Mr. Newton and the Facts

"I expect the incidental results of this job will be substantial headaches and more personal abuse--which I will try not to warrant."

So saying, stocky Carl Elbridge Newton last week left his job as president of the bustling, kitten-conscious Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, thrust his feet under a Washington desk, and got set for a tough summer and a hard winter as operator of the Government-seized coal mines.

Promptly, Newton sat down with mine operators, then with John L. Lewis. One fact Newton made plain: as deputy coal administrator he has no jurisdiction over wages, no power to make a contract with mineworkers.

Fact-minded Administrator Newton has spent a good chunk of his life making things plain. A graduate of Dartmouth (1920), a Rhodes scholar (law), a post-graduate Harvard law student, Newton's first public job as assistant U.S. attorney was to help dig into a $6,500,000 alien property fraud, come up with such plain facts that President Harding's alien property custodian, Thomas W. Miller, was sent to jail. Later, as special counsel for New York State, he investigated sewer scandals, smashed an arson ring, was named special assistant attorney general.

In 1934, he formed a law firm with three friends, specialized in tax, anti-trust and reorganization cases. During the railroad-reorganizing '30s, he came up fast. In April 1942 he landed on the board of directors of C. & O., nation's second largest soft-coal carrier. Last December, only 44, he was boosted to president. As such, he had a big dollars-&-cents stake in the mine dispute, but was neither pro-operators nor pro-miners. In Republican Newton, businessmen agreed that Solid Fuels Administrator Harold Ickes had made a top-notch nonpolitical choice.

In his new job, Administrator Newton is busily getting all the facts, wisely keeping mum. Favorite Newton nugget: "There's nothing like a fact. When I was trying criminal cases, I found that a good, old-fashioned fact could stop even Max Steuer (famed Manhattan trial lawyer)."

The U.S. fervently hoped that Administrator Newton could produce some good, old-fashioned facts to stop the seldom-stopped Boss of the Miners.

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