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¶ On Saturday noon with the Labor Disputes Bill on his desk awaiting signature, the President was comfortably sure that he had the U. S. Labor situation well in hand, when in rushed Secretary Marvin McIntyre. The Press, declared Mr. McIntyre, was clamoring for a Presidential statement on the strike to begin Monday morning. What strike? asked the President. Why, the soft coal strike, said the Secretary. Oh, was there going to be a coal strike? The President had not heard of it. It had been postponed to July 1 when he had promised to press for passage of the Guffey Coal Bill and he had assumed it would be postponed again. Hastily the President asked McIntyre to get Madam Secretary of Labor Perkins on the telephone. After some difficulty "Mac" located her lunching with Mrs. Roosevelt. Miss Perkins had not known there was to be a coal strike. Besides, she was all involved that day in moving to her new quarters from the late Mary Harriman Rumsey's Georgetown house. Nevertheless, she agreed to get her efficient Assistant Secretary Edward F. McGrady to look into the matter. Mr. McGrady found the conference between coal operators and miners had broken up and the operators had gone home. John L. Lewis, head of the United Mine Workers, and his assistants were busy preparing telegrams calling the strike. Mr. McGrady asked to have the strike-call canceled because the President did not want a strike. Miner Lewis grew huffy. If so, he demanded, why had not the Department of Labor told him that the President did not want a strike? Why wait till he was sending out the call? Telegrams cost money.
Mr. McGrady was diplomatic. After a time he got Mr. Lewis to go over and see Secretary Perkins. Periodically all afternoon the President was on the wire to the Department of Labor. Towards evening Miss Perkins had news for him: Mr. Lewis would not call the strike if the President really did not want it.
¶ To quiet the hopefully palpitating hearts of a multitude of U. S. Negroes, the President last week named a Minister to Liberia, which his State Department recently recognized (TIME, June 24). His choice: Lester A. Walton, 54, newshawk of his father-in-law's New York Age, formerly writer for the defunct New York World. He visited Monrovia two years ago, was presented with a leopard skin by Liberia's President Barclay, attended sessions of the International Liberian Com-mission at Geneva. Clean shaven, bald, a modest family man, he will now return to Liberia taking his wife and two débutante daughters, 20 & 21. Said the Baltimore Afro-American of Minister-designate Walton: "His indorsements for the position come from a cross-section of American life . . . Senator Robert F. Wagner, white . . . Claude A. Barnett, editor-in-chief, Associated Negro Press . . . Bishop Reverdy C. Ransom of the African Methodist Episcopal Church . . . Dr. R. R. Moton, retired principal, Tuskeegee . . . George Foster Peabody, banker . . . Dr. Mary F. Waring, president, National Association of Colored Women's Clubs."