Riskless Resignation

One of the best-paid Government jobs, at $18,000 per year, is that of U. S. High Commissioner to the Philippine Commonwealth. The Governor of Michigan gets a paltry $5,000 per year. Last week Frank Murphy renounced his sure $18,000 as High Commissioner to take a chance on $5,000 by running for Republican Michigan's Democratic gubernatorial nomination. He did it, explained the dynamic, redheaded, onetime Mayor of Detroit in his letter of resignation to President Roosevelt, because he believed that ''continuance of your leadership and the success of the Democratic Party in the coming State and national elections are of the first importance to the people of Michigan and the country at large."

Having drafted popular, vote-getting Frank Murphy to bolster the ticket in Michigan, exactly as he drafted New York's popular, vote-getting Governor Herbert H. Lehman last month, President Roosevelt promptly rewarded him with the same kind of job insurance he gave Postmaster General Farley last week. Graciously declining to accept the High Commissioner's resignation, the President loaded the dice in Frank Murphy's $13,000 gamble by granting him a two-month leave of absence without pay, ending two days after elections.

Able Frank Murphy likes his job in the Philippines, announced before departing for the U. S. two months ago that he hoped and expected to return. But his friends know that he has had his eye on Michigan's Governorship for a long time, that at 43 his political ambitions are virtually boundless. Having stayed long enough to achieve a notable reputation for tact and efficiency, the eleventh and last Governor General of the Philippines may have concluded that the post might prove for him the same kind of stepping stone which it was for the eighth. Henry Lewis Stimson, who became Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State; or for the first, William Howard Taft, who went home to be Secretary of War, later President.

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