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Show Washington, D. C. FOURTH TERM DATA Not much has been said about it publicly, but already the question of the Fourth Term has corne in for a lot of backstage discussion. Republicans, worried about it, want to do everything possible to block it. And in the vicinity of the White House, some of those who would like to stay around indefinitely, indefinite-ly, want to do everything possible to encourage it. But those closest to the President are convinced that there will be no Fourth Term. Even if he could get it, they say that this is the last thing Roosevelt wants. Or even if there should be a tremendous tre-mendous demand on the part of the public against changing horses in midstream, they don't think the President would yield.' His ideals for preservation of the democratic system are too deep-rooted, they say, for him to continue in office for what would be a total of 16 years. However, the President does have one very definite political goal, and that is to retain control of congress during his two remaining years in office. He remembers all too clearly, when he was assistant secretary of the navy, the chaos which the country coun-try faced when Woodrow Wilson lost control of the house of representatives. representa-tives. He also remembers the troubles trou-bles faced by Herbert Hoover, Calvin Cal-vin Coolidge and his cousin Teddy Roosevelt when they faced a rebellious rebel-lious congress during their last two years in office. So the President is out to win the house, and win it at all costs next November. To that end he will leave Washington something he hasn't done since 1940 and take a swing through the Middle West some time in October. JOES TO REPUBLICANS Some of FDR's political advisers, among them Democratic Chairman Ed Flynn, tell him privately that the battle to control the house in November will not be easy. One trouble is patronage. Patronage is a word which may bring a bad smell to the public, but to the politician it is like the smell of raw meat to a circus lion. He will not perform without it. Back in the early days of the New Deal, Jim Farley kept a little card index of how every congressman congress-man voted on important issues and what jobs he had received. When the congressman stopped voting right, he stopped getting jobs for his constituents. That system worked like a charm for a while. But in recent years Roosevelt himself him-self has given more and more jobs to Republicans, while Leon Henderson, Hender-son, the greatest job dispenser of war times, has placed everything in the hands of state governors, a large proportion of them Republicans. So today, the President's political friends say that his definition of patronage pa-tronage is: "Something which you hold out to your friends, but use to reward your enemies." And these friends have had the short end of the patronage stick for so long that, as November approaches, ap-proaches, FDR is finding a lot of the old politicoes unwilling to go to bat for him, while the rewarded enemies ene-mies won't stay put. So the-congressional elections are going to be tougher than a lot of people realize, and you will probably see certain seasoned political sea-dogs, sea-dogs, among them Ed Flynn, resigning resign-ing from the picture before many weeks are over. Note: Patronage under the old congressional system had a lot of faults, but it was not half as bad as under the present dollar-a-year man system, where somebody gets a key WPB job or a cellophane commission commis-sion merely because he is the friend of a big accounting firm or a partner part-ner of a Wall Street broker. WHERE CREDIT IS DUE One of the best jobs of Americanization Americani-zation has been done by the Illinois State Register of Springfield in its series of editorials and radio programs pro-grams paying tribute to the big contribution con-tribution foreign groups have made to t'.ie culture and progress of the U. S. A. The radio program, called "Americans "Amer-icans All Immigrants All" told the story of how the men of many races had contributed to this country the Italians, including men like Frank Capra, LaGuardia. and Ernest Cu-neo; Cu-neo; the Welsh, including Charles Elvans Hughes; the Slavs Louis Ad-amic, Ad-amic, Sikorsky, Seversky; Joseph Pulitzer from Hungary, John Philip Sousa from Portugal, George Vour-nas Vour-nas from Greece and .thousands oi others, ' CAriTAL CHAFF C. According to fair-minded Senator Styles Bridges, who sits on the Republican Re-publican side of the aisle, Democratic Demo-cratic Senator Scott Lucas of Illinois is one of the coming men of the country. C. When Henry Kaiser first got his big shipbuilding contracts he had Tommy "The Cork" Corcoran as his Washington contact man. Now he doesn't . . . Kaiser isn't making much headway with his cargo planes. |