Bibliophiles

Revelation of how President Roosevelt occupied his spare time last November was made last week by his Assistant Secretary Stephen Early. The late William Forbes Morgan, Mrs. Roosevelt's uncle by marriage and treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, brought around to the White House a large box full of sheets of paper. Whenever the President had nothing else to do. he spent his time signing his name on sheet after sheet. By the time he was ready to sail for South America Nov. 17, the whole boxful was used up.

Then Mr. Morgan took the box of paper back and had each sheet bound into a copy of the 350-page Democratic campaign book. This book, in which many businesses had bought advertising space, was sold last year at the Democratic convention for $2.50 a copy. With the President's autograph bound in, the same book, dressed up in leather covers, was offered as a de luxe President's edition at $250 a copy. Letters went out urging people to buy, accompanied by contracts, suggestively filled out for the purchase of four copies for $1,000. In case a purchaser did not wish to keep this costly reading matter, the contract provided that he might turn over his copy to the Democratic National Committee ''for distribution by them as they see fit" (presumably for resale at a second profit).

Last week, the ingenious Mr. Morgan having died (TIME, May 3), Secretary Early felt called upon to make explanations, because Representative Bertrand H. Snell (Republican) produced the photostat of a letter, purporting to have been sent out by the Democratic National Committee, offering copies of the book for sale and saying: "We are using this book as a means of clearing up the deficit and the President has made his contribution by individually autographing each of the volumes.

"The sale of the book enables us to legally accept corporation checks, and this is the way all the companies who are assisting us are handling these expenditures."

Mr. Snell said he was going to demand a Congressional investigation. The Federal Corrupt Practices Act of 1925 forbids any corporation to make a political contribution in any Federal election. Either, he thought, the law had been broken (penalty: for corporations $5,000 fine; for their guilty officers, and for political beneficiaries $1,000 fine, a year in jail) or a loophole had been found which needed plugging. Mr. Early wanted it recorded that when the President filled his idle hours writing his name on pieces of paper, he had no notion that they would be sold to corporate bibliophiles.

Two days later the official report to Congress by the Democratic National Committee revealed the names of several corporations with expensive bookish tastes --most of them also sellers of the kind of goods of which the Government buys quantities: Bethlehem Steel Co. (20 copies); Automatic Voting Machine Corp. (12); Monolith and Medusa Portland Cement Companies. Hammermill Paper Co. (10 each); California Portland Cement Co., Deere & Co. (8 each); The Carborundum Co., Inland Steel Co., Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. (4 each). Other bibliophiles: Walter P. Chrysler (50 copies), Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, International Association of Machinists, American Federated Hose Workers of Philadelphia (4 each); Charles M. Schwab (1).

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