NEW YORK—Last Tuesday evening I went with Henry Morgenthau III to dine at the Henry Street Settlement with Miss Helen Hall, after which we attended the first of the free concerts, or "Evenings By The River," which Julius Grossman, music chairman of the High School of Performing Arts, here in New York is conducting. There will be another concert on August 2, and these performances are sponsored by the Lower East Side Neighborhood Association.

I said a few words at the opening of Tuesday's concert and then enjoyed myself with the neighbors who gathered to hear it. I think it is a wonderful innovation to have these free concerts for the people of New York's lower East Side, and I am glad I was able to attend the first one.

Some of our youngsters who are our Hyde Park summer guests came to New York on Tuesday and I think had a thoroughly enjoyable time. They spent an hour at the United Nations most of which was consumed in buying stamps or looking at wares from different countries in the book or gift shop.

They then had lunch with me at the U.N., and then we went together to the Museum of Modern Art to see a showing of "Mr. Hulot's Holiday," which the children seemed to enjoy.

As a final touch we had an ice-cream soda in a hotel coffee shop and the children started back to Harmon on the train, having left their car there on the way down.

Once a year Mr. and Mrs. Elliot spend a month with me during the summer, and it has become a custom that the children shall have one day in New York. It has always proved to be a very pleasant day, and though it was warm on Tuesday it was less warm than it had been and most of us survived very comfortably.

I was glad to see an announcement of the formation of an organization to promote tourist travel in West Central Georgia. This organization will be called the Chattahoochee Valley Attractions Association, and the headquarters will be at the Columbus Chamber of Commerce.

I am sure one of the sightseers' attractions will be the Ida Cason Callaway Gardens. I have seen these gardens and enjoyed them very much. In addition, in the same area there is the amazing canyon near Lumpkin, which reminds one somewhat of the Grand Canyon on a smaller scale. Then, there is Warm Springs and the Roosevelt State Park and Scenic Highway. From the highway one gets the most-beautiful views over Pine Mountain and Pine Mountain Valley.

I am sure that many people will enjoy taking a trip to this area by car, but I would urge them to extend their trip to the Tennessee Valley Authority project which is close by. That is one of the most extraordinary regions of the country and one that every citizen should be familiar with since it is the one engineering development that is known in every other country of the world and copied wherever it is possible to do so.

I noticed in a paper which came to me the other day a little editorial on the numerous laws that are being introduced in various states, and occasionally passed, under the misnomers of laws to protect the "right to work."

That phrase is very misleading, since in some instances it actually seeks to undermine the coming together of people collectively to promote their interests.

Some of the laws, for example, say that no one shall be denied employment because of membership or non-membership in a union, and they seek to make it impossible for a union or an employer to enforce a union-shop contract.

Now, if there were not unions, which gained the high standards for workers, non-union members would not profit by these high standards. Under some of this new legislation, however, the "right to work laws" are really tools to destroy the strength of unions.