Conference No. 25
STATES & CITIES
Conference No. 25
Most Governors' Conferences, started as annual affairs in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt, are more fun & frolic than work & worry. Last week's twenty-fifth meeting was no exception for the 14 Governors who enjoyed the hospitality of California's James (''Sunny Jim") Rolph Jr. Monkeyshines began when their special train was playfully "held up" at midnight as it crossed the State line. At Truckee, Calif, there was a rodeo and Idaho's Charles Ben Ross exhibited his skill with a lariat, ended by roping Governor Rolph around the neck. There was a picnic near Lake Tahoe and champagne on the train from Sacramento to Oakland. In San Francisco's Palace Hotel the Governors ate off a $500,000 gold service while Communists fussed noisily outside. They gaped in awed silence at the wonders of Yosemite. At Hollywood they were smiled on by pretty cinema girls. Los Angeles gave them a raucous booster welcome.
On paper a Governor's conference looks important and imposing. Actually it is inconsequential. Its participants "debate their common problems," "exchange executive ideas," steer clear of concerted action on real public issues. Last week the Governors held their business sessions in the State Capitol at Sacramento and in the Supreme Court chamber in San Francisco. They pledged their support to Pres ident Roosevelt's recovery program and in return the President, an inveterate conferee when Governor of New York.* invited them all to Washington next winter to discuss such things as oil production and land conservation.
As his emissary President Roosevelt sent Secretary of War Dern, onetime Governor of Utah, to Sacramento to address the conference on the National Recovery Act. Theme of his speech was that States must surrender more & more of their sovereignty to the Federal Government. Declared he:
"State borders must to an extent be disregarded and the United States must be taken as one economic area. . . . Evil practices have hidden behind the bugaboo of State rights long enough. . . . We are trying to rid ourselves of the destructive aspects of the doctrine of laissez faire and to substitute a regulated competition which will operate more justly. If present conceptions of State sovereignty stand in the way of that experiment, it will be a calamity. ... If the National Industrial Recovery Act fails, something more radical will have to be tried. ... It is the rainbow of hope against the black clouds of chaos and if these clouds gather once more, no other democratic recourse will be open to us but the calling of a Constitutional Convention to allow economic planning on a more effective national scale."
Chairman of the conference was Virginia's white-haired, benign John Garland Pollard who spoke on the desirability of mortgagees and mortgagors getting together voluntarily to adjust their debt. But the 62-year-old widower made far more news when he scuttled out of San
Francisco one hour before his colleagues learned that he was to marry his 44-year-old executive secretary in Winnipeg (see p. 30). Last year Governor Pollard happened to remark that, whereas many girls were named Virginia, he had never heard of one called California. Before he left San Francisco he was so swamped with "Californias" that he promised to name his next granddaughter after that State.* Ohio's George White, his suspenders showing under his loose summer coat, harangued the meeting on compulsory unemployment insurance as a worthy substitute for charity and the dole. Connecticut's Wilbur Lucius Cross thought tax exemptions for religious and charitable organizations were much too liberal. South Carolina's stolid, hefty Ibra Charles Blackwood-constantly pestered by persons who wanted to know what the Governor of North Carolina said to the Governor of South Carolina/--made a ringing declaration in favor of a sales tax.
Flicking ashes indignantly from his foot-long cigaret-holder, Nevada's Frederick Bennett Balzar brought up the kidnapping issue, demanded drastic national action by means of a national police. Cried this onetime sheriff: "We as Governors have become too mellow and too prone to listen to the cry of the sob sisters. These kidnappers have become an absolute menace. I favor putting them away not for ten years or 50 years but forever."
Governor Park of Missouri proudly called attention to his State's sentence of death, pronounced last week, upon the kidnapper of Kansas City Manager McElroy's daughter Mary. Said he: "The jury should be given the highest praise. Kidnapping is a vile crime."
Up jumped Montana's Frank Henry Cooney to second this view, to recite how his 27-year-old son Francis had been kidnapped and nearly beaten to death two years ago by two soldiers now doing time in the Alcatraz Island military prison in San Francisco Bay. Setting aside its tra ditional rule against petitions the conference asked President Roosevelt to push his Federal drive against crime to the utmost.
*He attended conference meetings at New London (1920), Salt Lake City (1930), French Lick (1931), Richmond (1932), made many a friend and much political capital for his subseguent campaign for the Presidency. *Governor Pollard has three children, all married: John Garland Jr.. Charles Phillips. Susie Virginia (Mrs. Herbert Lee Boatwright Jr.): two grandchildren, John Garland III, Herbert Lee Boatwright III.
/-Said he: "It's a long time between drinks." Not in California last week was the present Governor of North Carolina, John Christoph Blucher Ehringhaus. He was in Manhattan dickering (successfully) with bankers for an extension of credit to his State. Governor Ehringhaus bragged that North Carolina had cut expenses 32 % since Jan. T. balanced its budget.
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