THE PRESIDENT. This is a famine day again. I have questions on three subjects that are not for quotation, but just for your information.
LAW ENFORCEMENT COMMISSION
One of them is as to whether Justice [Harlan Fiske] Stone has been selected for the Law Enforcement Commission.
I think every one of the Justices of the Supreme Court have been suggested for that commission and nearly every circuit judge in the United States for one of those positions; and that is the extent to which that has gone. Whoever sent that story out was misled.
Q. Mr. President, may I ask a question? Wouldn't he have to resign from the bench ?
THE PRESIDENT. I don't think we want to enter that.
"I'M ALONE" ARBITRATION
The other question is whether we have appointed an arbitrator for the I'm Alone commission. We have not. At least I have no recommendation from Secretary Stimson.
MEDITERRANEAN FRUIT FLY
The other relates to the Mediterranean fruit fly in Florida. We have sent recommendations to Congress to make an emergency appropriation to deal with this particular pest because it is probably the most [p.126] dangerous thing that has attacked American horticulture. It is regarded by all of the experts as probably the greatest menace that could come into American horticulture, and the proposal of the Government is to spend the money to stamp it out instantly without dilly-dallying with it at all. We have asked Congress for $4 million and propose to go right after it. That is all that I have--that I am able to give you.
Note: President Hoover's sixteenth news conference was held in the White House at 4 p.m. on Friday, April 26, 1929.
The I'm Alone was a Canadian-registered rumrunner, sunk off the coast of Louisiana by the United States Coast Guard on March 22, 1929. One life was lost in the incident. The Canadian Government protested and its claims were submitted to arbitration as 'provided for in the Liquor Smuggling Treaty of 1924. The case was considered by two commissioners, one chosen by each side.
Herbert Hoover, The President's News Conference Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/209423