Unexpected Fishing Trip

Unexpected Fishing Trip

One day last week the Vice President had a tete-`a-tete with the President of the U. S. Shortly after he emerged, an inconsequential item of news began to trickle through Washington. Political quidnuncs listened to it with blank surprise. If they had been told that in the face of pending Congressional action on a phalanx of important New Deal bills Franklin Roosevelt had decided to go off on a fishing trip, they would have been only mildly surprised. But this was man-bites-dog. John Nance Garner was going fishing in Texas, off for an indefinite vacation of two to six weeks.

Never before while Congress was in session had Jack Garner done anything of this kind. In Congress he has been one of the President's chief behind-scenes wirepullers, arranger of neat political compromises, legislative uncle of the New Deal. With the Executive department reorganization, wages & hours and taxloophole-plugging bills on the way, with the Supreme Court enlargement bill expected to produce such a fight that perhaps the Vice President's vote and certainly his influence would be needed, Jack Garner was slipping away.

"We recommend the rejection of this bill as a needless, futile and utterly dangerous abandonment of Constitutional principle.

... It would not banish age from the bench nor abolish divided decisions. It would not affect the power of any court to hold laws unconstitutional. ... It would not reduce the expense of litigation nor speed the decision of cases. It is a proposal without precedent and without justification. ... It is a measure which should be so emphatically rejected that its parallel will never again be presented to the free representatives of the free people of America."

Such was the majority report of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presented to the Senate the day after Jack Garner departed. That coincidence lent color to reports that the reason the President had been willing to excuse Oldster Garner from duty, was that the Vice President had grown more and more to side with those "free representatives" who want to kick over New Deal traces.

But no snapping turtle can be more close-mouthed than Vice President Garner and there was nothing to confirm such a supposition. But if the supposition were not valid, there remained only one inference: President and Vice President neither expected nor hoped to win action on the Supreme Court or any other important issue for several weeks--the White House had resigned itself to letting the New Deal program sink or swim in the Congressional doldrums.

P: To the White House came Artist James Montgomery Flagg to present Tree-Lover Roosevelt with a gift. It was a poster for the Forest Service, showing Uncle Sam, wearing goatee and something resembling

C.C.C. uniform, staring sternly into the eyes of all citizens and pointing to a flaming forest. Its legend:

YOUR FORESTS-- YOUR FAULT-- YOUR LOSS!

P: One April day, six years ago when Herbert Hoover was President, Mrs. Lizzie Jaynes, cashier of a "Garden T Shoppe" in Washington was mortally wounded in a holdup. One Thomas Jordon, 31-year-old busboy, was among those suspected. Two years ago Thomas Jordon, living in Mount Vernon, N. Y., and wishing to get married wrote to inquire whether he was still under suspicion. Two Federal officers went to question him, obtained a confession. He was tried for murder, repudiated his confession (which he said had been obtained by threats to drag his fiancee into the case) and convicted. Five times reprieved, he was still in the death house awaiting execution last May when Franklin Roosevelt, trolling for tarpon off Texas, received a letter from Newshawk Philip H. Love of the Washington Star. Newshawk Love reported that, preparing himself to write about the execution, he had consulted an account he had written six years ago at the time of the murder. He had found discrepancies. Checking up with police records, he found that dying Lizzie Jaynes had described her murderer as 6 ft. tall, fair haired and grey eyed. Jordon was 5 ft. 65 in., black-haired, brown-eyed. Franklin Roosevelt stopped trolling long enough to radio Washington, stay Thomas Jordon's execution for the sixth time, order the Department of Justice to investigate. Last week, four days before the seventh time set for execution, Franklin Roosevelt commuted Busboy Jordon's sentence to life imprisonment.

P: In Manchester, Mass. Edward Mandell House, 78-year-old adviser to the last previous Democratic President, arrived to spend his 40th summer in the Massachusetts North Shore. Questioned by newshawks he predicted flatly: "Roosevelt will not be a candidate for a third term."

P: At press conference Franklin Roosevelt was asked what he thought of Royal S.

Copeland, Senator from New York with whom he has long been on the outs, as a Democratic candidate for Mayor next autumn against the President's good friend, Socialist-Republican-Fusionist Fiorello LaGuardia. The President replied: "Ha! ha! ha!" When this was reported to New York's bumbling Senator, he cracked back: "I'm delighted if the idea gave him a chance to laugh. If he got enjoyment, that's fine. He needs it. As a health matter it's a good thing to laugh.

"I am, however, capable of making a decision on my own initiative. I am not a candidate for mayor. ... I like the Senate. Particularly I like the group I am with in the Senate, the people who are opposing the Supreme Court Plan."

P: "For us an adequate merchant marine has to be a new merchant marine." So wrote Franklin Roosevelt last week pointing out that no freighter for the foreign trade had been built in U. S. shipyards for 15 years. He asked Congress to provide 1) a $10,000,000 appropriation, 2) authorization to contract for $150,000,000 worth of ships, as a starter for his friend Joseph Kennedy, once head of SEC, now chairman of the Maritime Commission, charged with subsidizing the rundown merchant fleet of the U. S. into efficient operating order.

P:To the post of Assistant Secretary of War, vacant since Harry Woodring was upped to full Secretary last September, President Roosevelt appointed Louis Arthur Johnson, commander of the American Legion in 1932-33, director of the Veterans division in last year's Democratic campaign. A West Virginia lawyer, captain in the World War, now 46, Legionary Johnson's chief responsibility will be buying all the Army's supplies.

P: Much-traveling Mrs. Roosevelt last week traveled to upstate New York and to coastal North Carolina. Soon after she returned to Washington late last week a young lady whom she had been putting up at the White House departed. Two years ago Mrs. Roosevelt met Roberta Jones, 19, of St. Petersburg, Fla. studying dancing at Manhattan's Neighborhood Playhouse.

Last month she invited the dancer, now Roberta Jonay to dance at the Press Party in the White House (TIME, June 7). Result: Miss Jonay got a job in the floor show at Washington's Shoreham. Ever-generous Mrs. Roosevelt insisted that her friend stay on under her great roof, sleeping in the Rose Room, taking her meals with the family, traveling out Connecticut Ave. every evening in a White House limousine to do her 15-minute turn at the Shoreham. Last week Roberta Jonay, bound for Broadway, was as morally certain of landing a good job as a lucky young girl can be.

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