Exit Kreps

The ark loses its skipper

In 1972 she became the first woman di rector of the New York Stock Exchange. That same year she was the first woman appointed to the prestigious James B. Duke professorship in economics at Duke University. Finally, in 1977, she was the first woman to become Secretary of Commerce. Last week Juanita Kreps walked into the Oval Office and told Jimmy Carter she was resigning for "altogether personal" reasons -- the sixth person to leave his Cabinet. Said an associate: "She has a desire to spend more time with her husband and three kids, to read a good book, and maybe even have a relaxed meal."

Kreps is especially concerned about her husband Clifton, a retired professor of banking in the business school at the University of North Carolina, who suffers from periodic bouts of depression. In June he shot himself in the head. Since his release from a hospital two weeks ago, he has been living in Washington with his wife. They have not yet decided whether to return to Duke, where Kreps has been offered her old job.

As Commerce Secretary, she won encomiums from colleagues and White House aides. The department has 30,000 employees, a budget of $3.2 billion and a heterogeneous collection of responsibilities ranging from taking the census every ten years to collecting economic statistics every month. Kreps once quipped: "The only difference between Commerce and Noah's ark is that Commerce has only one of everything."

Kreps proved to be a talented bureaucratic infighter, despite her soft-spoken manner. She persuaded the White House to transfer to Commerce some of the Treasury Department's import-regulating duties. She also caused Commerce to take a more active role in promoting international trade. In May she initialed the U.S. China trade agreement in Canton. But she was never allowed into Carter's inner circle of economic policymakers, whom she once dubbed "the boys at breakfast."

The list of her possible successors includes Under Secretary Luther Hodges Jr., son of Kennedy's Commerce Secretary, and Anthony Solomon, the Treasury Department's Under Secretary for Monetary Affairs. Both have the qualifications believed to be uppermost in Carter's mind: expertise in economics and the ability to work well with American businessmen, which Kreps did with grace and considerable skill.

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