Montana labor news., 1937-11-18
DI5PELLING THE FOG
By CHARLES NICHOLSON
Director of Publicity

of the Roosevelt administration, for
it will give them something of con-
temporary interest to find fault with.
If the Senate and House adopt the
measures mentioned by the Presi-
dent in his talk about the extra ses-
sion, the opportunity will be i'm
proved by denouncing the National
Legislature as a rubber-stamp Con-
gress and marking a subtle and sin
lister approach to dictatorship. On
the other hand, if the Congress, or
members of it, oppose these mea-
sures we may expect to hear from
Republican spokesman, and to read
from anti-administration editors and
columnists, that the Presidents in
f~luence is vanishing and that the
Democratic party is approaching a
ruinous split.
So far, these distinguished sources
of woe-mongering have c~ontented
themselves with finding deep and
~subversive reasons for the special
session call, the least meretricious of
which is that the President is en-
deavoring to hurry Congress into
passing some unspecified legislation
for some dire purpose Of his own.
1t has not occurred to any Of them
that perhaps all the President is
looking for is progress along those
lines of domestic service that failed
to reach enactment at the last SEES
sion-farm legislation and the wages
and hours bill, for example.
Some details of these are highly
controversial, although the objec-
tives are in accord with the whole
membership, except the small mi
nority who are, on principle, against
anything a Democratic President is
for. incidentally there have been
some weird stories published during
the Summer.
HOt-Weather COlumnizing
The weather in Washington was
distressingly hot, Congress had gone
home, the President was on vacation.
Perhaps it was this combination
of circumstances, and the resulting
dearth of news happenings at the
Nations Capital, that was respon-
sible for some of the torrid imagin-
ings.
Pretty much everybody who can
get away, leaves Washington in the
Summer months, but apparently this
year there was left at home a large
population of intimate friends and
close advisors of the President de-
voting their particular attention to
whispering his intimate secrets to
the press commentators most hostile
to him.
One hot weather tale appeared in
the New York Herald ribune-it
naturally would appear there-re-
citing that President Roosevelt has
decided that unless he takes a third
nomination himself, he is DESTROYS
that Senator LaFollette, Republican
Progressive from Wisconsin, should
succeed him.
The news came, so the ~veracious
correspondent informed us, from
intimate political friends of the
President, who got it from him at
a talk of a private and personal
nature"
Now anybody might think that as
astute a politician as the President
is credited with being might be made
wary of talking confidentially with
men who were prone to give the
widest circulation to his confidential
communications, particularly as
there has hardly been an issue of the
newspapers, served by these cor
respondents, in which the anony-
nous intimate confidante has not
been quoted. But, if we are able to
believe the columnists, he is so I'M
%suspecting, so innocent, so ingenious,
that he goes on babbling his inmost
thoughts, to people SO careless of
obligations and amenities as to dis
close to the opposition press all they
hear in private and personal con
fabs.
l observe, also, that that convent
ent anonymous Presidential init
mate conveyed the tidings that the
speech of Senator Guffey of Penn
sylvania, in which he arraigned some
of the Senators who opposed the
President on the Supreme Court is
sue and prophesied that they would
be defeated for reelection, repre-
sented the White House position, if
it was not in fact instigated from
that source.
What the vigorous Senator from
Pennsylvania did was 10 voice his
own opinion of the proper treatment
) of those he accused of disloyalty and
ingratitude. Heaven knows the SEN
ators on the other side were not
chary of unflattering comment on
the ideas and motives of those who
advocated the Presidents Supreme
: Court plan. 1t is not improbable
that Senator Guffey has company in
his views-but that is very different
: from the thought industriously cir
culated that the Administration and
the Democratic National organization
will exert their influence in Demo
cratic primaries and other state func-