Excerpts from the Press Conference

Q. Mr. President, would you comment, sir, on the shelling of the California coast by a submarine last night?

THE PRESIDENT: I suppose the best comment is to repeat what somebody said earlier this morning, just after I got waked up, and that was that it was an excellent example of political warfare. I think it was too. Only I think it might react in the opposite direction from what it was intended.

Q. Mr. President, have you any information from the Navy as to what happened to the sub?

THE PRESIDENT: No. At the present time it is probably underwater. (Laughter)

Q. Voluntarily?

THE PRESIDENT: So far as I know, voluntarily. (Laughter)

I have a long thing here today to give you. If you have got any other questions first, go ahead and shoot them. Then I have a whole story for you.

Q. I have one, sir. In your radio talk last night you mentioned at one point Americans who in and out of Government since Pearl Harbor have been whispering all these rumors about the fleet, and the planes, and casualties, et cetera.

THE PRESIDENT: (interjecting) Yes.

Q. (continuing) Did you have anyone specifically in mind when you said that?

THE PRESIDENT: Quite a number of people.

Q. Would you care to—

THE PRESIDENT: (interposing) No.

Q. (continuing)—mention any names?

THE PRESIDENT: I think you know just about as well as I do.

Q. Mr. President, there is a report published in a midwest paper that Secretary Hull was going to resign?

THE PRESIDENT: I saw that report, because it was sent over to me, and it has already been commented on by the State Department. I think the State Department characterized it as a fiat lie. Furthermore, that the whole story was a fiat lie.

Now this has got to be off the record, because it is just between us. There is one of the things that I was talking about last night. Two newspapers ran a story this morning to this general effect that indignant British and Russian officials in Washington have made known their feelings regarding the situation in the Caribbean, which is swarming with Nazi submarines based on French islands.

Now, in the first place, I raise the question, just among us, as to whether that is not a lie. I don't believe that indignant British and Russian officials in Washington made their feelings known. I don't believe it for a minute. I think that's pure invention on the part of the young gentleman who wrote the story, and many of you do too. No responsible British and Russian officials have said anything of the kind in Washington.

I will make an even money bet with the fellow who wrote the story. I will make an even money bet today that no responsible Russian or British official said so, because any responsible British or Russian official would not deliberately say something that he knew was not true. That comes right back to the fellow who wrote the story.

Number two—based on French islands. As far as anybody in the Navy or State Departments, or consular services, or anything like that are concerned, that is not true. We have had absolutely no information. Then he goes on and says, "the presence of these submarines in the vicinity was known February 2, and a high British officer who had been there made a report on the Vichy French there," and he goes on, "told the State Department about the submarines."

Well, the State Department swears that nobody did such a thing, and I don't believe that any high British officer did it, because we have had an observer in Martinique for over a year and a half, and we have had awfully good information about everything that has happened down there. Kind of a little bit of a place, as you know. It would be mighty hard to hide any German submarine base in those islands, without everybody knowing it inside of 24 hours.

And then it goes on and talks about the Secretary of State being at Coral Gables, and of course he is. The Secretary has been really very, very ill, much more so than you fellows have printed in the papers. And I am very grateful that you haven't printed the fact that he was very ill. We think he is going to get all right in the course of the next two or three weeks. But he does have to have absolute, complete rest. There is no thought about his being ousted from the Cabinet, or resigning, or anything else.

The point of it is this: that that is an awfully good example of just what I was talking about last night. It is incorrect information that starts people whispering and talking on lines which are based on falsity. Now there you are. Now there is the example—it probably came out in those papers simultaneously with my talk last night. And that is the thing we have to guard against.

Q. Mr. President, I have a very small question. (Laughter) Every spring a great many high school seniors come here for a spring trip. They are writing in now to us asking whether they should or should not come to the crowded city here. Do you have any thought on that?

THE PRESIDENT: I don't think so, for publication. It's awfully hard.

