THE PRESIDENCY: The Coolidge Week: Aug. 1, 1927

¶ Visitor after visitor to Custer Park has given assurance that farmers are not anti-Administration, are not set upon the passage of the McNary-Haugen bill or its equivalent. Last week came a minority report. Mayor Fred H. Hunter of Des Moines, Iowa, member of a group of State Lodge visitors assured newspapermen that farmers are more McNary-Haugenish than ever and would give the President a "grudging" vote should he be renominated.

¶ The President held in his hand a solid gold paper knife, the handle of which was made in the form of a sheaf of wheat. The knife was presented to him by a delegation of Canadians headed by Mayor Ralph H. Webb of Winnipeg.

¶ For unto every one that hath shall be given—and President Coolidge last week received an additional Presidency, though of the honorary variety. He accepted the position of Honorary President of the South Dakota division of the Izaak Walton League of America. Onetime Judge J. M. Dickinson, national president of the League, approved the South Dakota action, despite the regrettable worm-bait tendency of President Coolidge. He said that the League was more concerned with having fishermen throw small fish back into the water than with the type of bait they used.

¶ President Coolidge last week made a tariff reduction—50% of the duty on refined cresylic acid.

¶ The President complimented Hugh S. Gibson and other U. S. delegates to the Geneva Arms Conference (see p. 10) for the manner in which they have presented the U. S. position and protected U. S. interests.

¶ Among presidential callers last week were: Frederick E. Murphy, publisher of the Minneapolis Tribune, who said that the McNary-Haugen bill was a "delusion and a snare"; Mrs. Fred P. Mann, Republican National Committeewoman from Devils Lake, N. Dak., who said that the radical element in North Dakota was losing its hold and political turmoil was subsiding; a caravan of some 500 visitors from Iowa and Canada, who were photographed with the President in their midst; Colonel Hanford MacNider, Assistant Secretary of War, who arrived in an airplane; some 200 Methodists from 20 South Dakota towns; also Senator Reed Smoot of Utah and Secretary of Commerce Herbert C. Hoover (see below).

¶ "I received the letter you wrote to me. I appreciate it very much. I am old and passing slowly to the life that nobody knows about. Your notice of me, an old chief, proves that you are really a great man. This has made my heart sing with gladness. . . ." So, to President Coolidge, wrote Chief Plenty Coups, of the Absarokees (Crow Indians).

¶ A successor to Prudence Prim, deceased White House Pet (TIME, July 25) was offered to Mrs. Coolidge and accepted by her. The new arrival is one Diana of Wildwood, a four-month old white Scotch collie. Diana was donated by W. E. Scripps of Wildwood Farms, Orion, Mich., in the names of his son Robert Warren, 7, and daughter Ann, 5. To him Mrs. Coolidge wired: "Would be delighted to have your dog."