Roosevelt Week

For the first time in history, under the influence of warm winter rains the White House lawn really needed to be mowed in January. Winter rains 600 miles to the west had a bigger influence on Washington politics. The Ohio-Mississippi flood had brought to the Capital an emergency atmosphere not unlike that of the early months of the New Deal. Congressmen once more hungered for Federal aid and Franklin Roosevelt resumed the prestige cf the Great White Father to whom all must appeal.

With prestige also went responsibility.

Around him he rallied those whom he calls upon in all major" catastrophes: his Reliever-in-Chief, Harry Hopkins, his Commander of Public Health, Surgeon General Thomas Parran Jr., his mover of battalions, Chief of Staff Malin Craig, the Army's ranking engineer, Major General Edward Murphy Markham, the chairman cf the American Red Cross. Dr. Gary T. Grayson, and many another. Together they mapped and planned how to care for a million suffering citizens, how to mitigate $400,000,000 worth of property damage in Mid-U. S., how to save other millions in humanity and property from damage (see p. 17). The President sent Harry Hopkins and a group of experts out to reconnoitre the wake of the retreating flood.

Even a great flood could not, however, prevent other matters-of government from occupying the President's time:

P:Six months ago in the midst of the campaign he called a conference to see if some sort of power pool could not be worked out between TVA and private power companies. The conference adjourned to await fact-finding efforts. Last week with fact-finding complete the President wrote to the conferees that the conference would not be reconvened. Reason: it would be useless because 19 power companies have obtained a temporary court injunction restraining TVA's efforts to distribute power. Wendell L. Wilkie, president of Commonwealth & Southern Corp. said that the President had known at the time of the conference in September that the utilities planned to continue their court fight. Plain inference by most observers was that the President had used the injunction as an excuse, had really broken off the pool negotiations for other reasons. So doing he clearly rebuffed the plea of Chairman Arthur Morgan of TVA for a peaceful effort to get along with the utilities (TIME, Jan. 25), had decided to keep the support of TVA Director David Eli Lilienthal, of Senators Norris, La Follette, McKellar and others advocating war to the death on private power.

P:Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Eccles came to the White House on a mysterious mission. Three days later the country was told that the Reserve Board had upped bank reserve requirements one-third more, to the maximum allowed by law (see p. 61).

P:Saying farewell to Walter Runciman, hard-headed president of the British Board of Trade who had come to discuss a Reciprocal Trade Agreement (TIME, Feb. i). Franklin Roosevelt presented that longtime shipping man with one of his treasures, a three-foot model of the four-masted schooner Shenandoah.

P:At Kent, Conn, one Samuel McWhinnie, 42, was charged with burglary for having broken into a shed on the Hyde Park estate of Miss Ellen Roosevelt, cousin of the President, and stealing four small sailboat models which Franklin Roosevelt carved with his own hands.

P:The President enjoyed his state reception for Congress because it was smaller than usual. Reasons: influenza and flood.

P:In Nevada the State Legislature ratified the proposed Child Labor Amendment to the Constitution and Franklin Roosevelt, biggest booster of that Amendment, was pleased to chalk up the 26th endorsement, leaving ten to go.

P:On his 55th birthday (Jan. 30), Franklin Roosevelt, who now hopes to visit Warm Springs in March, broadcast to his annual birthday balls in cities throughout the nation his thanks for the nation's response to 1) the Red Cross $10.000.000 flood relief fund, 2) the infantile paralysis benefit for which the balls are held.

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