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In Manhattan, Austin Phelps Palmer, retired electrical engineer living on Park Avenue, pleaded guilty to writing the President the following letter last November:
"Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
"Communist and Destroyer of Private Business,
"Warm Springs, Ga.
"You —, I warn you if you destroy my business, I will strangle you with my own hands. May your soul be exterminated in Hell.
"C. R. Nelson."
Correspondent Palmer was sentenced to 90 days in the Federal House of Detention, alienists having found him "sane but eccentric."
To Congress President Roosevelt last week sent a message calling attention to a report of the National Resources Committee, entitled Little Waters. Said the President: "It is not suggested that we neglect our main streams and give our whole attention to these little waters, but we must have, literally, a plan which will envisage the problem as it is presented in every farm, every pasture, every wood lot, every acre of the public domain."
To Congress President Roosevelt sent a message advising repeal of: 1) the Bankhead Act, 2) the Kerr-Smith Tobacco Act, 3) the Potato-Control Act, which Washington has assumed would be found unconstitutional as soon as the Supreme Court got around to them. The President's reason for repeal: They are now useless having been "auxiliary" to the late AAA.
The U. S. Civil Service celebrated the 53rd anniversary of its foundation. In honor of it:
1) Victor Weybright wrote in the February Survey Graphic: "That 200,000 newcomers to the Federal service have been exempt from civil service in the past three years has alarmed critics of bureaucracy."
2) Lawrence Sullivan wrote in the February Atlantic Monthly: "The present administration has added roundly 235,000 persons to the direct full-time payroll of the Federal Government, but only one in 107 among the new personnel is under Civil Service."
President Roosevelt wrote to the League of Women Voters: "It matters not what political party is in power by the elective will of the people, the Government functions for all; and there can be no question of greater moment, or broader effect than the maintenance, strengthening and extension of the merit system, established in the competitive principles of the Civil Service Act."
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