Federal Court judges were knocking the NRA out of the ring right & left. Farmers were in a blatantly bitter mood. The Administration's great hope for 1935 recovery was a building boom to be fostered by the Housing Administration. In California Upton Sinclair as Democratic candidate for Governor had become such a nuisance that the President had to repudiate him. In Manhattan a million-share day on the stock exchange was front-page news and Henry Ford's announcement that he would build 1,000,000 cars was a refreshing breath of optimism. In Washington the Railroad Retirement Act went out as unconstitutional. In Miami Legionaries shouted for immediate cash payment of the Bonus. In Denver and Albany there were hunger marchers. Donald Richberg had just been named co-ordinator-in-general to set the cosmic alphabet in order. From coast to coast the issue was whether Harry Hopkins, playing Santa Claus at the rate of $140,000,000 a month, was corrupting the electorate. On all sides were squabbles, hopes, issues. And then in 48 states men marched to the polls and overwhelmed the New Deal with the greatest majority ever given to a party.

Last week from his Hyde Park study President Roosevelt looked out on a strangely different U. S. scene. Gone was the NRA. Gone was Donald Richberg. No angry bankers and no housing boom disturbed the tranquillity of the country. Henry Ford had built a million cars in the first ten months of 1935. Not one but two million shares a day were changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange and stocks after a seven-month climb were at their highest levels since the New Deal took office. Unemployment was still high, relief plans still in a muddle, but hunger marchers were nowhere. The Bonus was conceded victory in the next session of Congress. Only two disturbances loomed ahead: 1) the possibility of the Supreme Court's invalidating AAA's processing taxes; 2) the growing issue of Government spending to be faced in the next budget.

As the temper of the country has quieted down, so has its hero-worship of the man in the White House. Surveys agreed that public enthusiasm for Franklin Roosevelt was cooler today than in the confused autumn of 1934. Dr. George Gallup, professional surveyor of public taste (who calls himself the "American Institute of Public Opinion"), recently published a graph of the President's popularity showing that it reached a new low just after Congress adjourned. Last week Frazier Hunt, correspondent of Newspaper Enterprise Association, after a cross-country political reconnoissance, came to a similar conclusion. The opposition, though still a minority, had grown in numbers while its issues had ceased flaming.

Ballot carnivals in Kentucky, in Philadelphia, in New York, in half a dozen other places were all that Election Day, 1935, had to offer, all of them billed by political pressagents as momentous New Deal tests. Franklin Roosevelt showed, however, that he understood well enough that local elections are local elections.

The state of his feelings was evident one morning when he read in the paper that Melvin C. Eaton, Republican state chairman in New York, had tagged the New Deal with a prize piece of invective: "The New Deal is handing back to the people the still-smoking revolver with the plea, 'Everything went black--we thought we were doing right, and so we pulled the trigger of experimentation--but excuse it, please.' "

Thereafter Franklin Roosevelt called in his newshawks for an interview. Beaming upon the assembled company, he launched into a description of a gentle earthquake which had shaken the Atlantic seaboard the night before. The reporters in their beds in Poughkeepsie's Nelson House, five miles away, had not felt a tremor but the President proceeded for ten minutes to embroider on a vivid scene of what had taken place at Hyde Park: He had awakened and felt the whole house shake from side to side; Secret Service men had turned on all the lights, searched the house, found a great china platter, an heirloom of the Roosevelts', thrown from a shelf and shattered on the floor. Then, still beaming, he distributed photographs of the 134-lb. sailfish he caught off Cocos Island.

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