Roosevelt & Rain

On the same day that Republican Presidential Nominee Alf Landon's special train rolled into Buffalo, N. Y. on his strictly political invasion of the East, another special train rolled out of Washington carrying Democratic Nominee Franklin Roosevelt on a tour of the West which the White House had repeatedly emphasized was to be a strictly non-political survey of the worst drought in U. S. history. That the disaster should have befallen as he was seeking reelection, that as President he could visit the stricken region not as a candidate seeking favors but as a savior offering aid, sympathy and encouragement, was simply Franklin Roosevelt's spectacular good fortune.

As the last, incredible touch of Roosevelt luck, came rain--just as it had on the President's drought-inspection trip of 1934. From the very start, as he pushed through the Midwest, his train rolled under drizzling or overcast skies.

Skirting through Chicago and Milwaukee without public audiences, the Presidential special arrived on the second morning at its first goal, Bismarck, N. Dak.

There President Roosevelt & party got down to business with Montana and North Dakota's Acting Governors and Senators, made contact with the Great Plains Drought Committee which had just ended a motor survey beginning in Northern Texas (TIME, Aug. 31). Primed with long-range plans which they promptly laid before the President were Chairman Morris L. Cooke, Resettlement Administrator Tugwell and fellow committeemen. Suggesting a variety of such familiar remedies as withdrawal of submarginal lands from production, regrassing and reforestation, terracing, contour plowing, dam building, the Committee stressed the importance of individual and local co-operation but declared: "The Federal Government must do its full share of remedying the damage caused by a mistaken homesteading policy, by the stimulation of Wartime demands which led to overcropping and overgrazing, and by encouragement of a system of agriculture which could not be both permanent and prosperous." "We endanger our Democracy," it concluded, "if we allow the Great Plains, or any other section of the country, to become an economic desert." That the Great Plains were not yet a desert was the message of the Fargo Forum, of which copies denouncing fake drought photographs were put aboard the Presidential train at Bismarck.

But the President, who had gone out from Washington to get away from blueprints and reports, soon shoved printed matter aside, set off at the head of a 40-car motor caravan to see things for himself. Rolling through stubbly, barren fields, over roads which blanketed the party in dust, the President inspected a sample WPA dam, turned into the farm of big, blue-eyed, young J. J. Boehm. While Mrs. Boehm and six small Boehms stared, the President asked: "How many acres have you?" "President," replied Farmer Boehm in a thick German accent, "I got 480 and I am having a hard time making a go of it." "Any water on this place? Have you a well?" "Everything is burned up. I haven't harvested a thing." "Well," cried the President as he left with a cheery wave, "everything is going to be all right." Roosevelt rain began to fall as the President got back to his train to find 5,000 cheering Bismarckians awaiting him. "Back East," he told them, "there have been all kinds of reports that out in the drought area there was a despondency, a lack of hope for the future and a general atmosphere of gloom. But I had a hunch, and it was the right one, that when I got out here I would find that you people had your chins up. ... I get a picture which reassures me as to the future of the so-called Great Plains drought area--reassurances of the fact that the Government can and must and will go ahead . . . with winning out through a system of careful, long-range planning. . . . You are not licked." That morning President Roosevelt had got the news of Secretary of War Dern's death, promptly shifted his schedule to attend the funeral in Salt Lake City this week. That meant dropping Minnesota and Wisconsin from his itinerary, postponing for two days his conference in Des Moines this week with seven Western governors, including Kansas' Landon.

It was raining hard when the President's train puffed into Jamestown, N. Dak. next morning. Pulling on a slicker, he set out in an open car for a two-hour look at WPA projects, could not resist gloating over his luck when he returned.

At Aberdeen, S. Dak. a cheerful, prosperous-looking crowd of 15,000 gave President Roosevelt the warmest reception of his trip. There, as in other towns along his way, he saw good clothes, smiling faces, rows of new automobiles, was assured that, though crops had failed, Fed- eral relief money spent on neighborhood building and conservation projects had kept things humming. "I understand," cried he, "some people are not in favor of planning for the future. I understand some people object to spending now in order to save for the future. But it is real economy if you spend $1,000,000 now to save $10,000,000 later."

From Aberdeen, the President motored off on another side-trip, stopped at the farm of young Henry Welbus, who told him that with the help of a $1,221 Government loan he was making out, had even been able to pay back $400 of it. Up for Presidential inspection in her mother's arms went 19-month-old Darlene Welbus. Said he: "She's a fine-looking youngster." No baby-kisser is Franklin Roosevelt, but while cameras clicked he seized Darlene's hand, counted her fingers: "One, two, three, four, five."

"That's a grand game!", he declared, playing it again. "She likes it," grinned the President. Reported the arch-Republican New York Herald Tribune's correspondent: "Small Darlene did not seem particularly interested."

On & on through a South Dakota of burned fields, bare trees and dried-up stream beds went the warming Roosevelt smile and inspiriting Roosevelt voice, spreading cheer and confidence. At Pierre, Democratic Governor Tom Berry introduced "our friend and our President," assured the crowd that ''when he says to you 'my friends,' he means 'my friends.' "

Thrilled were South Dakotans at sight of their first President since Calvin Coolidge summered in the Black Hills and decided he did not choose to run. At Wasta, a flag stop, an elderly woman bustled up to Son Franklin Jr. standing on the rear platform and chirped: "Young man, tell Mr. Coolidge we want him to come out here and see us."

At evening the President arrived in Rapid City, where a crowd which nearly doubled the town's population had come to welcome him, and where even Republican headquarters displayed his picture. Next day was Sunday and the President & family went to tiny Emanuel Episcopal Church, heard Rev. E. Jerome Pipes sermonize on the Parable of the Talents. After lunch the party motored out across the plains, up through a national forest, emerged above the tree line to look across a narrow valley, see a huge head of George Washington jutting from a mountainside. It was Gutzon Borglum's Mount Rushmore memorial group, begun in 1927. Beside the Washington head hung a U. S. flag 70 ft. long. At a signal from Sculptor Borglum's daughter, his son, across the valley, dropped the flag, revealing an heroic head of Jefferson, 60 feet from crown to chin. Simultaneously five dyna mite blasts sent rock clattering down from the space where Lincoln's face is to be carved. Not yet begun is the fourth head, that of Theodore Roosevelt.

Returning to Rapid City, the President was abruptly brought back to serious af fairs of State by a telephone call from Washington informing him that the U. S destroyer Kane had been bombed by an airplane in Spanish waters. Proper protests were ordered at once. That night the Presidential special set _ off on its long, sad detour to Salt Lake City.

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