THE PRESIDENCY: Batter Up

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Save in 1933, for the first exciting weeks of his term, Franklin Roosevelt has always succeeded in taking his problems in a very easy stride. Through his re-election campaign last year he had almost the air of coasting with his hands off the handlebars. But last week he gave clear signs of rolling up his sleeves and going to work like a man who knows he has a real job ahead. That job was to put through his plan for putting New Dealers on the Supreme Court.

Whenever difficult problems are before Congress the President is apt to call Congressmen to the White House to confer. Last week he called not one conference, but one or more conferences a day. No less than 19 Senators went to the White House successively. It looked almost as if the President meant to conduct a seat by seat canvass of the Senate. He likewise delivered a long "background" talk to newshawks.

Never before had observers seen Franklin Roosevelt go so earnestly to bat for anything. It was an omen that the beginnings of the Supreme Court battle (see col. 2) were but a mild foretaste of what is yet to come. To those who believe Franklin Roosevelt is the shrewdest judge of political trends in the U. S. it meant also that the outcome of the battle is more uncertain than that of any which the New Deal has yet fought.

¶With the opportune aid of the calendar clearing the decks for his Supreme Court fight, the President and Mrs. Roosevelt held their Army & Navy reception ushering in Lent, closed season on social events.

¶To Congress the President sent the report of his Great Plains Committee recommending that a long-range drought program be developed and adopted. From his special Farm Tenancy Committee he received a report recommending a long-range program to rid the country of the evils of farm tenancy. Both programs are of vast scope, indefinite outline.

¶ Pleased was the President to hear that New Mexico had ratified the Child Labor Amendment, 27th State to do so. Displeased was he to hear that the Amendment had been defeated in the South Dakota Legislature.

¶As the great Ohio flood rolled down the Mississippi to New Orleans and apparent danger of leaking levees passed, Congress sent to the President a bill setting up a $20,000,000 Disaster Loan Corp. As a subsidiary of the R. F. C. to make rehabilitation loans to flood victims. He promptly signed.