Evening Star Newspaper, June 19, 1932, Page 68

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JUNE 19, 1932 total many hundreds. This arrangement caves much conversaticn, handshaking and valuable time. HIS is scheduled to end a few minutes before 1 o'clock. Then the Presi- dent’s secretaries hasten in to make re- ports on their activities of the foreroon. They will, by this time, have had many interviews, and quite a number of their reports will be of a nature requiring the President's decision. At 1:15 the Presi- dent should be on his way to luncheon. He may not be. of course, but that is the schedule. If all goes well he will have entertained his guests . there are nearly always guests, and naturally they have matters of importance to discuss . . . and will be back in his office at 2:10 o'clock. If there are no guests the President gives only part of that time to lunch. Those who must be at their posts when he is at his scamper away at a pace which represents an earnest effort to run without appearing to do so and, some- how, still retain their dignity. For those at the White House luncheons are sketchy affairs. When there are no guests the President will be absent 15 or 20 minutes, total elapsed time. On his return he will be at work until 6:15. That, however, is merely the schedule; sometimes he is at work until 7. Again he follows his custom of returning to the papers on his desk before a visitor has passed through the doorway. It is a performance that amazes all who witness it. There is no apparent haste, no wrinkling of the brow; he simply files the matter of the interview in a convenient convolution of the brain and returns to the business previously in hand without seeming to have been interrupted at all. If he gets away from his office at the scheduled 6:15 the reward will be 30 or even possibly 40 minutes of rest. He has trained himself to fall asleep almost in- stantly, and usually awakes without being called. Like most men accustomed to these strenuous schedules, he also bathes and dresses very quickly. A very short time will see him through the shower and into evening dress. Dinner is served at 8 o'clock and he rarely causes delay, because dinner is an extremely important part of the day’s work, guests numbering from a minimum of 3 to 20 or 30. It is here that mat- ters requiring too much time to be taken up during the day are discussed. At the conclusion of the meal Mrs. Hoover con- ducts the ladies to a drawing room and the men go to Mr. Hoover's study. There they will usually remain until about 10:30, although midnight is not unusual. When matters of the gravest importance are pressing, the hour may be still later. On the morning when Mr. Hoover arose at 5:30 o'clock to begin writing a message to the Senate he had retired at 1. He had hoped to get away from Washington on Friday afternoon for the Decoration day week end and return Tuesday, but too much important legis- lation was pending. He managed to leave at 5 o’clock Sat- urday afternoon, returned from the Rapidan camp Sunday evening, held con- ferences until half-past midnight, was in the office at 8:30 Monday morning as usual, conferred that night with Secre- tary of the Treasury Mills, Owen D. Young, Democratic congressional lead- ers and others until nearly 1 o’clock, arose at daybreak Tuesday, wrote his message and gave it to the stenographers at 9 o'clock, attended a meeting of the cabinet at 10 o'clock, sent word to the Senate that he would appear at noon, left the office at 11:55 o’'clock, read his message at 12:03 o'clock, returned to the office and took up the routine of the day, feeling fit, cheerful and energetic. PPARENTLY he finds the necessary mental relaxation in turnlng from one subject to another, for certainly he does not tire; nor does he find it im- possible to notice the minor events of the day. He was in the midst of the budget- balancing bout with Congress when the newspapers reported that three children had arrived in Washington to plead with him for the release of their father, who was charged with crime. They were two girls and a boy, aged 13, 9 and 7. Mr. Hoover requested his staff to assemble the data on this case at once and gave orders that the children should be ad- mitted. This was not a supervised stunt, with councel in the background giving stage directions. Some of the data had to be obtained by long-distance telephone. When the children arrived in the Presi- dent’s office at 12:45 o’clock he had gone over the records in the case and then asked the eldest girl to tell her story. She told it so well that he was aston- ished and impressed, and told her that such bright and well behaved youngsters showing their measure of devotion to their father must have a father who is worthy of it. He promised to use his good offices in behalf of their petition, and an hour later the father was released from cus- tody. Long before that, however, Mr. Hoover was back at his routine. The turning aside for an event of so