Assistant President?

One day last week President Roosevelt put his signature to one more Executive Order. Its words were momentous. Under an Executive Director it put the National Emergency Council composed of all the Cabinet and the heads of 20 potent government agencies. The members were to advise the Executive Director, whose job was to co-ordinate all administrative functions of the Government. Named to the post of Executive Director was Donald R. Richberg, now on indefinite leave of absence with pay ($14,250) from his post as general counsel to NRA.

All good citizens were left to draw one of two conclusions. One was that the long-needed post of Assistant President of the U. S. had been created and filled. The language of the Executive Order placed Donald Richberg over the Cabinet. Many a Washington correspondent wrote the news that the President had picked a No. 1 assistant, a coordinator of coordinators. Coordination, it seemed, was sweeping the country.

But many another correspondent remembered that coordination had swept the country before, remembered the excitement when 16 months ago the President created an Executive Council to keep all the strings of the administrative lyre tuned to one key. They remembered the headlines when, five months later, the President created a new and similar coordinating body called the National Emergency Council. They remembered the stir again when the Industrial Emergency Committee was picked last September to settle the New Deal's policies. And they could not become excited when last week the Executive Council was merged with the original National Emergency Council and the Industrial Emergency Committee was made a subcommittee of the new body. Could the sum of three nonentities add up to anything worthwhile?

Little history has been made by the men whom the Press has successively hailed as Assistant President. Mr. Roosevelt had a No. 1 personal representative and confidential agent in his secretary. Louis McHenry Howe. But Mr. Howe, suffering from dyspepsia, gradually faded from the scene. Frank C. Walker, able lawyer, one-time treasurer of the Democratic National Committee and personal friend of Franklin Roosevelt, was likewise hailed as Assistant President. For months he presided over the mute and unsung labors of the old Executive Council and National Emergency Council. Finally he quietly retired and was quickly forgotten. Donald Richberg is the third No. 1 man at the President's elbow. Despite the powers conferred upon him, he was not expected last week to remain "Assistant President" for very long.

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