Monday, Feb. 18, 1929
Boy Scout
A very solemn handshake it was that Herbert Hoover gave to Senator Reed Smoot last week in Florida as the next President bade the Senate Finance Committee Chairman farewell and sent him back to Washington as a special emissary. For three days they had talked, these two, the Utah Senator's thin querulous voice rising in vain pleadings for an early special session of Congress, for a general tariff revision. Mr. Hoover shook his round head. Many things had been made firmly clear and the parting handshake sealed all conclusions.
With Senator Smoot gone, and with the G. O. P., South, interviewed and dismissed, an unwonted emptiness pervaded the Penney estate. Mr. Hoover was fretful. He had drawn Cabinet lists, rearranged them, scratched them, interlined them, thrown them away and locked his decisions in the secret vault of his mind. Everything was arranged and three slack weeks stretched away to March 4. Other men might have played sportively in the languid Florida sunshine, but not Mr. Hoover. His hands itched to grip the Presidency. He greeted casual callers absently and mused about Washington.
He was too preoccupied to be interested in the suave social attentions of Miami's wealthy winter visitors. Had he not been the President-Elect, he would have been set down as snobbish. The Committee of One Hundred asked him to attend a splendid ball, to sit in a Presidential box, at the Nautilus Hotel in Miami Beach. A curtly polite "No thanks" came from the Penney estate. On the date set he planned to be inspecting the dreary Okeechobee district where 2,000 persons lost their lives in last year's flood and hurricane.
But Mr. Hoover was not too busy to go through a ceremony close to the heart of many a small boy. He became, last week, a tenderfoot Boy Scout. As U. S. President he will be Commander-in-Chief Scout. He stepped out of doors one bright morning and, with Mrs. Hoover ("the greatest Girl Scout of all") at his elbow, scrutinized the regimental front of 46 scout troops, Boys and Girls. Charles A. Miller, chief adult Scout of Dade County, made a speech. Then Adult Scout John C. Norsk saluted and presented wee Scout Charles A. Miller Jr. Gravely the little fellow saluted Mr. Hoover, drew himself up on tiptoe. Still he was too short, so Mr. Hoover bent down within reach of his shaky fingers, which fastened the gold fleur-de-lis emblem of a Tenderfoot into the blue serge Hoover lapel. Scout Miller saluted. Scout Hoover saluted.
Politicians winked at each other, to think that Mr. Hoover was now pledged to one good deed each day.
The Hoovers boarded Manhattan Banker Jeremiah Milbank's yacht Saunterer and cruised away at slow speed for the Florida Keys, for Fort Myers and a birthday party with their great and good friend Thomas A. Edison. Mr. Hoover planned to go on around to the West Coast and try for an early-running tarpon.
Not quite all the Hoover troubles had been smoothed out. Dispute again arose as to who shall hold the Presidential hat at the Inauguration. Newt Butler of West Branch, Iowa, was to have been official hat-holder, because as a boy he "licked the stuffing out of Bert Hoover." But now 92-year old J. W. Reeder of Tipton, six miles from West Branch, claimed the honor, chiefly on grounds of seniority. Mr. Hoover will decide the hat-holding problem personally.