Q. I know.

THE PRESIDENT: I would say if they can come here and have a good time, and go away without using up too much gas, and without "discombobolating" Washington, it would be all right.

Q. Most of them make their reservations the year before, but the hotels now would like them to give them up because they are crowded.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't know whether they "discombobo-late" or not. It is a thing for them and the hotels to work out.

Q. Mr. President, there has been some confusion about who is going to handle alien property. Can you straighten that out?

THE PRESIDENT: No. Still studying it. There won't be anything on it for a while.

Q. Mr. President, in connection with these stories about Secretary Hull, there have been some stories printed about changes in the Cabinet, some of which are not destructive or merely critical. Could you say if you have any plans whatever-

THE PRESIDENT: (interposing) Absolutely none.

Q. None?

THE PRESIDENT: Are you ready for this Order?

Q. (interposing) Can you tell us, sir, whether there is anything new on the manpower mobilization board?

THE PRESIDENT.' Nothing yet.

Q. Soon, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: I hope so. Well, here are two Executive Orders. And this is quite important.

As you know, we started in with certain kinds of housing, six or seven years ago. And in a sense it grew up like Topsy, for the very good reason that when each new organization was started there seemed reason at the time for making it a separate organization by itself. And the result has been, over a period of years, that it has become pretty evident that we ought to have some kind of a simplification, based on the general thought that housing of human beings is a subject that is separate in itself, even though it affects all different kinds of people. The housing has to be of all kinds and of different characters, and it affects a good many different departments. And there has been recognition of the fact that it was a permanent problem, not slum clearance, but to improve conditions to keep people from losing their own homes.

That was one of the earliest things—Home Owners' Loan Corporation, to encourage building, Federal Housing Administration, et cetera. After a long study we at last got it down to the point of having a consolidation of all housing.

And the first Executive Order sets up this new organization, to be called the National Housing Agency. And I am putting in charge a young man who has been in the Government, and has shown amazing executive ability: Jack Blandford—John Blandford, Jr., the Assistant Director of the Budget.

This new organization will be able- you can get an idea of the thing; (holding up chart) there is the old—I have got copies of these outside—there is the old organization, you see how complicated it is. And this is the new organization- (holding up chart) you see how much simpler it is. Bill will have copies of those for you.

This is a consolidation for swifter and more efficient prosecution of the war, consolidating the various housing agencies in one National Housing Agency, with the single Administrator having the full power to carry out the responsibility. This plan of consolidation resulted from unusually widespread agreement among Government officials and all kinds of students of housing in the practical, private field who are actively engaged in day-by-day administration of housing activities, in and out of the Government.

Heretofore, there have been sixteen different agencies which have either built housing with public funds or sought to encourage private enterprise to build housing with private funds through the extension of Government credit or guarantees. The result has unquestionably been a lot of duplication, conflict, disputes, and overlapping among these public agencies themselves, and also between them and private building agencies.

The plan of reorganization streamlines most of these agencies, and places the housing functions of all of them into one agency with a single Administrator. Under him there will be consolidated war and other housing activities that have heretofore been carried on by Federal Housing Administration; Federal Home Loan Bank Board; Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation; Home Owners' Loan Corporation; U.S. Housing Corporation; U.S. Housing Authority; Defense Homes Corporation; Non-Farm Public Housing; Farm Security Administration; Federal Works Agency; Public Buildings Administration; Division of Defense Housing and Mutual Ownership Defense Housing Division in the Federal Works Agency; and that part of the War and Navy housing function that is not on military or naval reservations. Then also the defense housing of the Farm Security Administration, and the Division of Defense Housing Coordination.

Now part of these agencies that are transferred to this National Housing Agency by this Order are now in Federal Works Agency, and the rest are now in the Federal Loan Agency. We are taking them out of those agencies—and we are abolishing the Federal Loan Agency altogether. So we are creating a new agency, but we are abolishing the old one.

