Washington Report:

...Humphrey: "I do not think that a dollar for a family for a whole year [his estimate of the increased cost of his steel on a family's purchase of canned goods] is going to have much effect on whether they will buy canned goods...

...This is why President Kennedy at his press conference said firmly the United States would oppose "any attempt" to intervene unilaterally in the Congo, and added, "I find it difficult to believe that any government is really planning to take so dangerous and irresponsible a step...

...His bid to control or at least influence the Congo through Lumumba was frustrated by the military coup of Colonel Joseph Mobutu...

...The thinking of the Administration on the latest Soviet behavior is well reported by Chalmers Roberts in the Washington Post...

...It is briefly: • Khrushchev and Soviet power politics suffered a double defeat last fall, at exactly the time the Chinese were challenging his strategy, and this was both galling and dangerous for Khrushchev...

...This attitude can be contrasted with the stories of human despair that the energetic Secretary of Labor, Arthur Goldberg, brought back from his tour of distressed areas...

...It all depends: When there is a shortage of materials the customer fixes the prices, because it is the customer who will bid the highest...

...Kefauver: "We are not talking about a few cents...

...The U.S...

...Instead, there has been a dismal list of shutdowns...

...One place had advertised for general male factory help...

...At that time, former Secretary of the Treasury George M. Humphrey was being questioned about a price increase announced by National Steel, which he headed...

...When this came up at his press conference, the President's lips tightened in a moment of exasperation, and he replied: "I think we have been in a recession for some months, and we have not fully recovered from the recession of 1958...

...He could no longer endure the hunger and despair of his wife and children...

...Humphrey replied, "I have just explained to you I do not think we would...

...Humphrey did admit that the increased price of steel was "having some effect" on a slowdown of largescale construction projects in New York and Washington...

...Christmas was coming with no hope or joy for them...

...Fortunately for President Kennedy, his top Soviet advisers have been in Washington to counsel him...

...What made the Soviet blowup at the United Nations so damnable for President Kennedy was that he had been working quietly behind the scenes to create an atmosphere for U.S.-Soviet cooperation in arms control, and to cool down the Congo...

...No matter how well prepared the fighter is, these first smashes are a shock...

...We are concerned because while there was an economic slowdown in 1949, 1954 and 1958, we now have an economic slowdown only two years after the 1958 recession...

...Senator Estes Kefauver (D.-Tenn...

...To old Russian hands in the State Department, this followed an almost predictable pattern—the warm handshake followed by a swift, cruel kick in the shins, as though to test the opponent, but without any deep malice...

...Humphrey, that you could sell and produce more steel if you had your price down...

...Then there is the letter, one of thousands sent to Congressmen, from a jobless man in Chicago: "I braved a 39-mile-an-hour wind and eight inches of snow to walk miles to answer the want ads...

...Kennedy headed a team of Government officials giving frank man-to-man talks to business leaders in Washington last week, and after the meeting a steel leader said he was "glad" the President didn't use the word "recession" because there wasn't one...

...In December he wrote his wife a letter...

...By Tristram Coffin Congo, Soviet UN Maneuvers and Recession Test Kennedy Any old prize fighter will tell you the roughest part of any match is the first hard, jarring blows...

...economy is worse off than he had anticipated, and yet the public and Congress are indifferent to his cries of alarm...

...A series of Russian jabs and then the stiff punch of Valerian Zorin at the United Nations were bruising...

...If he were dead, they could live better on Social Security...

...President Kennedy also has discouraging news on another front...

...How far the Soviets will go in openly sending arms to Gizenga is not known...

...recounted to the Senate the tale of a coal miner who had wandered about for two years searching for work...

...He would give them the best Christmas he knew how...

...One asked Pierre Salinger, the press secretary, how he could get on the list of those the President drops in on...

...He appeared at a televised press conference a little grim and unsmiling, but he was still cool and in command...

...Some of the lines by both Potemkin and the Empress might have been cribbed from Khrushchev...

...One of his companions, Senator Vance Hartke (D.-Ind...

...His carefully chosen words were based on the theory that arms control has a higher priority for Khrushchev than tearing up the Congo and disemboweling the United Nations...

...Humphrey: "I am talking about a dollar on a whole family's cans for a year...

...They are Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson, back from Moscow, and three former Ambassadors to the USSR, George Kennan, Charles Bohlen and Averell Harriman...

...Somewhat bitterly, Democratic leaders in Congress are pointing to the steel hearings in 1957 as indicating the social responsibility of American business...

...And Mae Craig, television's favorite Washington newswoman, well known for her charming small parties, complained in her Maine newspaper column that Kennedy is going out too much socially...

...Kefauver: "Why not...

...As I have found it for over a month of patient searching, there was no job, and I was willing to accept anything...

...Kennedy's plan for the Congo was to obtain the release of deposed Premier Patrice Lumumba and other political prisoners, disarm the various warring factions, set up a representative caretaker government, provide food for the hungry and have the UN bring in competent technicians...

...Then the Soviet attack on UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, as the man responsible for allowing the coup to occur, was treated with cold outrage by a majority of the nations in the UN...

...President Kennedy has taken his first punches, and is still standing...

...Lumumba was murdered by the one, the other moved to so fragment the Congo that it will take months if not years to pick up the pieces...

...He also pointed out that the steel produced by this company went into tin cans for food and into automobile bodies...

...He killed himself with a shotgun...

...Khrushchev's goal now is to help Lumumba's lieutenant, Antoine Gizenga, gain control in the Congo...

...So this compounds our difficulty...

...It deals with the bewilderment and outrage of a simple American fighting man, Admiral John Paul Jones, at his treatment by the wily Potemkin and the very shrewd Empress Catherine II in 1788...

...Washington theater-goers this week were entertained by a comic version of this scheme in a new play, Once There Was A Russian...

...I would call this a recession.' The President had hoped that when the business and industrial community learned the facts, it would heed his call and undertake long needed rehabilitation of plant and equipment...

...We are talking about $540 million...

...What made this so bitter for Khrushchev was that the Chinese were saying contemptuously...

...pointed out that there was a discrepancy of $2.85 per ton of steel between the steel wage increase and the price boost, and he asked, "Do you not think, Mr...

...We told you so...

...They regard any aid to non-Communist liberation move ments as a waste of money and resources and as discouraging Communist revolution...

...When there is an abundance, it is the lowest priced seller who fixes the price...

...I found a terrific mob, with no queue or system, and after an hour's milling around a door opened and a man shouted, 'We haven't any jobs, that's all.'" And if this isn't bad enough news for the new President, reporters who are not on John Kennedy's social list are complaining...

...But, it is now apparent, neither the despot of Katanga, Moise Tshombe, nor the Russians wanted order in the Congo...

...I am talking about our business and what our business is, and I do not believe that the difference we are talking about will affect the volume of steel in our line of business...

...They can stun and confuse him and blow up his timing...

...He hasn't stopped in to see her yet...

...At the same time, Kennedy held out hopes for effective agreements on disarmament...