News

A sty in his left eye, three days of intermittent rain and cold at Warm Springs, Ga., bad weather that grounded a plane carrying official mail, contrived last week to give Franklin Roosevelt as much rest as even a President could desire.

The dozen newshawks assigned to report his activities found it a welcome relief when they could break off a game of golf or poker to report to a waiting world that:

P: Ambassador William Bullitt had left for Washington.

P: Son James had arrived.

P: The President had dedicated the 5,358th Negro school built by the Julius Rosenwald Fund.

P: Paul V. McNutt, High Commissioner to the Philippines had arrived for a conference (see p. 16).

P: The President had driven 25 miles to dine and hear Negro spirituals as the guest of Cason J. Callaway--one of the group of cotton textile men who recently visited Japan and induced the Japanese voluntarily to limit the exports of cotton to the U. S. (TIME, March 8).

P: A driving rainstorm had kept his car from crawling home over miry roads until 3 a. m.

P: He had sent a telegram to Shawnee, Okla., as a memento to his wife of their 32nd wedding anniversary.

P: Governor Bibb Graves of Alabama had dropped in for a visit and loudly declared: ''Any enemy of President Roosevelt's is an enemy of mine!" The trivia that flowed out from Warm Springs could not have interested the President so much as the news that rolled in: of a Middle West in the frenzied grip of labor trouble, of the terrible New London, Tex., school explosion (see p. 23), of the Capital still in the stitches of the Supreme Court controversy. Two bits of news had a peculiar interest for the President.

One was that Connecticut's House of Representatives had rejected (174-to-83) the Child Labor Amendment. This made the score even for 1937 (four approvals, four rejections) and practically ended hope of final ratification this year.-- The other was a significant commentary on the President's recent implied assurance that he would not stand for a third term. The April issue of FORTUNE published one of its quarterly samplings of public opinion that have proved highly indicative of political trends. To the question of whether Franklin Roosevelt should have a third term in the White House, the public answer was: 43.6%, No; 48.4%, Yes, at least if his second term is successful; 8.0%, Don't Know. Since 40% of the public was opposed last autumn to a second term for Franklin Roosevelt, the implication of the FORTUNE poll was that if Franklin Roosevelt is still as popular in 1940 as he was in 1936 he will have ample opportunity of himself being the "successor" to whom he wishes to hand the U. S. Government "intact."

*For final ratification eight more States must approve. Only nine which have not acted still have Legislatures in session: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Missouri. Nebraska. Since Southern states, New England states, Middle Western farming States are none of them very good prospects for the Amendment, its chances are for the present negligible.

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