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¶ Washington betting until the start of last week was 3-to-1 that the President would veto the Sugar Bill which lobbyists spurred through Congress in its closing days. To domestic growers, both cane and beet, the Bill provided continuance of the quota system limiting raw sugar imports, as well as cash benefits to be paid from a ½¢-per-lb. processing tax, and the President was reconciled to holding an umbrella over the growers in the form of a domestic price about three times the world price. But he strenuously objected in principle to that part of the bill which for the benefit of mainland refiners severely restricted imports of refined sugar from Hawaii, Puerto Rico and Cuba (TIME, Aug. 16). A veto, however, would have brought down on the President's head the anger of both growers and refiners. After meditating last week at Hyde Park, he decided that discretion was the better part of principle—simultaneously signed the Sugar Bill and denounced it, indignantly insisting that a sound measure had been "seriously impaired in its value by the inclusion of a provision designed to legalize a virtual monopoly in the hands of a small group of seaboard refiners." He added: "I am approving the bill with what amounts to a gentleman's agreement that the unholy alliance between the cane and beet growers on the one hand, and the seaboard refining monopoly on the other, has been terminated by the growers. That means that, hereafter, the refiners' lobby should expect no help from the domestic growers. That is at least a definite step in the right direction."
¶ If President Roosevelt were to find that what is going on in the Far East is a war, he would be obliged to apply to it the provisions of the rickety Neutrality Act. Therefore, in explaining to the press why all 7,780 Americans in China had been warned to get out as fast as possible or stay at their own risk, he described the Sino-Japanese situation not as a war, but as an awful mess. As to applying the Neutrality Act, the President was still on a 24-hour basis.
¶ Released the day after, but drafted several days before John L. Lewis' broadcast (see p. 11) was a Presidential Labor Day statement. By coincidence it sounded so much like a pointed reply to C. I. O.'s major-domo that some papers described it as such. Wrote the President: "The age-old contest between Capital and Labor has been complicated in recent months through mutual distrust and bitter recrimination. Both sides have made mistakes. . . ." On one major point, the President and John Lewis agreed: "The conference table must eventually take the place of the strike."