much moment in the lives of the children had cost him less than half an hour, during which he had both heard the petitioners and examined the record. The Presi- dent’s fondness for children, of course, is well known, and these youngsters had certainly shown remarkable initiative. While Mr. Hoover has had to cut down the loss of time that would result from handshaking, he frequently answers a letter from a child, regardless of what may be pending at the moment. He knows how to grab the necessary min- ute, and no doubt finds a wholesome re- laxation in these little excursions from routine. He also has the invaluable gift of find- ing terminal facilities for an interview without being brusque—a rare quality. By contrast, this art remained a mystery to President William Howard Taft throughout his tenure of office, with the result that he frequenty sent some one hurrying out to get him an apple be- cause he had no time left for luncheon. His callers had remained too long. Presi- dent Roosevelt liked to talk to many per- sons during the day, and knew how to keep them going as well as coming, but President Wilson was appalled by the demands of visitors and declined to re- ceive more than three or four a day. Few Presidents have welcomed as many as 10, and no one has ever attempted Mr. Hoover's daily stunt of 20 to 25 confer- ences during office hours alone. They didn’t have to, of course, but the firing line of this great battle against world- wide depression runs right across Mr. Hoover’s desk. Not only domestic affairs, but the increasing gravity of the situa- tion in Europe and Asia have added tre- mendously to the pressure on the White House. VBRY few Presidents during the last quarter of a century have done as little traveling as Mr. Hoover. The rea- son for his sticking on the job, of course, is obvious. There is an unprecedented Top Soil Built Up an Inch in 400 Years UCH has been written and much has been said about the loss of soil fertility througi the washing action of unretarded rainfalls on sloping land. Too often these facts have been considered only as the theorizing of “cranks” on the subject. A case which takes the discus- sion out of the realm of theory into the realm of hard and cold figures is cited at the” Missouri experimental station of the Department of Agri- culture. The area tested is in a belt abound- ing in the so-called Shelby loam. A 1-inch rain fell over the area under ob- servation, a slope 146 feet long. The result of the rain was the loss of 40 per cent of the water, which ran off instead of sinking into the ground, and with the rain went 191: tons of top soil per acre. Last year a test was made on adjacent plots of land, one of which had been under cultivation for 50 years with no remedial steps taken to prevent the washing effect of the rain and the other new ground broken out of blue grass five years ago. Identical seed and identical cultivation methods were carried out. The new land pro- duced 51 bushels of corn per acre, while that which had been cultivated for 50 years vielded 14. Careless farming, which has gone on for gen- erations in this country, the vastness of the agricultural rescurces being. conducive to the carelessness, has brought about a condition in which many farmers already are “sub-soil farm- ers” and as such can hardly make & paying thing of their work even under the best of price conditions. It has taken nature about 400 years to build up a single inch of good top soil. The average depth in this country of the top soil is about 7 or 8 inches. In other words, it would take around 2,800 years to build up the top soil existing on the farm land of this country by nature’s own methcd. The top soil, then, would appear to be a precious heritage that should be guarded zealously. It is to be expected that growing a crop would take something frcm the fertility of the soil, but what growing corn, for instance, removes from the soil each year isn't a fiea bite to what the erosive action of rainfall robs the soil of each year. It is estimated that for each year's loss of fertility through crop-growing, that same year takes 20 times as much fertility by ero- sion and not only takes fertility, but takes the soil as well. Ten years of unchecked erosion on a steep hillside can easily remove what nature spent 400 years producing. Fully three-quarters of the land under culti- vation in this country is subject to erosicn and from that land a billion and half tons of the top soil is washing annually because no care is taken to prevent the loss. Much of the in- formation cbtained by careful and painstaking research as to proper methods of fertilizing, cuitivating and seed preparation has been offset by the loss of soil. The new developments, which should increase farm yields and farm profits, have in reality “gone down the sewer’ and have resulted merely in keeping step with the yields of former days. ‘The situation really is serious, not in th=2 sense that starvation is facing the land