Somebody's Sweetheart Now

In the Interior Secretary's office last week, at a desk which visitors must ap proach over an expanse nearly as long as Mussolini's, sat a happy old grouch. Honest Harold Ickes, the New Deal's grumpy grandpa, had escaped the manpower job which President Roosevelt wanted him to take (see p. 28). He was still firmly ensconced in his beloved Interior Department. Working in the sleeves of a horribly blue-striped shirt, he pulled the lumpy knot of his tie a little more crooked, and nearly smiled.

After a full decade as a bogie-man, an ogre, a name to frighten children and Republicans, Horrible Harold Ickes had found that somebody loved him after all.

Being offered one of the biggest war jobs was one proof. Being permitted to talk his way out of it and into new, enlarged powers as Petroleum Coordinator was an even greater one. Then came the final tribute from Chairman William R. Boyd Jr. of the Petroleum Industry War Council (a real, live businessman): "[This] is deeply gratifying to me personally and I am sure that it will be to every oil man in the country." Mr. Ickes' new powers over oil may have little practical value, since he was exercising them anyway, but they give him the blessing of the law. He still controls the potent machinery of the Interior Department, with its authority over mining and public power. If Franklin Roosevelt appoints a power administrator some day, as seems likely, Harold Ickes is the logical man. And he still sits on the same operating base from which he has waged some of his hottest and most triumphant battles: to expand steel and aluminum production, to build a pipeline to the East Coast, to purge Commerce Secretary Jesse Jones (an old enemy) from the war program.

Thus Honest Harold's star was at zenith last week; he had gained more prestige by avoiding the manpower job than Paul McNutt had by taking it. He was no longer a wallflower. A few days earlier, he had written a blistering ten-page letter to the editors of the Washington Star, nailing them to a barn door and skinning them alive for daring to criticize his oil setup. Given a chance to do the letter over last week, he would doubtless have cut it to five pages.

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