Federal First

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first President to put a woman into his Cabinet. Last week he became the first to put a woman on the Circuit Federal bench. Before he leaves the White House his friends think he will be the first to put a woman on the Supreme Court. A likely choice for this last honor would be bobbed-haired, blue-eyed Florence Ellinwood Allen whom the President last week appointed to the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals, only one step below the Supreme Court. To Miss Allen who now sits on the Ohio Supreme Court the appointment came as the latest of a long list of "firsts." She was Ohio's first woman assistant county prosecutor, Ohio's first woman Common Pleas judge. She was the nation's first woman to serve on a state Supreme Court, the first to sentence a murderer to death. Born in Salt Lake City, Florence Allen, at 15, moved with her family to Cleveland, was her class cheer leader at Western Reserve, graduated with a Phi Beta Kappa key in 1904. An able musician, she went to Berlin to study, earned piano money by writing criticisms for New York's Musical Courier. Two years later she returned to Cleveland as the Plain Dealer's music editor. New York University gave her an LL. B. An able feminist, a Dry, an opponent of war, she soon became a heroine to women. A quiet, thin-lipped woman with a cordial hand shake and myopic eyes, she rises at 5:30 a. m., exercises to a phonograph before going to work. Weekends she hikes. Her decisions from the Supreme Court bench have been learned, middle-of-the-roadish. Had President Roosevelt withheld his appointment one fortnight, he would have given Judge Allen a pretty birthday present. Next week she will be 50.

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