Evening Star Newspaper, June 19, 1932, Page 67

s e Features — Puzzles PART 7. he Sunday Star Magasine WASHINGTON, = = B NE JUNE 19, 1932 Fiction Books 16 PAGLES. The Presidents Eighteen-Hour Day Myr. Hoover Is Called the Busiest Chief Executive This Country Has Ever Had—War on Depression Often Keeps Him at His Desk From Early Morning Until Midnight—A Strenuous Schedule, Yet He Seems to Thrive on It—Steady Nerve and Calm Judgment. EPUBLICS are tradi- tionally lucky. And ours has been luckier than most. At present we face a situation generally agreed to be as se- rious as war, if not more so; and the vortex of the conflict is in the National Capital. More specifically, it is in the President’s office, for in addi- tion to his executive duties the President is a vital and powerful part of the legisla- tive branch of the Govern- ment. From that branch must come drastic economies and the bills to balance the budget, as well as emergency legislation to meet the eco- nomic crisis. ‘Other branches of the Government fight each on its separate front; the President of the United States fights on all fronts, literally scores of them. It becomes hLis duty to originate programs, to examine all that may be offered by others, to urge and plead both for and against pending legislation, to use the veto power and, finally, to accept the respon- sibility for such programs as he and the Congress origi- nate. = These programs now cover every subject from banking, railroads, shipping and agri- culture to measures for sav- ing the unemployed from starvation; they range through the tariff, foreign debts, threatened collapse of European nations and war in the Far East. How simple, indeed, if he could delegate some considerable part of this far-flung battle line to the Army and Navy, with in- structions to go and defeat the enemy! But this time the enemy is within. The center of the fight is Wash- ington and the commander in chief is the President of the United States. WITH such a situation, and no possible alternatives, we find in the execu- tive office of the White House a man who has had no vacation for four years, who handles 15 to 25 conferences daily with- out undue fatigue, who has a memory for facts and figures that has quite ap- propriately been likened to a card index; a man who rises shortly after 6 o'clock in the morning and works until close to midnight every day. He actually thrives on it! This has been his program for many months. But he is in excellent health. Eye and hand and nerves are steady. He can snatch 30 minutes of sound sleep before dinner and come up refreshed. For Herbert Hoover there is nothing very new in all this. He was doing it years ago in Belgium. And before that in China, South Africa and other places. Engineers usually rise early and if need be they work late. Herbert Hoover is an engineer. Nevertheless, the working day he puts in is almost incredible, for even engineers are human. No other President of the United States has even approxi- mated his hours; no other President ever had to, but it is equally certain that very few of them would have been phys- ically able to sustain the burden. And there, of course, is the luck of our Re- From lithograph by N. J. Woolf, reproduced through courtesy of Schwartz Galleries, “He has kept fit despite the strain under which he works.” By Chester T. Crowell public. Let us have a look at this work- ing day: Six-fifteen in the morning finds him awake; he never rises later than that hour and on many occasions he has started the day earlier. His first ac- tivity is a session with the morning news- papers; they bring the earliest world news available, and Washington is a world capital now. At 7 o'clock the “medicine ball cabinet” gathers on the lawn immediately behind the White House executive offices. They and the President are attired in clothes suitable for the strenuous exercise, for this is no social function. The ball is hurled vig- orously for not less than 30 minutes. Among those who are most regular in attendance are the Secretary of War, the Attorney General, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Jahncke, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Heath, Justice Stone of the Supreme Court, Mark Sullivan, Dr. Joel Boone, the President’s physician, and two of the President’s secretaries, Laurence Richey and Walter H. Newton. Last Fall, when the members of the college foot ball team which Herbert Hoover served as business manager back in California (he was too light to make the team him- self) visited the White House, he invited them to join the medicine ball session. They did, but quite a number didn’t like it, and some dropped out. Too strenuous for gentlemen in their fifties! The only time Mr. Hoover has been absent in two years was quite recently, when he arose at 5:30 o'clock to write a message to the Senate which he deliv- ered in person at noon, reading the final draft, pen in hand, in the White House automobile on the way to the Capitol. The “medicine ball cabiret” adjourns to quaff beakers of orange juice, after which the President bathes, changes clothes and has another go at the morning newspapers—the out-of-town papers which had not arrived when he arose, AT 8:30 o’clock he is in his office and the day's work begins. Before him will be a vast and varied assortment of papers to be read, and conveniently at hand the pad and pencil with which he will make notes as he proceeds. This will go on until 1:30 o’clock, but with frequent interruptions. At 9 o'clock his secretaries make their morning reports, which cover, among other matters, telephone messages received as late as midnight of the preceding day. They must never be more than 10 seconds from a telephone re- ceiver. Obviously, the Presi- dent himself cannot answer in person unless the subject matter is of such a nature that he must. However, now- adays he frequently must. In fact, Mr. Hoover is the first President of the United States who ever had a tele- phone receiver on his desk. Visitors admitted between 9:30 and 11 o'clock are usually persons the President wishes to see on urgent business. Theoretically they should be few; actually they sometimes are numerous. It cannot be helped. These visitors are ushered in by Secretary Joslin and he also ushers them out, spending a few seconds in po- lite farewells. These tiny in=- terims the President puts to use! He can turn his mind instantly from the interview just closed to the business in hand on the desk before him, sometimes adding just one sentence to what he is writ« ing, or absorbing one more brief paragraph of what he is reading before the next vis- itor arrives. The hour and a half be- tween 11 o'clock and 12:30 is set aside for those who wish to see the President, prece- dence being given to cabinet members, Senators and Rep- resentatives, with a second precedence to visitors from distant places. These sched- ules are made up as far in advance as possible, and even then have to be held subject to the urgent business always pending before the State Department; when the Secretary of State is an- nounced he comes ahead of every one. For many years 12:30 had been the reception hour for the President; the line formed and he shook hands as it passed by. Now that has been discon- tinued. It proved to be utterly impos- sible, for the lines grew longer and longer at the very time when the burden upon the President was heaviest. During re- ceptions at the Executive Mansion and the executive office from January 1 to February 15 this year . . . just 46 days . . . he had shaken hands with more than 20,000 persons! Moreover, there were pending requests from 160 national organizations that were to meet in the Capital during the year that he hold re- ceptions for the delegates attending. That simply could not be done, so the ancient custom was abandoned. Instead, the secretaries arrange for a small group representing the organization holding its convention to meet the President, or make engagements for the delegations to assemble on the lawn back of the execu- tive offices to have their photographs taken with the President. Sometimes the groups are small; at other times they