Roosevelt's Ten

Paying the U. S. $90, each member of the Hoover Cabinet last week had his heavy black leather & mahogany chair taken out of the White House and crated for shipment to his home as a souvenir.* Into the spacious, many-windowed Cabinet room were trundled ten brand new chairs for Franklin Delano Roosevelt to fill with his ten chief advisers. On the high stiff back of each chair was a metal plate naming the Cabinet job but not the jobholder.

After months of conferences and cogitations the new President at last picked nine men and one woman. Because War Debts and the Federal deficit were his two most urgent inherited problems, Mr. Roosevelt formally announced the appointment of his Secretary of State and Secretary of the Treasury eleven days before the Inaugural. When the happy wife of the man he had chosen for Secretary of War bubbled to the Press about her husband's good fortune, the President-elect good-naturedly confirmed the news. The names of other members were dribbled out from day to day.

Cabinetmaking is easier in October than in February. During that interval the President-elect learned that he could not crook his finger and get the ready services of his party's first & foremost. Much mentioned before election but not to be found on last week's slate were the national names of Bernard Mannes Baruch, Owen D. Young, Newton Diehl Baker, Albert Cabell Ritchie, Alfred Emanuel Smith, Carter Glass. Even his two ranking Cabinet officers Mr. Roosevelt had to "draft" (his own word) into Federal service.

On paper the "New Deal" Cabinet contained no shocks and few surprises. Its make-up was largely personal and political. Seven were Democrats who openly and ardently supported the Roosevelt nomination before the Chicago convention. The presence of three nominal Republicans who bolted Hoover gave it a vague semblance of coalition. Conservatives dominated 2-to-1. Three members were drawn from the Senate, none from the House. Counting the President, Episcopalians tied 3-to-3 with Presbyterians, Roman Catholics and Methodists evened off at two apiece. New York got three jobs, the South three, the Midwest two, the West two. For the first time in history a woman was to sit at the Cabinet table, but she was placed at its foot.

Though it lacked the glitter of great names, though partisan Republicans might call it a "small-time" aggregation of administrative talent and disgruntled Democrats might object, sectionally, the Roosevelt Cabinet seemed well received by the country. Most of its members know by long experience the business of government. It presaged good teamwork with a President who obviously would be its master.

Secretary of State. Cordell Hull, 61, was picked because he is the ablest tariff man in his party and President Roosevelt proposes to start world trade again by international tariff agreements. Rated high for quiet good sense and personal integrity, Senator Hull's appointment produced the loudest popular applause. Abed with a bad cold in his two-room apartment in Washington's fashionable Carlton Hotel, the new Secretary of State said: "I hope I have the capacity to measure up to the responsibilities." After March 4 he will take a larger suite at the Carlton, do all his official entertaining there.

Born on his well-to-do parents' farm near Carthage, Tenn., Cordell Hull used to raft logs down the Cumberland River. With a law degree from Cumberland University, he quickly mixed practice and politics, served briefly in the State Legislature. During the Spanish War he captained a company of the 40th Tennessee Volunteers. Because he once sat on the district bench, most Tennesseeans still call him "Judge." In 1906 he was elected to the House where he wrote the first Federal income tax law (1913), the first Federal inheritance tax law (1916). When the Harding landslide put him out of office for two years, he served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Back in the House in 1923, he was promoted to the Senate in 1930.

High-tariff Republicans call Cordell Hull a free-trader. He calls himself a Jeffersonian Democrat committed to tariff-for-revenue-only. In 1910 he damned the Payne-Aldrich law as "a miserable travesty, an ill-designed patchwork, a piece of brazen legislative jobbery" and in 1932 he flayed the Hawley-Smoot act as "utterly disastrous to our trade." Long an advocate of tariff reciprocity, he wrote that plank into the last Democratic platform. As President Roosevelt's Secretary of State his job will be to negotiate tariff treaties. Senator Hull's world views: "The mad pursuit of economic nationalism or aloofness--every nation striving to live unto itself--has proved utterly empty and disastrous. The practice of the half-insane policy of economic isolation during the past ten years by America and the world is the largest single underlying cause of the present world panic. . . . Economic disarmament and military disarmament are patently the two most vital and outstanding factors in business recovery."

