THE PRESIDENCY: Appeasement

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Franklin Roosevelt, master of words, is allergic to certain words with which the press has ticketed his acts. He disliked "death sentence" when applied to his holding-company bill. He felt that "court-packing plan" was unjust to his attempted reform of the Federal judiciary. "Purge" he hated; it smacked of Stalin and Hitler. By last week a new word annoyed him: "appeasement," as applied to his big push to restore Business confidence. "Appeasement" sounded as though he had done something to Business for which he now sought to apologize.

Under-Secretary John Hanes solved this phraseological problem at the Treasury by having printed in black on a batch of blue cards, to be attached to interoffice correspondence, an oft-repeated question of Secretary Morgenthau: "Does it contribute to Recovery?" At the White House, when Mr. Roosevelt expressed displeasure at "appeasement," correspondents asked him for a better word. He mused a while, then said he would look in his Thesaurus, tell them later.

Meantime, the Roosevelt Recovery push proceeded on a dozen fronts—but not without incongruities. The most notable pushes:

1) The President began tax-bill conferences with Messrs. Morgenthau & Hanes about the possibility of removing tax deterrents to Business (capital stock, capital gains, undistributed-profits taxes, the rule disallowing profit-&-loss offsets from one year to the next). The President was described as agreeable to most of their suggestions so long as revenue is not cut. Chairman Pat Harrison of the Senate Finance Committee, field marshal of Vice President Garner's Economy bloc (see col. 3), sat in on one session, after which he described the President's tax attitude as "fine, harmonious."

2) The President's Secretary of Commerce announced that U. S. national income might reach 70 billions this year, that he meant everything he said at Des Moines (TIME, March 6), that "Johnny Hanes and I have a substantial meeting of minds." Word even went round that arch-New Dealers suspected Harry Hopkins of selling out Reform in his eagerness for Recovery.

3) Although the President again asked for another appropriation for WPA (see col. 3), his WPAdministrator "Pink" Harrington followed Congress' instructions by purging 30,000 aliens (2,000 in Texas alone), and an unannounced number of political job holders, from his payrolls. He also called in all his regional directors to plan the discharge of 1,000,000 clients in case Congress was slow or balky about the money.

4) Although the President is opposed to economy at the expense of national defense, last week he telephoned to tell Chairman May of the House Military Affairs Committee to cut from $25,000,000 to $10,000,000 the amount to be expended this year on the proposed $100,000,000 purchase of strategic imported raw materials for war (tin, manganese, mercury, etc., etc.). He announced he favored double-locking the Panama Canal instead of digging a second canal across Nicaragua, on grounds of economy ($200,000,000 as against $720,000,000).