New Attorney General

Added to the President's official family last week was another liberal with a gentleman's background. Francis Biddle of Philadelphia, as long predicted, became Attorney General of the U.S.*

Like his boss Mr. Roosevelt, 55-year-old Mr. Biddle went to Groton, then to Harvard (1909 cum laude), then to Harvard Law (1911 cum laude). Traditionally he might have returned to Philadelphia, crusted city of his fathers, and, considering his high breeding, lived gently on his wealth. But the job he got as secretary to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the great dissenter, gave him stouter ideas.

Biddle (known in Washington as "Mushmouth," because of his hot-potato accent) then practiced law, served as special assistant U.S. attorney, and in due time, with the backing of New Dealing Philadelphia Publisher Dave Stern, became chairman of the National Labor Relations Board (1934-35). He could hardly have picked a New Deal agency which his neighbors trusted less or hated more.

For his careful handling of the dynamite-packed TVA investigation in 1938 he was rewarded in 1939 with a judgeship in the Circuit Court of Appeals. There he might have stuck for a lifetime, wrapped in Biddle dignity. But when the opening came he dived off again to become Solicitor General.

In the renovated Supreme Court he met and worsted some of the country's highest-priced legal talent, became a bright sharp sword in the New Deal. He fought for the Government's right to fix wages for workmen on Government contracts, fought for the wages and hours law. He defended the right of the Government to intervene in bankruptcy proceedings. He argued for the spread of Federal control over the nation's waterways. In all his earnest advocacy of these New Deal measures he was upheld.

This week Mr. Roosevelt tapped him.

* The first Attorney General of the U. S. was Edmund Randolph, from whom Mr. Biddle traces a direct descent.

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