Senator Hull on War Debts: "However important they may be, they are not a major cause of the panic nor are they a major remedy. . . . Each important country before seeking separate and preferential consideration of their claims for further [debt] reduction, should first indicate their attitude toward the more fundamental program of tariff cuts."

A grey, gaunt man with downcast eyes and stooped shoulders, Cordell Hull has been moving about the Capitol for 24 years in studious preoccupation. Only his Congressional intimates know his unspectacular worth. He has never had any practical experience as a diplomat but he has read every decision handed down by the World Court. He refuses to wear spats and carry a cane, but can recite by heart every trade barrier the world over. Laconic, when asked the time he will silently exhibit his watch instead of reading it himself.

To assist Secretary Hull in running the State Department, two names were prominent last week--William Phillips and Raymond Moley. Mr. Phillips is a longtime career diplomat. As envoy he has represented the U. S. in the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada, served two years (1922-24) as Undersecretary of State. He is a protocol (procedure) expert. Professor Moley, head of the Roosevelt "Brain Trust" has been the new President's chief adviser on War Debts since accompanying him to the first White House conference with President Hoover.

Secretary Hull will have a fellow Tennesseean to work with in the person of Norman Hezekiah Davis, President Hoover's Man-About-Europe, chairman of the U. S. delegation to the Disarmament Conference.

The plumpest diplomatic plum, Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, seemed last week about to drop into the dapper lap of Robert Worth Bingham, 61, wealthy Louisville, Ky. publisher. Born and educated in North Carolina, Mr. Bingham crossed the mountains to Kentucky to seek fame & fortune. He practiced law, served as Mayor of Louisville (1907), sat on the bench, organized long leaf tobacco growers into cooperatives. After his first wife was killed in an automobile accident, he married the widow of Henry Morrison Flagler who made $70,000,000 developing the Florida East Coast. In 1917 she died, leaving Mr. Bingham $5,000,000. The next year he bought the famed Louisville Courier-Journal and the less famed Louisville Times. In his papers he wobbled between the Republican and Democratic parties. In 1928 Hoover was his candidate. In 1932 it was Roosevelt. A man of position and polish, Publisher Bingham now sits on the board of a bank, a railroad, a creosoting company. He has a married son living in Scotland whither he goes grouse-shooting every August.

Secretary of the Treasury. William Hartman Woodin, 64, had 21 important directorships to resign when President-elect Roosevelt picked him for this portfolio after Carter Glass turned it down. The appointment of such a successful manufacturer of railroad equipment to head Federal finances heartened U. S. business. Secretary Woodin is a "hard money" man who can be counted on to oppose all schemes for currency inflation. He was a stanch Union League Republican until, as fuel administrator for New York in 1922, he came under the spell of Governor Smith, whose presidential candidacy he supported.

Mr. Woodin's father had a foundry at Berwick, Pa. where he was born. As a college graduate the son was put into this shop, cleaning castings at 90-c- per day. It was hateful work for an esthete like young Will Woodin. Once he became an expert foundryman, he fled to Europe to study music. Recalled by his father, he entered

American Car & Foundry, world's biggest of its kind, emerged as president in 1916. His company also builds ACF cruisers. When Federal agents began potshooting innocent yachtsmen as rum-runners, Mr. Woodin turned violently Wet (TIME, April 29, 1929).

His contribution to the Roosevelt campaign was twofold: 1) $35,000 in cash; 2) a Big Businessman's assurance to Big Business that the "New Deal" would benefit the country. A close personal friend of the new President, he sits as a trustee on the Warm Springs Foundation.