Those things in the Federal Loan Agency which do not relate to housing are being transferred to Mr. Jesse Jones as Secretary of Commerce. He has been handling them in the past in his position as Federal Loan Administrator. Well, that title is being taken away from him, but we are turning over to him as Secretary of Commerce all the things like the R.F.C. and lots of others—a whole group of them that have hitherto been Federal Loan Agency.

Q. Is the R.F.C. as such abolished?

THE PRESIDENT: What? Oh no. Oh no. You couldn't abolish the R.F.C.! (Laughter) It's put under Jones as Secretary of Commerce, instead of Jones as Federal Loan Administrator, that's all.

Q. (continuing) Mr. President, is there a Federal Loan Agency left?

THE PRESIDENT: No, I said that is abolished. That has gone.

Q. But the individual components of that Agency still remain?

THE PRESIDENT: Of the R.F.C.? Oh, surely. Because they are doing the bulk of the loaning we do.

The third constituent—wait a minute now, I am getting ahead of my copy—it means that the recent Order for the conversion- for the transfer of Government workers to the war effort is going to be attained also in housing, because on this reorganization there will be quite a lot of people who will be let out, or rather who would be let out, if it were not for this transfer Order of the other day. They will be transferred to other agencies of the Government, probably defense agencies of the Government.

Q. About how many, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: That is a thing that we can't give you the figures on. But quite a lot.

All Government employees doing work relating to war housing will be under one pool, under one supervision. The new agency for administrative convenience will have under it only three principal constituent units. That in itself is a great streamlining of the Public Housing Authority, which will be an amalgamation of all the various agencies and personnel engaged in constructing housing with public money. That is the distinctive feature of that.

[Leon] Keyserling will be the Acting Administrator of that Division. The second Division will be the Federal Housing Administration, and will continue to be known as such. In other words, the guaranteeing or insuring of mortgages placed by banks and lending institutions on homes. And Mr. [Abner] Ferguson will continue as Commissioner of that, only we are going to call him Commissioner instead of Administrator, because Administrator is the name of the top person in charge of the whole works.

The third will be the Federal Home Loan Bank Administration, and will include all the functions of the Home Loan Bank System. John Fahey will remain as Commissioner of that.

All of these three units will be under the supervision and administrative control of the National Housing Administrator. He will also thus be able to save a lot of overhead in consolidating all of the functions now scattered all over the place relating to research in housing construction, materials, methods, et cetera, and general urban development planning relating to housing and similar facilities.

The Order will not cause one day's delay. Actually it ought to begin within a very few days to speed up the production of war housing. . . .

Then there is another Executive Order by which we transfer the functions of the present Federal Loan Agency to the Department of Commerce, and abolish the Federal Loan Agency. Those functions that are transferred to the Depart- ment of Commerce are the Reconstruction Finance Corporation; Electric Home and Farm Authority—this is all down —R.F.C. Mortgage Company; Federal National Mortgage Association; Disaster Loan Corporation; Export-Import Bank of Washington; Defense Plant Corporation; Rubber Reserve Company; Metals Reserve Company; Defense Supplies Corporation; and War Insurance Corporation.

And they all go out from under Mr. Jones, and under the control of Mr. Jones. (Laughter)

Q. Mr. President, can you say why they go to Commerce? Is it because of the personality involved? Why not—

THE PRESIDENT: (interposing) No.

Q. (continuing)-send them to Treasury?

THE PRESIDENT: No. It's because essentially I would like to see the Department of Commerce built up with things that don't—ought not to be under the Treasury; and yet I suppose the easiest answer is that the Commerce seems to be the best place to put them.

And then I have written a letter to Mr. Palmer, asking him in behalf of the new National Housing Agency—with one or two assistants—to proceed to England as my representative, and representative of the National Housing Agency to study and report on the work over there at the end of two years and a half of actual war, because as each month of war over there has gone on, they have modified and developed their various methods of dealing with housing.

I think that covers it all right. I am glad to get—

Q. (interposing) (loudly) Thank you, Mr. President.

Q. Thank you, Mr. President. (Laughter)

THE PRESIDENT: That's very good.