"I have no intention now or hereafter of resigning." declared Secretary of State Hull to newshawks as he debarked from S. S. President Harding in Manhattan and straightway motored off to Hyde Park to report to President Roosevelt on the World Economic Conference. At the President's summer home where he was a weekend guest he again assured reporters that he was staying in the Cabinet. When he got back to Washington he said the same thing. These denials seemed to dispose of persistent rumors of the most serious ruction in the Cabinet since March 4.
The President and his ranking Cabinet officer met at Hyde Park for the first time since that May day on which Secretary Hull, as chairman of the U. S. Delegation, sailed away so hopefully for London. Then as an internationalist he was about to have his innings. But the President's long-range handling of the Conference, his refusal to consider currency stabilization, his dispatch of Assistant Secretary of State Moley to London all combined to lacerate Secretary Hull's feelings and start reports of his resignation. The Conference had failed and the President's nationalist policy had struck him out.
Now as he sat on the Hyde Park veranda under the warm spell of the President's personal charm, patient, loyal Secretary Hull forgot his injured pride, swore new allegiance to the Administration. Carefully he explained the whys & wherefores of the Conference collapse. Britain had been a disappointment. The foreign Press behaved outrageously. Europe wanted the best of every bargain. The President was most sympathetic, expressed complete confidence in his foreign minister, sent him away with a smile to prepare for another conference, that of the Pan-American Union in Montevideo in September.
Secretary Hull's mollification was made easier for the President by the temporary-transfer, three days prior, of Dr. Moley from the State Department to the Justice Department. Internationalist Hull and Nationalist Moley have made poor bedfellows at the State Department. President Roosevelt turned his chief Brain Truster over to Attorney General Cummings for a month to conduct a survey of crime in general, kidnapping and racketeering in particular. Dr. Moley's new assignment was entirely logical inasmuch as he had made his principal pre-election reputation as a crime researcher in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, Virginia, Georgia. President Roosevelt called him to Hyde Park, told him his new duties, assured the Press 'there isn't any other story behind this.''* ¶ The NRA campaign kept intruding itself into the President's vacation most of the week. He signed trade codes for wool textiles, electrical goods, women's cloaks & suits. He approved Administrator Johnson's temporary settlement of the Penn sylvania coal strike (see p. 11). He announced the Government's readiness to adjust its contracts with NRA subscribers confronted with higher manufacturing costs. He wrote a letter to a Philadelphia woman who named her baby girl Nira, chuckled over the discovery of a town called Nira (pop. 20) in Iowa. ¶ Another career diplomat was promoted last week when President Roosevelt appointed Arthur Bliss Lane, now counselor of embassy at Mexico City, to be Minister to Nicaragua.