Music is still Mr. Woodin's avocation. At night he sits up in bed in his penthouse just off Manhattan's Fifth Avenue and plucks out new melodies on a guitar. For this week's Inaugural he has written "The Franklin Delano Roosevelt March." Works of his which have been well received professionally include "The Oriental Suite" and "The Covered Wagon Suite." But he says: "I'm not a budding Mozart or Brahms. I don't claim genius." Last week politicians poked fun at one of the verses of his songs for children which goes:

Oh, hear the happy bluebirds singing in the rain.

They're singing to the rainbow shining there again.

So let us be like bluebirds, happy all day long,

Forgetting all our troubles in

a sunny song.

Secretary Woodin collects U. S. gold coins, particularly $5 pieces which have been experimentally minted but never put into circulation. Once he wrote a book on numismatics which begins: "Coins are the metallic footprints of nations." He has a rare collection of the etchings of George Cruikshank, Dickens' illustrator. A standing joke of Mr. Roosevelt's to ward off press queries: "I've been discussing Mr. Woodin's Cruikshanks." Prominent in his delicate, heartshaped countenance are Mr. Woodin's twinkling blue eyes and his small mouth, a cupid's but firm. He plumes himself on his punning. Last week he declared: "I'm going to be more concerned with Federal Reserve notes than with musical notes for a while." When a newsman named Acuff introduced himself, Mr. Woodin quipped: ''Acuff? Well I've got a collar, ha-ha!"

Mr. Woodin's assignment is Cabinet's hardest. In the next eleven months the Treasury will be confronted with refinancing more than half the public debt of $20,907,000,000. In addition there must be new taxes to balance the Budget, new economies to cut the Deficit. Mr. Woodin was not ready last week to talk policies. All he would say: "I've more respect for this job than anything I've ever undertaken. Let me get my feet on the ground. ... I must saw wood and keep quiet. . . . What Secretary of the Treasury do I admire most? Why, Alexander Hamilton, of course."

Secretary of War. George Henry Dern, 60, got his appointment over the long distance telephone in Salt Lake City just as he was starting for Washington and the Inaugural. His was the wife who let the news out while he napped. Mrs. Dern, mother of five, and Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt, mother of five, are fast friends.

When long-jawed Mr. Roosevelt met broad-jawed Mr. Dern at a Governors' Conference in 1930, the Governor of New York chanced to remark that he thought the Governor of Utah was of "Cabinet size." Governor Dern has treasured that aside ever since as his promise of a White House seat after March 4. For a time, though, it looked as if party factionalism in Utah would keep him out. When the Dern appointment was announced last week Ormond Ewing, Democratic National Committeeman, declared: ''He won't last more than six months. I'm glad to see Utah recognized but I'm not glad Dern got the job."

Born on a Nebraska farm, George Dern went to the University of Nebraska, played on its championship football team, once had his pants torn completely off in a tackle. Migrating to Utah, he got a job as bookkeeper with a gold mine, learned engineering, helped to invent the Holt-Dern ore roaster. A moneymaker, he bought into banks, power companies, canneries, is today one of Utah's wealthier citizens. As a progressive Democrat, he was elected Governor in 1924, re-elected in 1928. A Congregationalist, he gets on well with the Mormons. His favorite parlor game is "Murder." Once when he was playing the murderer, he accidentally knocked out a guest.* Of military, experience the new Secretary of War has had none. As he set out for Washington, his chief interest centred in the Army's engineering projects. Said he: "I'm strong for Roosevelt's plans for operation of Muscle Shoals and development of the Tennessee River basin."

