THE PRESIDENCY: New Quarters

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Such is the White House Secretariat, the immediate tools with which Franklin Roosevelt operates his executive machine. But there are others. August Adolph ("Gus") Gennerich, Presidential bodyguard and attendant, was a strapping six-foot member of the New York City Police Force when Franklin Roosevelt, as Governor of New York, took him into his private household. Secret Servicemen Richard Jervis and Edward Starling, with their many understudies, flit about the White House office like substantial ghosts, keeping a hawkeye on everyone who comes and goes. Ira R, T. Smith, with mustache and gold-rimmed glasses, opens all the mail and routes it to the proper secretaries. Louise Hachmeister, the President's personal switchboard girl, does not know what the great men of the U. S. look like, but recognizes all their voices. Executive Clerk Rudolph Forster has been the permanent connecting link from one White House Administration to another for the past 38 years. The only man in the U. S. whose sudden appearance on the floor of the House or Senate can stop the deliberation of either body is Messenger Maurice C. Latta whose job is to carry Presidential messages to the Capitol. These are the faces the public sees. But above stairs and below stairs and in a dozen stenographic cubbyholes a hundred others perform the daily tasks which enable Franklin Roosevelt to do his job as President of the U. S.

* Front cover: Louis McHenry Howe (top, left): Stephen Tyree Early; Marguerite Le Hand; Marvin Hunter McIntyre (lower, right).

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