Mouthful

There are times when the President of the U. S. has to defer most serious matters because he has a common cold. Last week was such a time for Franklin Roosevelt. He took the case out of the hands of his physician, Rear Admiral Ross Mclntire, and downed a big dose of castor oil. "Make it short, boys," was his plea at his subsequent press conference. But before the cold took hold, he devoted a press conference to Taxes and Economy. Said he:

1) Taxes that slow up business must not be revised if doing so means a loss of revenue. He complained that the press had not made clear his insistence on that point.

2) The country is no more ready to abandon the undistributed profits tax than it is to revive the practice of incorporating yachts.

3) Tax revision to aid recovery is an idea of Chairman Pat Harrison of the Senate Finance Committee. (Most correspondents considered this camouflage to cover a shift by the President away from the viewpoint of Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau who, with Under Secretary John Hanes, were the first oracles of revision-for-Recovery.)

4) Economy might be worth trying if there were any guarantee that business would soak up the fresh unemployment resulting from cessation of Government spending. "I doubt, however," said the President, "whether this would meet with popular approval if it were tried and the results were not attained." Then he added that he guessed that he had said "a mouthful." (See below.)

> In the absence of Mrs. Roosevelt (who last week attended San Francisco's World's Fair) the land's No. 2 Lady, Mrs. John Nance Garner, had the experience of presiding over a White House tea party.

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