Attorney General. Thomas James Walsh, 73, Senator from Montana, was more excited last week about taking a wife in Havana than about his seat in the Cabinet. Long a widower, he flew to Cuba where he was the guest of Ambassador Guggenheim. At her suburban villa before 30 witnesses he was married to Senora Mina Perez Chaumont de Truffin, fiftyish, socialite widow of a wealthy Cuban sugar planter. Senator Walsh met his bride in New York two years ago, courted her mostly by mail. One of Mrs. Walsh's two stepdaughters is the wife of the Mayor of Havana. The other is the widow of President Clemente Vasquez Bello of the Cuban Senate (assassinated last autumn). After the ceremony the Walshes flew toward Washington for the Inaugural. Declared Senator Walsh: "I expect to take two months vacation to show my wife the beauties of Montana."

Entering the Senate in 1913 as a Helena attorney, "Tom" Walsh, grim of mien and gruff of manner, quickly developed as a great constitutional authority. He fought notably for the confirmation of Louis Dembitz Brandeis, first Jew on the Supreme Court. Organized Labor is still grateful to him for his efforts to exclude unions from the anti-trust laws He led the fight that ended only when Michigan's wealthy Truman Newberry resigned from the Senate seat he was accused of buying. His relentless investigation of the Teapot Dome and Elk Hills oil leases finally put Albert Bacon Fall behind bars. He presided over the 103 ballots cast by warring Democrats in Madison Square Garden in 1924, presided again last June at Chicago. After the oil investigation had made him a headliner, Washington's Daisy Harriman took him in hand, trimmed his scraggly mustache, made a society lion out of him. But no amount of social attention could diminish his capacity for public indignation or soften the glare of righteousness in his hard blue eyes. As an Attorney General, he is rated faintly radical because he sponsored the Federal Trade Commission's investigation of the "Power Trust."

Postmaster General. James Aloysius Farley, 44, took the portfolio that generally goes to a President-maker. More than any other man, he sold Franklin Roosevelt to the U. S. just as he used to sell gypsum and now sells building materials, through Elks' Clubs, among Red Men, by mail, over the telephone and in back-slapping personal contacts. Big, bald, breezy Jim Farley steps into the Post

Office Department as the recognized patronage broker of the new Administration.

Secretary of the Navy. Claude Augustus Swanson, 70, got into the Cabinet only when his Senate colleague from Virginia turned down the Treasury. Behind his appointment lay the following political situation: Senator Swanson is up for reelection next year; Harry Flood Byrd was getting ready to beat him for renomination; by sidestepping into the Cabinet. Senator Swanson makes way for Harry Byrd to enter the Senate immediately by appointment, neatly saves his own old face.

Clerking in a grocery store gave Claude Swanson the money to go to Randolph-Macon. There his close friend was James Cannon Jr., now the politico-religionist. He was long (1893-1905) a member of the House. The Jamestown Exposition was the biggest event of his governorship (1906-10). Twenty-three years in the Senate made him No. 1 Democrat on the Naval Affairs Committee. A Big-Navy man, he was sent as a delegate to last year's disarmament conference at Geneva, made his big speech in praise of battleships.

In the Senate he wears frock coats and high wing collars, declaims his speeches, mixes his metaphors and keeps both ears to the Virginia ground simultaneously. Attacks of indigestion sometimes cause him to faint. His secretary tries to suppress publication of such incidents. A Swanson fainting spell that got into print once cost the Senator some $25,000 in additional campaign expenses to convince his constituents he was not an invalid. Admirals expect him to give them a free hand running the Navy.

Secretary of the Interior. Harold L. Ickes (pronounced "Ick-us"), 58, of Chicago, is a Midwest maverick appointed as a reward to progressive Republican bolters. He was recommended to the President-elect by Republican Senators Johnson of California and Cutting of New Mexico after they had both rejected Cabinet bids. The Ickes appointment started loud grumbles among Illinois' Democratic leaders who were completely ignored in the selection.

A graduate of the University of Chicago (1897), Secretary Ickes began practicing law in 1907, still has a small office on La Salle Street. In 1912 he became a rampant Bull Mooser but in 1916 was behind Hughes, only to switch to Cox four years later. In 1924 he managed Hiram Johnson's abortive Illinois campaign for the

Republican nomination for President. Early last year he came out against President Hoover's renomination on the ground that "not one Republican voter in ten wants him." His candidate was Gifford Pinchot whose portrait hangs in his office. The first successful campaign in which Reformer Ickes ever participated was that of Franklin Roosevelt.

