Eight New, Two Old

(See front cover)

After much secret and uncertain picking up and putting down, Herbert Hoover fitted ten pegs into ten holes and finally made up his Cabinet. It had been a brain-bullying task and the result, somehow, failed to produce the striking design of supermen and specialists which Mr. Hoover--and the U. S.--had hoped for last November. He had had a surplus of little pegs that would have fallen through the holes, whereas big pegs of individual shapes refused to fit in, even when pushed. But a survey of his handiwork at least brought the new President the consoling knowledge that it was composed chiefly of good obedient yes-pegs who would not hop out of their holes and make trouble for him.

One peg was a New England aristocrat, while another owned a small automobile agency in Missouri. One peg had been worn smooth with a quarter-century's public service, while another had never been outside the steel business. Two pegs were frankly politicians, stuck in as rewards for services rendered, and for convenience in services to come. Two others had snugly filled their holes for eight years under Presidents Harding and Coolidge. One peg was an old college friend, another a Democrat except in Presidential elections.

Nine of the ten pegs went to college (Harvard, 2; Michigan, 2; Yale, Pittsburgh, Coe, Minnesota, Stanford, one each). Three pegs have done military service. One peg is immensely rich; two pegs are rich; the rest, well-to-do. The pegs' geographical centre is further west than in any previous cabinet--Far West, 1; Midwest, 5: East, 3; New England, 1.

Viewed as men instead of pegs, the Hoover Cabinet was seen as follows:

Secretary of State. Henry Lewis Stimson of New York, began crossing water at the behest of Presidents 23 years ago in Rock Creek Park, Washington. There he was riding on the bridle path one drizzly afternoon when he heard his name imperiously called from across the creek. The caller was Mr. Stimson's Manhattan law chief, Elihu Root, then Secretary of State. out for an airing with President Roosevelt. Sergeant Stimson of Squadron A. N. Y. National Guard, spurred his horse over the swollen stream, nearly foundered in the middle, clambered up the slippery bank opposite, gave a mud-bespattered salute, reported for duty. President Roosevelt asked him to dine at the White House and later appointed him U. S. District Attorney in Manhattan.

District Attorney Stimson destroyed the sugar fraud ring, sent Charles W. Morse to the Atlanta penitentiary, extracted a $30,000 fine out of James Gordon Bennett for running immoral "Personal" advertisements in the old Herald. (Simultaneously the outgoing Secretary of State, Frank Billings Kellogg, was engaged in smashing the old Standard Oil Co.)

President Taft summoned District Attorney Stimson across the Hudson. Delaware, Schuylkill and Susquehanna Rivers, from Manhattan to Washington, to serve as Secretary of War. President Wilson commissioned him a colonel of artillery and sent him across the Atlantic to fight with the 77th Division. President Coolidge despatched him first, across the Caribbean to Nicaragua to patch up a peace between Diaz and Sacasa and later across the Pacific to be Governor General of the Philippines. President Hoover recalled him to sit at his right hand at the Cabinet table.

Statesman Stimson was last week recrossing the Pacific, on a wallowing steamer from Manila to San Francisco. When he lands, he will have the widest ocean of all to cross--the ocean of public opinion. He passed muster as Secretary of War 20 years ago. But Secretaries of State are subjected to far closer scrutiny, especially in times of peace, than Secretaries of War. And especially in the Hoover Era will the State Department be scrutinized. The whole State personnel is waiting to see what further inroads may be made upon its prestige and prerogatives by the foreign agents of the Hooverized Department of Commerce. Patriots and pacifists alike are waiting to see what tangible results may come of the ambrosial Kellogg-Briand peace treaty. Will Statesman Stimson, whose first report on the Philippines heavily adumbrated a survey by a vast public utility corporation, stand for Dollar Diplomacy? Will he be a yes-peg or a Statesman in his own right?

