THE PRESIDENCY: Snow on the Lawn

• Share

Franklin Roosevelt, who loves a political fight, last week was in one up to his elbows. He was putting a squeeze on those gentlemen in Congress who wanted to cut down the Relief appropriation for the next five months from $875,000,000 to $725,000,000. Fortnight ago when the House passed the bill (397-to-16) with the lower figure there was some suspicion that the President had laid a political trap for Congressional economizers. Last week, whether or not he helped to lay the trap, he helped to squeeze its jaws shut.

To the White House the President called Colorado's stocky little Senator Alva Blanchard Adams, banker-lawyer chairman of the Senate subcommittee which had charge of the Relief bill. "Little Alva," to whom the President gave "the silent treatment" when he ran for renomination last summer, may not be so brilliant as his late father, "Big Alva," who was Governor of Colorado for two terms, or so colorful as his Uncle Billy, who ranched in the San Luis Valley (whence came Jack Dempsey) and was Governor thrice. But his spine last week was stiff for economy.

In an ordinary winter the District of Columbia has little snow, but snow had just fallen heavily in Washington. Gesturing dramatically toward the snow on the White House lawn, the President asked Mr. Adams how he had the heart to turn a million jobless men off into a desolation like that. It was a tough question to any man, a tougher question to ask a politician.

Three years ago when the U. S. was suffering from cold. Senator Adams was photographed, grinning, beside a weather map which recorded that in Denver the temperature was six degrees above freezing (see cut). Last week with Denver temperatures down below freezing. Mr. Adams could not grin, but he had returned to the Capital firm in his belief that $725,000,000 ought to be enough to keep reliefers from being turned out into the snow between now and spring.

Putting Senator Adams on a chilly spot did not finish the President's work. His secretariat sent out hundreds of letters to citizens anxious or angry about the cut. in which blame was heaped squarely upon Congress. One letter said: "The needs of WPA are very close to the President's heart."

The economizers on Senator Adams' committee were asked by David Lasser, head of the Workers Alliance: "Is the majority in this Congress trying deliberately to provoke a situation of social disorder?"; were told by Fiorello LaGuardia of New York City, president of the United States Conference of Mayors: "Havoc will be rife throughout the nation." A committee of actors & artists visited Washington bearing petitions with 200,000 signatures demanding continuance of WPA arts projects. Cafeteria, hotel & restaurant workers telegraphed en masse. Senator Adams got one telegram which was delivered as follows: "Are you a man or a delete?"