Secretary Ickes is a short, paunchy man with thin grey hair and a mouth that twists up into strange shapes. Behind his gruff manner lies dry humor. He likes to call himself a "lone wolf" in politics. Few regular politicians of either party can guess which way Lone Wolf Ickes will jump next. Anna Wilmarth Thompson Ickes, his wife, whose inheritance is sufficient to leave them both free for politics, is now serving her third term as a regular Republican in the Illinois Legislature. The Insull debacle has been the latest and largest Ickes target.

The Ickes live comfortably on a ten-acre place at Winnetka where the new Secretary of Interior putters among his dahlias, drives a Packard, collects stamps. For this week's inaugural he is buying and wearing his first high silk hat in 30 years.

Secretary of Agriculture. Henry Agard Wallace, 44, got into the Cabinet because of a family grudge against Herbert Hoover. His father was Harding's Secretary of Agriculture when the outgoing President was Harding's Secretary of Commerce. The elder Wallace's plans for farm relief were frustrated by the White House influence of Secretary Hoover. Secretary Wallace, a good Republican to the end, died in office (1924), lay in state in the White House East Room. This year the younger Wallace had his revenge when he helped turn Iowa Democratic.

The new Secretary is editor of Wallace's Farmer, founded by his grandfather and now in receivership. He is one of the original sponsors of Domestic Allotment as "the most intelligent scheme yet brought forward to furnish agriculture with a program for an orderly retreat." He loudly advocates currency inflation to relieve farm debt. Said he last month: "England has played us for a bunch of suckers. The smart thing to do would be to go off the gold standard a little further than England has. The British debtor has paid off his debts 50% easier than the U. S. debtor has."

An expert on seeds but no "dirt farmer," Mr. Wallace is a gloomy, solitary man preoccupied with the farmer's woes as seen from an editorial office. Never before has he held public office. Around the Cabinet table his radicalism will probably need checking by cooler, more conservative heads.

Secretary of Commerce. Daniel Calhoun Roper, 65, was a forgotten man of the Wilson Administration until Mr. Roosevelt unexpectedly boosted him into the Cabinet. Responsible for the boost was William Gibbs McAdoo whose Madison Square Garden fight for the Presidency Mr. Roper managed. The Roper appointment infuriates the Al Smith faction of the party, for in 1928 the new Secretary of Commerce became a Hoovercrat by default when he sailed for Europe. Loose-jowled, bespectacled old "Dan" Roper is nominally from South Carolina, where he was born and where he still has two cotton plantations. But for the last 13 years he has lived in Washington as a lawyer, showing clients how to reduce their income taxes. Three years (1917-20) as Commissioner of Internal Revenue qualified him for this practice. Before that he was President Wilson's First Assistant Postmaster General. He arrived in Washington as a Congressional secretary, demonstrated a rare talent with figures, helped draft the Underwood Tariff Act (1913). Earlier in South Carolina, he had served in the State Legislature where, although an ardent Dry and devout Methodist, he offered legislation creating the notorious South Carolina liquor dispensary system. Never since has he ceased to talk of the failure of that system.

President Roosevelt expects to shrink the Department of Commerce, so greatly expanded by Herbert Hoover. Secretary Roper, no eminent commercialist, is prepared for major amputations.

Secretary of Labor. Frances Perkins (Wilson), 50, of Manhattan got this portfolio without organized Labor's backing because President Roosevelt considers her the smartest woman in public life today. No honorary appointee, she qualifies as the result of long, patient years in social and industrial welfare work.

Of the Boston Perkinses, she was graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1902, went to Lake Forest, Ill. to teach. The writings of Jacob Riis (How the Other Half Lives') and Lincoln Steffens (The Shame of the Cities) fired her ardor for reform, sent her to Hull House for six months. At Columbia later she did post-graduate work.