In Statesman Stimson's mind, the last question will never be answered save in one way. Stimson is as Stimson does. The Stimson stature is slight but sturdy, carried with ramrod erectness. From a narrow oval face, his eyes look coldly out through pince-nez. Well-cut lips speak clear crisp English. Energy, restrained and directed with brusque selfdiscipline, is his chief administrative characteristic. He prefers to cover a given distance in careful steps rather than in one reckless bound. He has a temper sometimes quick.

Nationalistic in outlook, he, like onetime Secretary of State Hughes, dutifully signed the Root round-robin of 1920 saying that Harding's election was the best means of getting the U. S. into the League of Nations. His appointment is of no political significance to New York, for his support came, not from the shirt-sleeve party workers, but from Elder Statesmen Root and Hughes.

Secretary of the Treasury. Andrew William Mellon's name was politically meaningless when President Harding, on the advice of the late Philander Chase Knox, popped it before the public in 1921. But in eight years the shy little man, who for so long had ruled industrial empires from behind a Pittsburgh bank desk only to discover belatedly the pleasure and prestige of public service, has spread that name into every crack and cranny of the business world. He has grown from a person to a personification until now no Republican President, mindful of the value of public confidence, could function without his endorsement. Mild-mannered, low-voiced, this third richest man in the U. S. has far outdistanced his historic prototype, Alexander Hamilton, in point of continuous Treasury service. Hamilton served six years. Mr. Mellon enters his ninth year.

Secretary of War. James William Good, pink and grey, smiling-eyed, is Iowa born and bred. His life--he is now 62--has successfully combined law and politics, which carried him from City Attorney of Cedar Rapids to the Hoover Cabinet in two decades.

Mr. Good went to Congress in 1909 from the Iowa district in which President Hoover was born. He rose to be chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and came to know Mr. Hoover as a Secretary of Commerce with whom it was pleasant to work in Budget conferences because he (Hoover) knew what he wanted. In June, 1921, Mr. Good resigned from Congress to go to Chicago and fortify his own bank balance.

The itch to play politics overcame him again in 1924 and he ably commanded the Coolidge western campaign. In 1928 he looked around for another Presidential winner. He looked at General Dawes and looked away. He looked at Secretary Hoover, saw his popular appeal, pitied his political inexperience. Again he took command, this time of the Hoover preconvention campaign, doing a miraculous job of amalgamating the heterogeneous Hoover following. After the nomination, Mr. Hoover begged him to stay on as Western manager. Reluctantly he did. There was less begging, less reluctance, to get Mr. Good into the Hoover Cabinet.

"Sir James" he is sometimes called for his courtly manners. He is full of funny stories, at which he cackles broadly himself. Behind the affable exterior is a sharp business-like personality that achieves difficult objectives. What he knows or thinks about the War Department it is impossible to say, but until last week he probably knew and thought very little about it.

That, and the political debt owed him by President Hoover, were partly what made the Republican New York Evening Post call his "a rather ignoble appointment."

The Post, with many other good G. O. Papers, was "disappointed" in Mr. Hoover because, under ill-disguised pressure from the Anti-Saloon League and the Ku Klux Klan, he had rejected William Joseph Donovan, a prize Hooverite but a Roman Catholic and a Wet. Before the eager Donovan eye were juggled first the Attorney-Generalship, then the War portfolio. Mr. Hoover finally had to withdraw both. The best he could offer his good friend was the Governor-Generalship of the Philippines, which Col. Donovan refused, leaving Mr. Hoover to wonder if he had been disloyal to an old friend.

Before getting the War portfolio, Mr. Good declined the Postmaster-Generalship. Knowing politicians as he does, he did not wish to traffic in party patronage. But Mr. Hoover wanted him in his Cabinet as congressional contactman.

Attorney-General. William DeWitt Mitchell, as a Minnesota boy, yearned to be an electrical engineer. Fishing in the Mississippi, he carried screws, coils, wire and switches in his jeans as well as worms and tackle. His father was by way of becoming a distinguished justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court when the callow son said he had no use for law because he "never knew a lawyer who amounted to very much." He played the mandolin and mumble-dy-peg, went to Lawrenceville. played lacrosse, went to the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale.

