With the war gone, it was possible to see him in a new light, of having led during a time when old political systems were passing from the scene and revolutionary ardor was running high, with the United States being the only country surviving the time with its tradition of free enterprise intact.

President Roosevelt altered the functions of the United States Government without changing its Constitutional form, always staying strictly within the boundaries imposed by the Founders, while exercising powers of the Chief Executive never exercised previously—in response to a time of unprecedented economic collapse in the country and then to a time of unprecedented world war. The powers were not, as some critics had it, usurped, but freely provided by the American people by electing him four times.

It suggests that unborn American historians would finally place him as a great conservative whose experiments, which would appear cautious a century down the road, were designed to preserve institutions while expanding the services they provided.

It suggests that the problems being experienced in the country were the direct result of his death a year earlier.

It is perhaps mute testimony to the lack of sweeping change in the country, albeit certainly in many respects changed in 68 years since the death of FDR, that he is still regarded as a great Liberal President, the most liberal President of the Twentieth Century, perhaps chased in that category, domestically, only by President Johnson and President Clinton, leaving aside the unfinished work of President Kennedy, as his domestic agenda was just getting off the ground at the time of the assassination, preoccupied as he was during his first two years primarily with Cold War issues.

No one yet, in 68 years, would certainly, with a straight face, seek to categorize President Roosevelt as a great conservative, though many later neo-conservatives who were young in that era, including Ronald Reagan, were New Dealers at the time, and so, perhaps, the argument is more valid than it superficially at first presents itself.

In any event, it would be difficult to make any case at this juncture that FDR appears, by comparison to Administrations since, as being at all "cautious", save perhaps in the ever unfolding area of civil rights, which has had to progress generationally through time, and is more a function of that generational progress, urged along by the three branches of the Federal Government, than necessarily the guiding hand of any one President, though President Kennedy initiated more action in that regard than any of his predecessors since Abraham Lincoln, action which was then guided to passage and extended by President Johnson.

But, as Congresswoman Helen Douglas Mankin of Georgia had argued persuasively, the ICC had done such a poor job historically of regulating the railroads in the public interest, citing the freight rate discrimination regionally as the prime exhibit, that there was no reason to reposit confidence in the ICC to follow the public interest in determining application of antitrust laws to the railroads.

The piece agrees and thus disagrees with Major Bulwinkle, while finding him, however, not without rationale, contrary to The Raleigh News & Observer, which had labeled him a quisling to the South for the bill, by inference impugning his motives for sponsoring it.

Intra-state enterprises, however, paid on average only $17.91 per week in retail trades while service industries, such as hotels and restaurants, paid an average of $20.62. Teachers also earned less than the $26 average.

An argument presented against the minimum wage bill by Southerners in Congress, tacking on the fatal farm parity amendment, was that the industrial workers in interstate commerce were already receiving most of the Federal benefits.

But someone, the piece reasons, ought be concerned about the underpaid workers in all those many areas of the economy not regulated by the Federal minimum wage law. It was left to the states to remedy.

Under President Wallace, he suggests, Sumner Welles, former Undersecretary of State until forced out in favor of Edward Stettinius, in August, 1943, because of his conflicts with Cordell Hull, would have become Secretary of State. Harold Young would have been made Postmaster General instead of DNC chairman Robert Hannegan. Mr. Wallace would have had better rapport with the public via radio but worse press relations than President Truman, especially given the hatred of the former for press photographers. More professors would have populated a Wallace Cabinet instead of "Missouri werewolves" as under Truman. He would have had as much trouble with labor but might have been more adept at handling it than President Truman.

In foreign policy, the troubles with Russia would have been just as acute and the outcome likely no different. Brain trusts would have replaced poker parties. Mr. Wallace would not have supported the draft extension and would have conducted a more efficient administration, recognized for the trait even by his political enemies.

He would have had the same troubles in uniting the country, with a split with Southern Democrats coming earlier. Even had FDR lived, however, this split was likely inevitable after the war.

