Backstage

Last week Franklin Roosevelt, the man of action, stepped out of the role he likes. Behind the headlines, he got in some heavy thinking, some quiet, effective desk work.

On the whole, the long expected "reassurance" of Business, given through the microphone in his "fireside" talk Sunday before, had borne fruit. So deep-dyed a Republican as Nicholas Murray Butler, in addressing his incoming class at Columbia, had taken the opportunity to say: "No open-minded person can help but have a deep sympathy for the President for the way in which he is bearing the tremendous problems facing the nation." And although melancholy Business Editor Alexander Dana Noyes of the New York Times might long "for some of the plain speaking on really vital questions which the people used to get at moments of confusion from . . . Wilsons and Clevelands," the perspicacious Wall Street Journal reported "a more confident feeling."

Well the President knew that patching up a truce between Management and Labor would be no tougher job than patching one up between Capital and Government. He began quietly passing out the word that the Administration had no present intentions of creating a central bank. President Francis Marion Law of American Bankers Association left the Presidential study cheerfully remarking: "He has not got it in for the bankers and the bankers have not got it in for him."

Business was further reassured when it became known that the President did not see eye-to-eye with Labor on the 30-hr. week and that in certain industries he was even prepared to face wage reductions. His housing program, the Administration's climactic effort to make the country prime its own industrial pump, had a full head of steam behind it. But the President believed that if the inordinately high wages of the building trades were reduced, he would get more housing and the workers a higher annual income.

Another backstage performance of the week: The President began his promised series of conferences with industrial leaders to bring about his "trial period of industrial peace." He actually saw only a few but he was reported in contact with many a bigwig by "other media."

P:In Moscow, famed Socialist H. G. Wells interviewed Joseph Stalin on the subject of Franklin D. Roosevelt and "planned economy." Mr. Wells thought Mr. Roosevelt was having a "colossal" socialistic effect, but the Marxian Pope pronounced verdict as follows:

". ..I do not belittle the personal qualities of President Roosevelt, his initiative, courage and decisiveness. Undoubtedly, of all the leaders of the present capitalist world, he is the most powerful figure. But as soon as he proceeds to undertake anything seriously threatening the foundations of capitalism he will suffer utter defeat. . . . The interests of the poor are different from those of the rich. So far as I can see, Mr. Roosevelt cannot find a path toward a reconciliation. . . .

"Subjectively, Americans may think they are reconstructing society, but objectively the present basis of society is being preserved. . . . And there will be no real, planned economy."

In Joseph Stalin's view a revolution is, of course, both necessary and inevitable. Of evolutionary England, he said:

"Of all the ruling classes, the ruling class of England has proved to be the cleverest and most flexible, from the point of view of its class interests. . . .

"The British have never foresworn small concessions and reforms, but it would be a mistake to think these reforms were revolutionary. ... I cannot conceive of such a flexible strategy being employed by the United States, Germany or France."

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