Within two years there the charms of electricity faded. He returned to Minnesota to enter the State University, to become a lawyer. His practice began and continued with "the greatest law firm between Chicago and the Pacific coast," later known as Mitchell, Doherty, Rumble, Bunn & Butler. Pierce Butler was long senior partner before his advancement to the Supreme Court of the United States.

Mr. Mitchell went to the Spanish-American war, as half-engineer, half-lawyer. He trained at Camp Zachary Taylor for the World War. In 1925 Justice Butler whispered the Mitchell name into the Coolidge ear and--presto!--Mr. Mitchell found himself Solicitor-General of the U. S. Such a good impression did he make as the Government's advocate before the U. S. Supreme Court that the Justices broadly hinted to President Hoover that he would be overlooking a good bet if he did not utilize the Mitchell legal talents in a top-notch of his Cabinet.

Politics had nothing to do with the Mitchell appointment, because he boasts that he is an "oldfashioned independent Democrat," except that he voted for Hughes in 1916, Coolidge in 1924, Hoover in 1928. Slender, brown-eyed, gently persuasive in manner, a sailor of summer boats on White Bear Lake, Minn., Mr. Mitchell is a practicing Dry, a Presbyterian.

Postmaster-General. Walter Folger Brown of Ohio studied his politics at the knee of Mark Hanna in the 18903. Since then he has improved considerably upon the Master.

Mr. Brown, whose father was once Toledo postmaster, put aside a newspaper career to become a lawyer. The law led to politics. Mr. Brown climbed from ward captain to county boss. In 1912 he went a-maying with the Bull Moose party, but four years later was back in the Republican fold. On the fringe of the "Ohio gang," he was called to Washington by President Harding to draw up a tidy plan for reorganizing the government. Mr. Brown obeyed, diligently. His plan went into a pigeon hole and its author returned to Toledo.

Early in 1927 Mr. Hoover, casting an anxious eye over the prospective political battleground, beheld Mr. Brown wasting his talents on the Ohio air. He called him to Washington officially as an Assistant Secretary of Commerce, unofficially as a campaign manager. Mr. Brown put his candidate in the Ohio presidential primaries, where defeat would have been certain had not Death scratched his rival, Senator Frank B. Willis.

Mr. Brown is slick, suave, smooth, poker-faced. He smiles instead of laughs. As trustee of the Lucas County Children's Home, he is called "Uncle Walt" by its young inmates. Foods and their preparation fascinate him. He has an almost feminine passion for cooking. He refuses to eat a strawberry that has touched water. A Harvard graduate, he is 60, below medium height, dark of hair, slow to wrath.

Every Administration needs an expert on patronage. Mr. Brown will serve Mr. Hoover in this capacity, the Post Office being the largest job-pasture in the Government (365,000 workers). Since President Hoover has evinced an interest in Government reorganization, perhaps the Brown Plan of 1921 will emerge from its pigeonhole. Otherwise, and perhaps even so, Mr. Brown may be counted on as a quiet yes-peg with a political point.

Secretary of the Navy. Charles Francis Adams of Boston fits the sea. sentimentally, as snugly as a well-made yachting cap in a stiff breeze. But to pilot the International Cup Defender Resolute to victory, as Mr. Adams did do in 1920, and to guide the destiny of the U. S. Navy from a swivel chair in Washington, as Mr. Adams will do, are two wide-apart things.