Most of the trends, indeed, coming out of the war would have transpired as inevitabilities of such readjustment economically and socially to peacetime, even under Roosevelt.

The contrast between styles of President Truman and President Roosevelt was sharp, especially in the method of conduct of Cabinet meetings, FDR having long, leisurely meetings while President Truman conducted meetings which were direct and to the point, lasting precisely an hour. President Roosevelt talked; President Truman mainly listened. The result was that many Cabinet members preferred talking alone to the President, with only Secretary Byrnes, the most politically experienced man in the Cabinet, appearing comfortable with longer discussions of important matters during the meetings.

Weekly Cabinet luncheons were less stiff and formal than the meetings, with Secretary of Agriculture Clinton Anderson often providing the President with a memo to read. There had been no such convention in previous Cabinets and it was conducive to better relations than afforded by the stiff meetings.

The column concludes by relating of an incident in which Ed McGrady visited with President Roosevelt one evening after 11:00 to confer on a strike problem and as he came to the open door of the Lincoln study, the carpeting having muffled his approach, he saw the President as if in stage lighting with the desk lamp highlighting only his face in an otherwise darkened room, staring off into space, not reading or smoking, but thinking.

"And on his face was a look of almost tragic loneliness. A man surrounded by people, problems, and war—and completely alone."

General Eisenhower had made clear the need for a force of 1.5 million men through July 1 and a million through July 1, 1947, to maintain an adequate occupation force, and that those minimum numbers could not be met without a draft, that otherwise forces would drop to about 400,000 with the planned discharges.

Some in Congress had made absurd counter-proposals, such as that by Representative Forest Harness of Indiana, who wanted to extend the draft by nine months but suspend the flow of inductees during the same time period. Some in the House and Senate wanted to double the pay of enlisted men to increase voluntary enlistments, but the prospect would provide more to the enlisted men than lower ranking officers when clothing and keep were included, making it difficult to obtain officer candidates, and causing the cost of the military to skyrocket, potentially causing a decline in military security as economy would inevitably set in to limit expenditures.

If extension of the draft by up to a year was running into so many obstacles, it appeared that the President's proposal for universal military training, also favored by General Eisenhower, would not stand a chance of passage by the Congress, especially in an election year.

One foreign observer suggested that America once had the freedom no other great nation possessed, the freedom to do nothing, but that such freedom was gone forever.

Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin would not have been the strategic leader in Western diplomacy and Secretary of State Byrnes would not have become a chief foreign policy maker of the United States were FDR still around, as he had occupied both roles while President during the war.

The West was now reliant on "squealing legalisms" whereas, had Roosevelt lived, "bad lawyer that he was", there might have been presently a new level of understanding being attempted rather than "parsing sentences in a charter."

As people were now able to go to Hyde Park and tour the grounds and places where the President had grown up and lived as an adult, the tourists seemed to fit the scene more than in any other fine house "as part of history's joke on historical determinism, which was Roosevelt." The ordinary people seemed to fit the workroom "of one who never altered his accent to please the poor, nor shaped his words to win the rich."

He had the ability to work with both sides, keep them together and make them laugh. He did not attempt to please both sides but never demanded anything of them which was not made clear as necessary and achievable. He was often superficial on the mundane level, but "above the surface, in thin air, almost never."

"One remembers him as a kind of smiling bus driver, with that cigarette holder pointed upward, listening to the uproar from behind as he took the sharp turns. They used to tell him he had not loaded his vehicle right for all eternity. But he knew he had stacked it well enough to round the next corner, and he knew when the yells were false, and when they were real, and he loved the passengers. He is dead now, and the bus is stalled, far from the gates of heaven, while the riders hold each other in deadlock over how to make the next curve."

Thus, the move to stabilize cotton prices by OPA was premised on stopping this upward cycle from speculation in cotton futures, driving up the price of cotton. Most farmers had already sold their crops for the season and thus were not being affected. To the contrary, allowing prices to rise hampered their ability to compete in foreign markets.

The editors respond that it would be the city as the county paid a flat fee to the Fire Department annually, plus a fee for each run into the county.