National Affairs: The First Month

At precisely 10:30 a.m. one day last week, looking neither to the right nor left, Dwight Eisenhower strode into the ornate, marble-paneled Indian Treaty Room of the old State Department building for his first news conference as President of the U.S. For two minutes he stood before the microphones while the photographers fired away; then he turned his attention to the reporters who had jammed into the room. Old campaign correspondents could see that Ike Eisenhower was nervous and apprehensive, but when he began to speak he was clearly in command of himself and the situation.

First of all. the President had some statements to make about the subjects he had picked as of most interest: farm prices, secret agreements, the atomic bomb (he is convinced that Russia has it), economic controls and taxes. Then he opened the conference for questions on those subjects first, on other things if time allowed. Exactly 33 minutes after he walked into the room he gave the reporters a quick grin, waved goodbye and walked out. thus ignoring the Roosevelt-Truman custom by which the senior White House correspondent, U.P.'s sleek-haired Merriman Smith, ends press conferences with a "Thank you, Mr. President."

Across the U.S., the stories of what President Eisenhower had to say rolled' on to the front pages. There were both cheers and denunciations for this new kind of press conference run by the President and not by the reporters (see PRESS). But the more remarkable factor was that, although Dwight Eisenhower talked in terms of new values and concepts of government, his meanings were readily understood. Chief reason: he had brought the U.S. a long way during his first month in office—sometimes by specific changes in procedure and policy, sometimes by less tangible changes in attitude and approach.

No administration can make its record in its first 30 days, but Dwight Eisenhower's had made an auspicious start:

Economics. In his first 30 days as President, Eisenhower basically changed U.S. economic policy. The best description of what is going on came last week from the President himself. Said he: the President is trying to unshackle the economy of the U.S.

In the unshackling, wages have been set free and prices are being set free. By last week only 17% of the items on the cost-of-living index were still under control. The tangled mass of red tape which has hobbled civilian industry in procurement of basic materials was being wadded up and thrown in the wastebasket. The Administration, said Dwight Eisenhower, will step back in with controls only if that becomes vitally necessary. Natural economic laws will be given, in the words of Defense Secretary Charles Erwin Wilson, "the darndest whirl" in 20 years.

Agriculture. In the face of a farm-prices decline begun two years ago, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson has been traveling across the land explaining the Administration's ultimate aim when the present price-support law expires in 1954: flexible price supports which allow freer operation of the forces of the market place, while still giving adequate protection to the farmer. Last week the President recalled a sentence in the Republican platform to indicate what that policy would be like; "A prosperous agriculture with free and independent farmers is fundamental to the national interest."