Ted for Ted

Without fuss & feathers, a lean, wiry figure walked into the White House last week, hung his hat up on a peg to which it was accustomed and went quietly to work in the office next to President Hoover's. It was Edward T. ("Ted") Clark, longtime confidential secretary to Calvin Coolidge. Unannounced, Theodore ("Ted") Joslin, the President's No. 1 secretary, had departed overnight for an indefinite vacation and Ted Clark had been called in to substitute. President Hoover could hardly have gotten a better man to help him through the ardors of the campaign.

Wise & witty Ted Clark was not made officially a member of the Hoover secretariat. He was not sworn in as a government employe. He was working for nothing so far as the Federal payroll was concerned. Yet he had all the prestige and all the power of the political job he was filling.

When President Coolidge left the White House in 1929, Secretary Clark, who looks not unlike his erstwhile chief, was snapped up by Louis Kroh Liggett and made vice president of Drug Inc., $60,000,000 Liggett holding company. Mr. Clark became Mr. Liggett's Washington lobbyist. He worked against higher duties on drugs and toilet articles in the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, against taxes on cosmetics in the 1932 Revenue Act. Drug Inc. has lent him to the White House, will pay his salary as its campaign contribution.

In addition to Mr. Clark, President Hoover now has working for him and re-election the following: Everett Sanders, President Coolidge's No. 1 secretary, as chairman of the Republican National Committee; George Akerson, onetime Hoover secretary, as publicity director at New York headquarters; Walter Newton, onetime Minnesota Representative, as political secretary; Lawrence Richey, one-time detective, as personal secretary.; French Strother, onetime editor, as literary secretary.

P: Last March First Lieutenant Francis J. Clark, U. S. Infantry, was convicted by court martial at Denver of intoxication, disorderly conduct, criminal assault. He was sentenced to be dismissed from the Army, imprisoned for six years. Reviewing the case as the Army's Commander-in-Chief, President Hoover found much hearsay evidence used to support the assault charge. Last week it was announced that the President had stricken the prison term from Clark's sentence, confirmed his dismissal.

P: On Aug. 29, 1916 a sudden West Indian hurricane and tidal wave smote the south shore of Santo Domingo, drove the U. S. S. Memphis, 14,500-ton cruiser anchored in the harbor, up on the rocks where she remains to this day. Live steam from broken pipes made below-decks an inferno. Last week at the White House President Hoover conferred the Navy's Medal of Honor upon Commander Claud Ashton Jones, the Memphis' senior engineer, for his heroism 16 years ago in evacuating the injured from her engine room.

"On to Soissons!"

We have overcome the major financial crisis. . . . Confidence and hope have reappeared in the world. . . . The great war against depression is being fought on many fronts. One of the most stupendous actions has been the long battle of the last 18 months to carry our financial structure safely through the world-wide collapse. That battle may be likened to the great battle of Chateau Thierry. That attack on our line has been stopped. But I warn you that the war is not over. We must now reform our forces for the battle of Soissons.

Before President Hoover as he spoke these words last week in the auditorium of the new Department of Commerce building sat some 300 of the country's foremost bankers, industrialists and businessmen. Most of them were members of the regional committees set up in the twelve Federal Reserve districts to help pump new bank credit into deflated business. Others were important guests who had also been summoned to Washington to participate in one of the most impressive economic conferences ever held in the capital.

Chairmen of the regional committees were: Boston's Carl P. Dennett (General Capital Corp.); New York's Owen D. Young (General Electric); Philadelphia's George Harrison Houston (Baldwin Locomotive) ; Cleveland's Lewis Blair Williams (Hayden, Miller & Co.): Washington's Edwin Charles Graham (National Electrical Supply ); Atlanta's George Simmons Harris (Exposition Cotton Mills); Chicago's Sewell Lee Avery (Montgomery Ward); St. Louis' James W. Harris (Harris-Polk Hats); Minneapolis' George Draper Dayton (department store); Kansas City's Joseph Franklin Porter (Kansas City Power & Light); Wichita Falls' Frank Kell (Kell Mill & Elevator Co.); San Francisco's Kenneth Raleigh Kingsbury (Standard Oil of California).

Scattered among the other delegates were Thomas Nelson Perkins (Boston & Maine), Redfield Proctor (Vermont Marble), Alfred P. Sloan Jr. (General Motors), Cornelius Francis Kelley (Anaconda Copper), Myron C. Taylor (U. S. Steel). William Hartman Woodin (American Car & Foundry), William Wallace Atterbury (Pennsylvania R. R.), Arthur Colbraith Dorrance (Campbell Soup), Irenee du Pont (explosives), George Horace Lorimer (Satevepost), Wilfred Washington Fry (N. W. Ayer & Son), J. Howard Pew (Sun Oil), Howard Heinz (pickles), William Cooper Procter (Ivory soap), George Mathew Verity (American Rolling Mill), Harvey S. Firestone Jr. (tires), Paul Weeks Litchfield (Goodyear), James Dinsmore Tew (Goodrich), Charles A. Cannon (towels), Samuel Clay Williams (Reynolds Tobacco), A. D. Geoghegan (Wesson Oil), Fred Wesley Sargent (Chicago & Northwestern), John Stuart (Quaker Oats), Fred Pabst (Cheese), Alvan Macauley (Packard), Frank Chambless Rand (International Shoe), Robert L. Lund (Listerine), Charles Donnelly (Northern Pacific), Frederick Edward Weyerhaeuser (lumber), Carl Raymond Gray (Union Pacific), William Stamps Farish (Humble Oil), Frederick Lockwood Lipman (Wells Fargo), Paul Shoup (Southern Pacific).

''This is a meeting," President Hoover told them, "not to pass resolutions on economic questions, but to give you the opportunity to organize for action. . . . What I wish is that banking and industry and business generally should assume further initiative and responsibility and they should cooperate with agriculture and labor and the government agencies to organize and develop every possible avenue of coordinated effort on the economic front. . . ." After his speech on credit and jobs President Hoover did the extraordinary thing of sitting for two hours on the platform while other Government officials made speeches.

To Franklin Fort, Chairman of the new Federal Home Loan Board, went the loudest ovation when he announced that national bank receivers had been ordered not to foreclose any more mortgages for 60 days until his relief organization could swing into action.* Later 20 State banking departments pledged themselves to carry out the same plan locally.

Concretely the conference set up a central committee to co-ordinate the twelve regional committees of the Federal Reserve and serve as a G. H. Q. in the war on depression. Placed in charge was Henry Mauris Robinson, Los Angeles banker and good Hoover friend, who has spent the last three weeks at the While House preparing for the conference. Six subcommittees were appointed for the following purposes:

1) Credit to business, headed by Mr. Young.

2) Increased repair and maintenance by railroads, headed by Daniel Willard (Baltimore &Ohio), and George H. Houston (Baldwin Locomotive).

3) Increased capital expenditures by industry. Chairman was Andrew Wells Robertson (Westinghouse) who told the conference: "Our financial men say the turn is made. They are wise men and I believe them. But when I look around my bailiwick I see no change. We don't come near being in the black figures."

4) Increased employment, chairmanned by Walter Clark Teagle (Standard Oil of New Jersey). The slogan: "Job Security by Job Spreading."

5) Home repair and improvement, headed by Montgomery Ward's Avery and American Radiator's Woolley.

6) Relief for home-owners with maturing mortgages, chairmanned by R. F. C.'s President Miller.

*The Treasury has no power to suspend mortgage foreclosures by solvent national banks.

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