Second Session of the Seventieth Congress

(December 3, 1928, to March 4, 1929). “I have stated universally to various callers,” wrote the President-elect to the President on January 28, 1929, “that it would be improper for me to express any views on current matters of the administration.” It is aside from the point to question the complete consistency of Mr. Hoover's added remark (the subject being the cruiser construction bill): “As you know, I warmly support your own views, and you may so inform others if you wish to do so.” The truth is that the President-elect would have set the tone of the short session if he had merely failed to state that there would be no special session. As soon as his willingness to call Congress back in April was known, most of the steam escaped and pressures in connection with farm relief which might have involved the whole program were forestalled. Under these relaxing circumstances, the cynosure of the session came to be the ironical juxtaposition of the left-over cruiser bill and the multilateral peace treaty in the Senate. Meanwhile the momentum of the inherently decentralized congressional system carried it past the dead-points of the interregnum and produced interesting, and even noteworthy, bits of domestic legislation.