The Roosevelt Week

The 52 most important weeks in Franklin Roosevelt's career are the 52 weeks before he stands for reelection. If he is re-elected he has an excellent chance of being written down in history as a statesman who wrought momentous changes in U. S. life. If he is defeated, historians will be tempted to set him down as a political monstrosity whom his country idolized for a few brief months of national hysteria. And the re-election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 is, most political

observers now agree, not the foregone conclusion it was in 1933 and 1934.

In Baltimore last week Federal Judge William Caldwell Coleman declared the Public Utility Act of 1935 void "in its entirety" (see p. 61). The immediate consequences of that decision affected utilities and the stock market, but its ultimate effect may well concern Franklin Roosevelt.

Neither NRA, AAA, devaluation of dollar nor Government spending are so dear to Franklin Roosevelt's heart as the Public Utility Act. To him distrust of holding companies is on a par with love of trees. Not an official word did he utter when he heard the news from Baltimore, but in the first week of the critical 52 he saw that an unpleasant choice would soon be forced upon him: to suppress his personal feelings for the Public Utility Act while legal taunts and political insults are heaped upon it, or to carry the fight against holding companies into the 1936 campaign, thereby making it impossible for him to turn right and cotton to Business.

P:To the U. S. at large the results of last week's off-year elections proved merely that the Democratic majority is: 1) in New York, not so big as it was a year ago; 2) in Kentucky, still bigger; 3) in Philadelphia, not yet a majority (see p. 14). To Franklin Roosevelt, however, it proved that blood will tell in Dutchess County. On the evening of Election Day at Hyde Park a torchlight procession marched to the Roosevelt home headed by Elmer Van Wagner, 38, bushy-haired proprietor of a garage and an automobile sales agency, first Democrat elected Supervisor of Hyde Park in a generation. The Supervisor-elect won his campaign by distributing 30 boxes of 5-c- cigars, and by stanchly championing Mrs. Roosevelt who his Republican opponent, Walter Gilbert, had declared was "whistling up a drain pipe" in her efforts to provide self-sustaining industries to take care of Hyde Park's unemployed. The torchlight procession carried a piece of drain pipe labeled

"Here is Gilbert's drainpipe." The President chose, however, to speak of one of Dutchess County's oldest stone houses built before the days of drain pipes. Said he:

"It was built about 1740. It was the original Van Wagner homestead. They were one of the earliest settlers of the town. This shows that blood will tell." Said Supervisor-elect Van Wagner: "Gee, if I don't make good it's just too bad."

P:Before his return to Washington Franklin Roosevelt, Shriner and 32nd degree Scottish Rite Mason, had promised to attend the Masonic ceremony at which two of his sons, James and Franklin Jr., were to become 3rd degree Masons. Accompanied by his mother, the President entered a car at Hyde Park and started for Manhattan under heavy escort. Instead of driving at the usual 50 m.p.h. clip, the motorcade never once exceeded 30 m.p.h. The 75-mile trip took nearly three hours. At the edge of New York City, 350 police took over from State Troopers. Behind 15 motorcycle policemen and a dozen cars filled with detectives in constant touch by radio with police headquarters, the President drove to his town house on East 65th Street through streets which had been cleared of all traffic for half an hour before his arrival. Although it was dinner hour on a rainy night, the city's heavy traffic was again disrupted in order to drive him from his town house down a deserted Fifth Avenue to Masonic Hall on West 23rd Street. Late at night, after seeing his sons raised in Masonic degree, he was zipped to Pennsylvania Station in about four minutes and to the great relief of the Secret Service safely put aboard his train to Washington. What danger, if any, had threatened the President during his New York City visit remained a deep secret to Secret Service and police. P:The same day that the President had his heavily-guarded ride, Mrs. Roosevelt, swinging down Manhattan's Madison Avenue afoot, stopped into the hat shop of Lilly Dache. With ten minutes to spare before keeping an appointment, she tried on four hats, bought two. Said the sales-clerk who knew Mrs. Roosevelt of old: "She is one that either likes a thing or she doesn't. But she has improved in style a lot in the last few years, I'm glad to say."

P:Good news awaited the President when he returned to Washington. A new yacht, the Coast Guard patrol boat Electra, will supersede the wooden Sequoia to carry him on his weekends afloat. Advantages of the Electra: steel hull, 165 feet overall; 15 knots; enough space not only for the President and guests but also for his Secret Servants. Budgeteers expected some saving in the $87,166 which it cost the Government to operate the Sequoia in fiscal 1934.

P:When Minnesota beat Iowa at football last week Governor Clyde Herring of Iowa lost a bet of one prize swine to Governor Floyd Olson of Minnesota. Curtis Dall, ex-son-in-law of the President, a guest of Governor Herring at the game, suggested that the pig should be named "New Deal." When Governor Herring rejected the suggestion, the father of the President's two favorite grandchildren retorted, "Then I think you ought to grease it a little with cold cream to make it a smoother proposition."

P:Standing in Arlington National Cemetery over the grave of the Unknown Soldier on Armistice Day, 1921, Warren G. Harding declared: "There must, there shall be a commanding voice of conscious civilization against armed warfare. . . . Knowing that the world is noting this expression of the Republic's mindfulness, it is fitting to say that [the Unknown Soldier's] sacrifice and that of the millions dead shall not be in vain."

Standing in Arlington's white marble amphitheatre, on Armistice Day, 1935, Franklin Roosevelt declared: "If we as a nation by our good example can contribute to the peaceful well-being of the fellowship of nations our course through the years will not have been in vain."

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