The Adams family has sailed far and famously in U. S. history. Mr. Adams's father was John Quincy, four times defeated Democratic candidate for Massachusetts Governor. Mr. Adams's uncles were Charles Francis Jr., colonel of a Negro cavalry regiment in the Civil War and onetime president of the Union Pacific R. R., and Henry, autobiographer of The Education of Henry Adams. Mr. Adams's grandfather was Charles Francis, U. S. envoy to England during the Civil War. His great-grandfather was John Quincy, sixth U. S. President and, earlier, minister to The Hague and to Berlin ("Most valuable public character we have abroad," said George Washington). His great-great-grandfather was John, second U. S. President, first occupant of the White House, husband of delightful Abigail Smith. Mr. Adams's daughter, Catherine, married Henry S., son of J. Pierpont Morgan.

In Boston, the new Secretary is called "The Deacon." His collar used to be of the high-stand-up kind; his cuffs are still stiffly white and detachable; his manner to strangers is austere.

The sea and ships are forever about Mr. Adams. At 62 he is greatest of U. S. amateur skippers. His eyes have wrinkles of sun and humor in their corners. His bald head and his face, with its Adams nose, beaked like a New England cliff, are tanned by salty weather. His hands are hard and veined; he wears no rings. His eyes are clear-water blue behind old-fashioned spectacles.

Appropriately born at Quincy, at ten he was scudding over Quincy Bay in a sail boat, out to Hangman's Island, where his father doted on the smelt-fishing. At twelve he was racing his own little boats and, soon after, sailing with Capt. Crocker on the sloop Shadow. Then came his string of "oo" boats--Papoose (1887), Babboon (35-footer), Gossoon (40-footer) in which he beat Capt. Charles Barr in the Scotch cutter Minerva; Harpoon (1892) in which he won the Goelet Cup at Newport; and the Rooster and Crooner. He is a stern skipper; his own son calls him "Mister Adams" on shipboard.

President of his class, Mr. Adams was graduated from Harvard in 1888, spent the customary year traveling over Europe, returned for a course at the Harvard Law School. He became in 1898 Treasurer of Harvard when it had only $12,000,000. His wise management has raised this to $100,000,000. Twice he was elected mayor of Quincy on a Democratic ticket. And all the while his corporate interests spread out and out until, last week, his resignations as a director or trustee went to 55 concerns including the A. T. & T., American Sugar Refining, Boston and Albany R. R., Amoskeag, Waltham Watch.

His friends regard him as Moist, if not Wet. To jack up the saggine morale of the Navy will be a man-sized job for him, which he will doubtless undertake with his usual quiet determination. He may be a yes-man to the White House occupant but to the admirals who flock around every Navy chief with selfish advice and suggestions he will most likely listen patiently and then, a seadog himself, bark NO.

Secretary of the Interior. Ray Lyman Wilbur, the outgoing Secretary of the Navy's younger, taller, thinner brother, goes from California into the Cabinet on the sun-tinted wings of long personal friendship with Herbert Hoover. President Harding imported many Ohio friends. They said "yes" to his face and "no" behind his back, but he continued to like them as friends. Out of New England, President Coolidge brought John Garibaldi Sargent to be Attorney General, William Fairfield Whiting to be Secretary of Commerce. Old friends are necessary in a Cabinet, if only to keep a President from getting lonely.

The Hoover-Wilbur friendship began in undergraduate days at Stanford University. Mr. Hoover went out into the world to slay the Jabberwock. Dr. Wilbur stayed behind to become president of the university. During the War, Mr. Hoover called Dr. Wilbur to assist him. Now, despite Mr. Hoover's well known intention of truncating the Department to which he has called Dr. Wilbur, the latter's friends vigorously deny that his role is to be that of a particularly docile yes-peg. Suppose, for example, that President Hoover should decide to include a new Department of Education in his reorganization of the Government. How convenient it would be to have the able president of a great university right on hand to take over the work.

Secretary of Agriculture. Arthur M. Hyde of Missouri neatly combines the various contentions of warring farm groups. Last spring he was a Lowden man in the belief that the farmer must be immediately saved by bountiful Federal aid. Then he nimbly leaped into the Hoover omnibus by deciding that the notorious equalization fee was no proper method of salvation. Mr. Hoover picked him over his own protest and has set him down to hoe one of the hardest rows in the Administration's patch of current troubles.

