Exeunt, Dead March

Six months ago Franklin Roosevelt discovered that Rexford Guy Tugwell had a negative propaganda value. Thereupon Dr. Tugwell's pleasant face was given a veil of political invisibility. Hence few people were last week aware that he was in Florida on vacation, recuperating from an attack of influenza. But Secretary Wallace knew. So did AAAdministrator Chester C. Davis. And many another was to become acutely conscious of the fact.

Although Tugwell's tongue won the Brain Trust fame with the public, another, even more voluble tongue, won the Brain Trust fame in many a Washington drawing room--the tongue of Jerome Frank. That restless young Jewish lawyer--who was a brain truster to Mayor Dever's Chicago reform administration; whose early drawing room sallies were in the homes of such Midwest literary liberals as Floyd Dell, Sherwood Anderson, Harriet Munroe; whom Communist Emma Goldman calls "Jerry"; whose shrewdness won him a place in the Manhattan law firm of Chadbourne, Stanchfield & Levy; whose brilliant articles on judicial psychology led him to friendship with Felix Frankfurter --was like a can of TNT dropped into a Washington drawing room. He turned his deep burning eyes on his fellow guests and unleashed his facile tongue for the sport of bating reactionaries. Nothing did he enjoy more than predicting the swift destruction which the Administration would wreak on the established order. When he passed, Tory hearts lay beneath their starched shirt fronts palpitating and bleeding. He was the making of many a party.

As counsel to AAA he was also a thorn in the paw of sturdy George Peek, his boss. Mr. Peek protested to Secretary Wallace. In vain, for Counsel Frank had Felix Frankfurter's approval and the support of Dr. Tugwell. So Mr. Peek, instead of using his legal counselor, hired his own lawyer out of his own pocket. But Thorn Frank was too pointed for his flesh. The time came when Mr. Peek gave Mr. Wallace the choice of accepting his own resignation or Frank's. With the advice of Dr. Tugwell and the consent of the President, Mr. Wallace accepted Mr. Peek's (TIME, Dec. 18, 1933).

In Mr. Peek's place, Chester C. Davis took charge of AAA. "Chet" Davis is not a man of Mr. Peek's sort, not a man of Mr. Frank's. Economically he stood somewhat closer to Jerome Frank, but he was a middle-of-the-roader in economics and in disposition. In AAA's legal department Frank and his satellites, including Francis Shea, Lee Pressman, Victor Rotnem, flashed their rapiers, determined to slice the profits off processors and middlemen and present them to the farmers. In AAA's Information Division, Consumers' Counsel Frederick C. Howe and Gardner Jackson slashed about them in the name of the consumer. Slow and steady Mr. Davis was not at home among such assistants, was not prepared to go their radical lengths. He held his hand, but the time came when the ax had to fall.

One murky evening last week a mimeographed sheet announced a reorganization of AAA. Mr. Frank, who had shocked so many Tories, was shocked. He and his friends were fired without warning. Frederick Howe was demoted. The Brain Trust was so completely taken by surprise that it had no rebuttal. And Dr. Tugwell, alas, was in Florida. Only next day did the full significance of the event dawn upon Washington.

Secretary Wallace and Administrator Davis received a hundred newshawks. For an hour the two were cross-examined. They spoke with circumspection but they denied nothing. The Brain Trusters of AAA had been ousted because Messrs. Davis and Wallace had had enough of them. The action had been discussed for two months.

Said Mr. Wallace: "Some people with the highest ideals don't have the same conceptions. . . . The situation was more or less inevitable. ... Everyone has the greatest faith in Mr. Frank's ability for hard work. . . . The move we took was for the greatest possible harmony. . . ."

A newshawk asked bluntly whether it was a fact that Mr. Wallace had sided with Frank to make Peek walk the plank, now sided with Davis to make Frank walk the plank.

"That is substantially correct. Yes," said Mr. Wallace.

What did Dr. Tugwell think of this?

"Mr. Tugwell is out of town and you will have to ask him what he thinks of this change."

If there was any further testimony needed to establish that the Undersecretary of Agriculture had not been told, he gave it himself. When the battle of Cedar Creek began, Sheridan was 20 miles away, but in this case Tugwell was 1,000 miles away. He broke off his recuperation. Up from the South at break of day he came by airplane, went in haste to the White House door. But he came too late. The President had already made his stand plain to newshawks: he had no intention of intervening, the shakeup in AAA was an "internal matter."

Although Dr. Tugwell had come too late to save his friends, he was not too late to win renewed expressions of esteem from the Administration. He himself was named to a place on the new ''operating council" of AAA. A liberal friend of his, Dr. Calvin B. Hoover, was appointed Consumers' counsel to AAA--with the understanding that the job would henceforth be different from what it was under Frederick Howe. Administration eyes were cast around to find innocuous jobs to appease Mr. Frank & friends. Yet Dr. Tugwell's nose was out of joint. He turned on a newshawk who remarked, "Well, you won't resign," and snapped:

"How do you know?"

The significance was quite unmistakable : with Franklin Roosevelt's consent the biggest single bevy of Brain Trusters in the Administration had been quietly but firmly turned out as troublemakers.

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