In 1911 Miss Perkins was having tea with friends near Manhattan's Washington Square when the cry of "Fire!" sent them tumbling to the street. There before her eyes 146 factory girls were burned to a crisp in the great Triangle Shirtwaist fire. That fire started a reform movement for industry which Miss Perkins still reads. As a member of a committee on safety, she went to Albany, lobbied through legislation for factory fire prevention. There, too, she met three young legislators--Al Smith, Bob Wagner and Franklin Roosevelt--who have been her great & good friends ever since.

In 1919 Governor Smith put Miss Perkins on the State Industrial Commission. Governor Roosevelt took her into his State Cabinet as Industrial Commissioner, the post from which she will follow him into the Federal Cabinet.

Again & again Miss Perkins tripped up Republican Secretaries of Labor Davis and Doak on their underestimates of U. S. joblessness during the Depression. When she steps into her office, she proposes not only an accurate and non-political count of unemployment but also a nation-wide system of Federal employment agencies to bring men and work together. In 1913 Miss Perkins married Paul C. Wilson, a secretary to the late John Purroy Mitchel, New York's reform mayor. They have a 16-year-old daughter. Though no Lucy Stoner, Mrs. Wilson kept her maiden name in public so as not to embarrass her husband with her political activities. Her elderly mother always introduces her as Mrs. Wilson and as such she will be carried on the Federal payroll. Mr. Wilson is now a financial statistician.

Olive-skinned Miss Perkins wears black dresses and over her wavy dark hair a brown tricorne hat almost as distinctive as the Brown Derby. Outside office hours her two chief interests are modern painting and keeping her private life private.

Director of The Budget. Lewis Williams Douglas, 38, of Phoenix, Ariz, will not sit with the Cabinet but his presence will be strongly felt whenever they meet. Personal friendship aside, the new President plucked him out of the House to head the Budget Bureau because nowhere else could he find a better combination of tact and tenacity, industry and intelligence.

Scion of the wealthy copper mining family which founded Douglas, Ariz. "Lew" Douglas was graduated from Amherst in 1916, studied metallurgy at M. I. T. With the gist Division he went overseas, a lieutenant of field artillery cited by General Pershing for bravery. Home and married, he took to citrus ranching, first tasted public life in the Arizona Legislature, got himself elected to Congress as his State's lone Representative in 1926. This week he rounded out his third term. A lean, wiry youngster with a quick grin and a ready tongue, Representative Douglas shot up to a commanding Democratic position in the House in six short years. On the Appropriations Committee he made a detailed study of Governmental machinery. He pitched House Democrats to victory in their annual ball game with Republicans. He bicycles daily to the Capitol wearing a narrow-brimmed hat cocked over his left eye.

Before Budget Director Douglas lies a hard anonymous job, one that will make him many enemies, no friends. Upon him rests the party pledge of cutting Federal expenses 25%. But he is a do-or-die budget balancer and, though himself a veteran, is committed to "purging the pension rolls," even to the extent of knocking out the $400,000,000 now paid for non-military disabilities. When it comes to Government spending, able "Lew" Douglas, with the President's backing, will issue crisp orders to the ten members of the Cabinet the theory: they will obey or get out.

*Only six Cabinet members--Messrs Stimson, Mitchell, Brown, Adams, Wilbur and Hyde--had sat in their White House seats all through President Hoover's four years.

*Rules of Murder: A prosecutor, chosen at random, is sent from the room. Cards are dealt face down to the other players, the one receiving the Queen of Spades becoming the murderer. All lights are extinguished. The murderer must find a victim, throttle it. The victim screams. After the scream the murderer may take only four steps, other players must stand in their tracks. All players must answer the Prosecutor truthfully except the murderer who may lie freely. The Prosecutor may openly accuse only one suspect.

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