In Grundy County, Mr. Hyde has three farms. Yet it was not as a Farmer that he was chosen, but as a Business Man. Born in Princeton, Mo., 51 years ago, he became a lawyer, lived to be the town's mayor, moved away to Trenton, Mo., where he opened an automobile sales agency. He acquired a law office in Kansas City, headed an insurance company, was well along toward prominence.

The rural Missouri voters love their own kind, which explains his election as governor in 1920. So lavishly did he go about getting good country roads and better village schools that in 1922 he was charged with inefficiently increasing Missouri's taxes. Yet his record as an administrator was held up by Mr. Hoover as a reason for his election.

On the stump Mr. Hyde is loud and noisy. Missouri's Senator James A. Reed used to call him "the steam whistle on a fertilizer plant." In the new Administration the voice will be the Secretary of Agriculture but the words will be the President. Mr. Hyde, because his post is politically conspicuous, will have to be a polite Dr. Jekyll to survive.

Secretary of Commerce. Robert Patterson Lamont of Chicago was Herbert Hoover's last and most deliberate appointment. To find a big peg to fill to a nicety the hole he himself had steadily enlarged was no easy task. An ordinary run-of-the-mill peg would never do. Mr. Hoover's advisers plowed Who's Who without turning up a suitable candidate for him. Three days before the Inaugural, Mr. Hoover on his own initiative reached out and drew Mr. Lament to his side, because he was a trained engineer, a business man with a world outlook, an old friend.

Mr. Lament is no politician, whether he is wet or dry seems of small consequence. He has qualifications of education and experience which Mr. Hoover believes will fit him to carry the Department of Commerce forward.

Nearly 40 years ago Mr. Lamont went to Chicago as a graduate engineer from the University of Michigan. His first job was at the World's Fair. In 1905 he entered American Steel Foundries, then tottering; became its president in 1912. lifted it to a position of sound industrial importance. In the war he was a Colonel of Ordinance, received a Distinguished Service Medal for procurement work. His son, Robert Jr., had a hand blown off one fiery night in October, 1917, at Jouy, near the Chemin des Dames.

World trade Mr. Lamont sees with the sharp eyes of a practical exporter. The U. S. Chamber of Commerce and the Department of Commerce have benefited by his active co-operation on economic surveys. He was a member of Herbert Hoover's Business Men's Flood Committee. His business connections have been manifold: Armour, American Radiator. Dodge Bros., International Harvester, Montgomery Ward, Chicago Daily News. A patron of scientific research, he was one of the chief supporters of the University of Michigan's astronomical observatory in South Africa,

A smooth-mannered man. with a high bald forehead, a roman nose and a cleft chin, Mr. Lamont makes his home near Lake Forest, Ill., in a huge structure composed largely of sections of imported English farmhouses.

Secretary of Labor. James John Davis of Pennsylvania holds a Cabinet position hard to fill. Mr. Hoover did not try very hard to find a new man. Labor is divided into many jealous factions. A Labor portfolio vacancy invariably starts loud shoving and shouting among organized workingmen's representatives. Mr. Hoover, rather than risk ill will and resentments retained in office the bighearted, big-voiced Welshman who is quite unfatigued by eight years' sitting at the bottom of the Cabinet table.

Mr. Davis' personal history is the G. 0. P.'s conventional bid for Labor support--immigrant boy, iron puddler, tin mill worker, economic and political rise to fortune and power.

Occasionally Mr. Davis forgets that he is the little boy of the Cabinet who should be seen and not heard, but for the most part he proves himself a genial yes-peg who does just what, the President tells him to do, or not to do, about coal strikes, full dinner pails and Immigration (see p. 18). A great Davis enthusiasm and vote preserve is the Loyal Order of Moose whose distinguished monarch he has been since 1906.