through lack of crops, but in the sense that farmec:s are faced with a permanent impoverishment of its agricultural population. Any impoverished rural life would probably be reflected in an impoverished industrial life. It is unnecessary to look further than the present to see what loss of spending power on the farms can do to the factory worker in the city. Between tne Mississippi flood and the drought and the re- sull of lost foreign markets for wheat, the farmer has been reduced to a hand-to-mouth form of buying. If on top of such a condition he were to be faccd with an increasingly poor soil year by year, and, as matters are now, thot is his situation, the future would call for seri- ous thought to guarantee the continuing pros- perity of the country. The necessary steps to be taken to prevent erosion are fairly simple and are well known to those interested in ercsion prevention. The De- partment of Agriculture engineers have worked out feasible plans adaptable to the use of the individual farmer from small scale to large scale farming, and a campaign of education is under- way to bring the farmers to a realization cof the problem before the destructive wash of sur- face water has gone too far. volume of work. It must be done in Washington, and he is staying there on the firing line. The complete record shows just one pleasure excursion in more than three years, and that one is so fixed by tradition that not to make it would amount to a declaration of panic; to be specific, he attended the opening world series base ball game in Philadelphia last year, a matter of one afternoon. During his first year in office he made only two trips—one in April to New York and in October to Detroit, Cincinnati and Louisville. Speeches. During 1930 he went to Florida in Feb- ruary, Old Point Comfort in May, Phila- delphia and Cleveland in October. More speeches. During 1931 he visited Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands on a tour of inspection because of the serious economic situa- tions existing there; that was in March. He made a short trip to Asheville, N. C,, in the same month, and in April at- tended the funeral of Nicholas Long- worth in Cincinnati; in June he made speeches in Indianapolis, Marion, Colum- bus and Springfield. In August he ad- dressed the American Legion in Detroit on the very serious mattier of the bonus question; in Oclober he attended the opening game of the world series in Philadelphia and during the same month made a speech in Yorktown, Va. So far this year he has made one trip; he spoke before the conference of Gov- ernors in Richmond, Va, in April. Not a long trip, but a very important occa- sion, with State budgets needing atten- tion no less than national budgets. His travels total 14,842 miles. President Taft, who was a famous traveler, piled up a total of 114,559 miles. Mr. Wilson, with two trips to Europe, traveied 87,400 miles. Mr. Harding traveled 32,228 miles, in- cluding trips to Panama and Alaska. Mr, Hoover had hoped to make a trip to the West Coast in 1930, but the drought came and there was a lot of swealy work to be done about it, so he remained in Washington. Few Presidents, either in peace or war, have had to send so many messages to Congress. War at least finds a front with generals and admirals to shoulder the immediate resporsibility. Depression stands like a wolf at the presidential door. Space prohibits giving the subject matter of all Mr. Hoover's messages, but it is worth noting the dates and how little time elapsed between them. Let’s begin with December, 1931, and come down to the middle of May. Here are the dates: In 1931—December 8, December 10 and December 11. In 1932—January 4, February 17, Feb- ruary 22, February 29, April 4, April 25, April 27, May 5, May 9 and May 11. ND Mr. Hoover is not a facile writer of messages; he goes over them again and again. They are not among the joys of high office for him. As a matter of fact, it would be difficult to point to the joys of high office. He be- came President on March 4, 1929, and the Wall Street crash touched off a con- tinuous round of trouble on October 28, 1929. Since then the White House has been the listening post for the woes of a sorely beset world. Scarcely an item of the bad news fails to reach there, whether anything could be done about it by the President or not. A sweet job he has! But he smiles, plans, initiates, ever working constructively. The job is hard, but not too hard. In fact, he has rarely had any jobs that were not hard. He is nsed to it, so his temper remains calm, his nerves steady, his health ex- cellent; he goes right on planning, not only what should be done to save the world, but the many thrilling things that will make a better world—things that can’'t quite be reached until the world is convalescent. A very steady captain for stormy seas. A captain who not only stays on the bridge, but lives there. And almost— if it were not impossible to conceive such a thing—likes it.