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Show NEWS BEHIND THE NEWS I Written for The Telegram By Ray Tucker WASHINGTON American business and industry have recovered re-covered their second wind. They will fight Franklin D. Roosevelt at the next session of congress as they never dared to do before. And the bugler for business in the new conflict will ba George H. Davis, president of the United States chamber of commerce. For the last few years the chamber hss secretly sympathised with the big man whose temporary tempor-ary home stands just across the park from their own citadel. Ex-President Ex-President Henry I. Harriman was one of the authors ef the N R A. His successor. Harper Sibley, was a Harvard classmate of the president, pres-ident, and his wife wsa one of Mrs. Roosevelt's bridesmaids. Messrs. Harriman and Sibley, naturally, pulled their punches sgainat F. D. R. During their incumbency the chamber was a voice crying In the wilderness. Mr. Davis, however, plana to put a few new vitamins into his gang's sinews. So Davis is a chap warth meeting and knowing. Mr. Davis, physically, can double dou-ble for Alf Landon. He haa often been mistaken on the streets for the Republican's 193 nominee. Hs has the same grey hsir, short ehunky build, bright black eyes, nervous energy and spectacles. He looks like an "almost president." He's an Horatio Alger boy an up-from-the-ranks career which resentful business loves to thrust in ths face of the president. Beginning Be-ginning as a clerk, he rose to head of a profitable elevator company in Kansas City, and than he branched out into buying land In tha wheat country. He Is a typical Kanaan. Though he's a teetotaler, he mixes and serves drinks for his guests. Mr. Davis Is a fighter, whereaa his immediate predecessors were compromisers and friends of the president His mission, he feels, is to organise buslnsss and industry in-dustry so that they can repel governmental onslaughts that contemplate further regimentation. regimenta-tion. So, if he has his way, the r ' next sesaion will reaolve Itself into ' a battle between big bualneaa and big government. President Roosevelt's habit of castigating publicly private guests at the White House may deprive hlra of advice on public sentiment so essential to a chief executive. In recent speeches Mr. Roosevelt Roose-velt has divulged ideas enunciated enunciat-ed by some of his friends, particularly particu-larly publishers and then proceeded proceed-ed to ridicule them in detail and derision. He uaed guests in his own home as horrible examples, and naturally they don't like it So the word has been passed to prospective visitors to say nothing noth-ing and let the president do all the talking. Then he won't have the subject for a sermon. The White Houss boycott may asaume dangerous proportions. With a cabinet and secretariat which tells him only what he wants to know, F. D. R.'s great need is honest and Independent advice. But he won't get It if he peralats in preaching on hi volunteer advisers. For years a blind beggar has sat on the wail fringing Senator Sena-tor Hale's old-fashioned home in Washington, and beaeeched pas-sersby pas-sersby to Invest in his shoelaces. Business, however, was none too good until President Rooaevelt appointed Hugo L. Black to the supreme court. On that day, and for several days thereafter, the beggar switched from his usual cry of "Pleas buy my shoelaces." He said in sing-song fashion for all to hear: "Nobody can annul an oath he has once taken," meaning mean-ing that Mr. Black could never wipe out the stain ha Incurred when he joined the klan. Both Republican and Democratic law-years, law-years, whose, offices Infest the neighborhood, dropped large pieces of silver into his hat as a reward for his anti-Black pronouncements. pro-nouncements. Ironically, the blind man Is a favorite of numerous public officials offi-cials who realde or work in the ' vicinity. Including-Justice Bran-deis, Bran-deis, Secretary Hull, John L. Lewis, Ambassador Bullitt and, of course, Mr. Hale. They won't admit ad-mit It, but most of them think ha has the right idea. The rebuke of Father Coughlln measures the depth to which all third party movements in the United 8tatse have sunk. It demonstrates dem-onstrates once again that the supreme lsaue In American poll-tica poll-tica ia the full dinner pail. The Black appointment fur-niahed fur-niahed Catholic Coughlinitea with a swell chance to denounce F. D. R. if they cared to do so. Yet not a aingla member of ths hsirarchy has spoken, and Cardinal Mun-delein Mun-delein recently entertained the president aa a luncheon guest. In several states erstwhile members of the Townsend movement for old age payments will run agalnat antlrourt senators with F. D. R.'s political bleasing. Their economic sins have been forgiven and forgotten. for-gotten. The late Huay Long's Louisiana machine can wangle favors from the White House at any time of ths night of day. Everybody's a pal these daya! To paraphrase Father Divine, Harlem's negro revivalist: "Politicsit's "Poli-ticsit's wonderful!" Motor csrrier bureau of the Interstate commerce commission is swamped with work and must be enlarged. . . . Bill limiting freight trains to 70 cars will be stubbornly fought by railroads aa heavy addition to sxpense without with-out Increasing safety. . . . Analysts " report that increased taxes are important factor in discouraging home builders. . . . Motorists in United States pay nearly $1,300.-000,000 $1,300.-000,000 annually in taxea, or IT per cent of life value of cars. . . . Internal revenue bureau charged with evasion of civil service law by appointing 2300 extra "deputy collectors" who are really clerks. ... Visitors to Wakefield ar ahown "room where Washington was born" In a house erected 12 years ago. Copyright 1937, for The Telegram |