Good Form

All the ex-tenants of the White House --Mrs. Thomas J. Preston Jr. (formerly Cleveland), Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Mrs. William Howard Taft, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, Mr. & Mrs. Herbert Clark Hoover, and also Mrs. Benjamin Harrison who never was a tenant*--were sent invitations last week to attend the second inaugural of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jan. 20. The political sympathies of few if any of the invitees would lead them to attend, but if they declined they would miss an opportunity to see the present tenant of the White House in his best form. For last week he entered 1937 in high fettle.

He showed it to the long array of Congressmen who called on him at his office, to Andrew Mellon who presented the U. S. with $19,000,000 worth of Old Masters (see p. 41), to the diplomats of 50 nations who came to shake his hand at the first state reception of the season, even to the members of the Panama Canal Tolls Commission who came to talk shop with him. But most of all he showed his New Year form to newshawks who came to his press conference. He was bursting with things to tell, and spoke with the same ringing voice which correspondents heard at the press conference that followed the Supreme Court decision killing NRA-- his famed ''horse &buggy'' utterance. Before he finished he had got around to the same topic in a somewhat different way.

But first he discussed the case of Mr. Cuse who forced the State Department willynilly to grant him a license to export airplanes to Spain (see col. 3). The President declared that 90% of U. S. business was willing to give up profits for the sake of preserving absolute neutrality and only a 10% minority was out for selfish profit regardless of its effect upon the country. He referred approvingly to the Supreme Court's decision expounding the President's power in the "vast external realm" of international affairs (TIME, Jan. 4), and made it clear that the stupid Congress which last year, in extending the Neutrality Act, refused to grant him discretionary power in proclaiming arms embargoes, ought now to see the light. Then he asked his hearers please to excuse the homily but it was a matter on which he felt strongly.

Presently he went on to discuss minimum wages and hours of Labor. He recited from memory the text of a note which he had sent the late Gus Gennerich to get from a weeping girl who stood beside the line of march on his triumphant tour of New England before election: "Dear Mr. President:

"I wish you could do something to help us girls. You are the only recourse we have left. We are working in a garment factory and up to a month ago our minimum wages were $n a week. Today 200 of us girls have been cut down to $4, $5 and $6 a week. Please send someone from Washington to restore our minimum wage so we can live."

He carefully instructed the newshawks just what to write about the matter. They should just say that, he felt "something must be done" about minimum wages. What he was going to do he did not divulge, but at just the right moment, with just the right inflection he put the newshawks in mind of the fact that the members of the Supreme Court are old and likely to die. He did this by calling attention to the fact that he had not nominated a single Federal judge over 60 years of age and that he thought this was a good rule.

In preparation for the big things at which he thus hinted, the President last week added a new member to his office staff. Beginning this week, eldest son James was to be assigned "odd jobs," his post for the present to be assistant to Executive Clerk Rudolph Forster. A clearer indication of what Son James may do was given by the fact that Press Secretary Stephen Early has moved to the office of the late Louis McHenry Howe and Son James is allotted Mr. Early's office. Observers inclined to the belief that soon James Roosevelt would become a Presidential secretary, the first President's son to hold such a job since Andrew Jackson employed his foster-son Andrew Jackson Donelson.

*She married President Harrison after he left office.

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