Shake-Up!

President Truman set out last week to mold his own administration and streamline Washington bureaucracy once & for all. Within 48 hours, he made three cabinet changes and asked Congress for permanent authority to untangle overlapping bureaus and agencies.

His appointments were generally applauded. He rid himself of the three weakest members of the existing cabinet: Wickard, Biddle and Madam Perkins. Into their places moved New Mexico's Congressman Clinton P. Anderson, 49, as Secretary of Agriculture; Texas' Tom Clark, 45, as Attorney General; and Washington's onetime Senator Lewis B. Schwellenbach, 50, as Secretary of Labor.

In one sweep, Harry Truman thus: 1) lowered the average age of cabinet members from 59 to 54; 2) gave the cabinet a total of five members from west of the Mississippi; 3) further strengthened the bond between himself and Congress; and 4) put into important Government positions three double-dyed Democrats whose personal loyalty to him was unquestioned (all had worked hard for his nomination as Vice President at Chicago last summer).

While the three new Cabinet members were generally unknown, they had no known disqualifications. Harry Truman, who does not believe in one-man government, told them that they would have unquestioned authority in their fields. Clint Anderson, for instance, also becomes War Food Administrator and will thus be the nation's absolute food czar in fact as well as in name. Washington dopesters thought it only a matter of time until WLB, NLRB and the National Mediation Board would be put under the new Secretary of Labor.

Along with the new Postmaster General, Bob Hannegan, the new members will take office with the start of the new fiscal year, July 1--except Clint Anderson, who will assume his new job as soon as Claude Wickard can be confirmed as Rural Electrification Administrator.

Man with a Method. Of the new appointees, Clinton Presba Anderson had been most recently in the news. As chairman of a special House food investigating committee, he had roared about the country, blasting the ineptitude and red tape which had given the U.S. its greatest food shortage. Only last week, two days before his appointment, he had released a blistering report on the sugar scandal (see BUSINESS).

Next day he was summoned to lunch at the White House. Clint Anderson, who has sat in many a stud poker hand with Harry Truman, expected a friendly dressing down for going too far. Instead, the President said: "Clint, how would you like to be Secretary of Agriculture?" Said Anderson, later: "I almost swallowed my grapefruit."

Tall, dark and square of chin, Clint Anderson came to Congress four years ago after a career that included newspapering (Albuquerque Journal), selling insurance (Mountain States Casualty Co.), the presidency of Rotary International (1932), and administration of New Mexico's relief (1935). He is a gentleman farmer. Three years ago he bought the 935-acre Lazy V Cross ranch, five miles outside Albuquerque. There he has 450 acres of alfalfa, 135 milch cows, and 300 head of Rambouillet sheep.

Man with a Bow Tie. Attorney General Francis Biddle, whose Groton-Harvard background and passion for civil liberties endeared him to Franklin Roosevelt, had nevertheless been on his way out for so long that the names of his possible successors had been bandied about the gossip columns for months. Last week one columnist (the New York Post's Charles Van Devander) found, in flipping through his scrapbook, that he had actually picked Tom Clark for the post 15 months ago. But none of President Truman's three new appointments was more surprising.

Thomas Campbell Clark came to Washington in 1937 with the blessing of Texas' Senator Tom Connally. In the Justice Department, he worked his way through antitrust and war fraud cases, finally handled many a law violation turned up by the Truman Investigating Committee.

Since 1943 he has been the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division, specializing in civil rights and peonage cases. He has a collection of 50 bow ties, an authentic cowboy Stetson, a broad grin, and a soft Southern drawl. He likes to be called Tom, "because that's the way folks address Senator Connally." Among Washington legal eagles, he is known for his bulldog tenacity in preparing cases. Said he: "A good lawyer doesn't file a suit unless he's sure he'll win."

Man with a Tongue. The most significant appointment was that of big, balding Lewis Schwellenbach.

A few days after his inauguration, Harry Truman got a letter from Indiana's onetime Senator Sherman ("Shay") Minton, now a federal judge, recommending Schwellenbach for a top job in the new Administration. (Truman, Minton and Schwellenbach had all been "freshman" Senators together in 1935, occupying seats in the back row.) Harry Truman did not need the letter. He had already ordered Lew Schwellenbach to Washington. When Schwellenbach arrived. President Truman told him that he wanted him to be the Harry Hopkins of his administration. Schwellenbach, secure for life in a federal judgeship, demurred. Then Truman offered him the Labor secretaryship. Knowing what a hot seat that would be, Schwellenbach flatly refused, went back to Spokane. But more Presidential phone calls did the trick. Washington insiders say that, for acceding to the President's wishes, Lew Schwellenbach was promised the first Supreme Court vacancy.

As a young Senator, traditionally supposed to hold his tongue, Lew Schwellenbach baited Huey Long, voted down the line for Roosevelt measures. He was a rampant hatchet man in the fight to pack the Supreme Court. One close associate, in a gross understatement, described him as "at least as New Dealish as President Roosevelt." A man with a saw-edged temper, he tirelessly baited the Hearst press and Wall Street, called Liberty Leaguers a group of "leeches, rascals and crooks." Once a labor lawyer in labor-conscious Seattle, he has the backing in his new job of the C.I.O., A.F. of L., and also of the West Coast's potent labor czar, Dave Beck of the Teamsters.

No End in Sight. At the press conference at which he announced the cabinet changes, Harry Truman flatly said that Secretaries Stettinius and Morgenthau, whose imminent departure had long been rumored, would definitely stay. But Administration insiders thought differently. They predicted that after the San Francisco Conference and the Seventh War Bond Drive were safely over, both secretaries would go--Stettinius to the London ambassadorship and Morgenthau to his Dutchess County farm. There were also rumors that aging War Secretary Henry L. Stimson, 77, would leave before VJ-day.

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