THE PRESIDENCY: Attack at Arthurdale

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Arthurdale gave Franklin Roosevelt a rousing hand for his memorable speech, but in Washington there was a different reaction. Judging by what he had said, the President, it seemed, had not read the new Tax Bill, or had not understood it. Among those most deeply concerned was hard-working Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi, Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Members of both houses flocked into the Senate Chamber next day to hear Pat Harrison insist that "American principles and Government principles of long standing" had not been abandoned in the Tax Bill which he had helped to write.

"We wanted to do something, if a tax factor could do it, that might assist in dispelling fear in the hearts of some people and restoring confidence in the mind of the American business man," said Senator Harrison, but the President's speech made it sound like "a monstrous tax bill," designed to let big taxpayers escape; on the contrary the first thing the bill did was positive—it erased the inequity of the old tax law by letting small businesses pay debts and meet deficits before levying on their undistributed profits, and by exempting all businesses earning less than $25,000.

Said he of the undistributed profits tax: "There is no great American principle about this. ... It came to us in 1936. Mr. [Herman] Oliphant, representing the Treasury, was very zealous and persistent about it. I presume he had sold it to the President."

Said he of capital gains taxes: "It is not an old American principle we are abandoning. . . . [Not until 1913 were long-term capital gains taxed, and then with a $20,-ooo exemption.] With reference to the illustration which the President gave, he was just misinformed. I have no doubt about that, because I know the President is sincere in his utterances."**

¶To Hyde Park, N. Y. for the weekend went Squire Franklin Roosevelt. There he viewed 42 new acres he had bought, off Cream Street on the edge of town, since his last trip home. That evening he was host to royalty: Prince Louis Ferdinand Hohenzollern and his bride, the former Grand Duchess Kyra Romanoff. When he took them to church on Sunday morning, he was tickled by a parable read by the Rev. Frank R. Wilson. It was an essay by a school girl on Manhattan's East Side. Its subject: "True greatness." Its text:

"Once there was a woman that had done a big washing and hung it on the line. The line broke and let it fall down in the mud, but she didn't say a word: only did it all over again, and this time spread it on the grass, where it couldn't fall.

"But that night a dog ran over it with its muddy feet. [Here the President began to grin.] When she saw what was done she sat down and didn't cry a bit. All she said was, 'Ain't it queer that he didn't miss nothin?' That was true greatness, but it is only people who have done washing that know it."