Dew and Sunshine

Franklin Roosevelt's long indecision about his Attorney General was at last resolved by Vice President Garner and Jim Farley: five New Yorkers in the Cabinet would really be too many, therefore the President must pass over Solicitor-General Bob Jackson. Mr. Garner's thorough approval of Michigan's rufous Governor-reject Frank Murphy settled the matter. With that approval, the man-who-was-soft-on-sit-down-strikers could be confirmed without trouble. So Mr. Murphy packed up in Lansing, took his brother George, his sister Marguerite Murphy Teahan and the Bible his mother gave him. Next day he presented himself in the President's study and was sworn in on two verses from Isaias:

But he shall judge the poor with justice and shall reprove with equity for the meek of the earth. . . .

And justice shall be the girdle of his loins; and faith the girdle of his reins.

Mr. Garner's view of Frank Murphy's handling of 193 fs motor strikes is that the President of the U. S., not the Governor of Michigan, was at fault--in not early and firmly condemning sit-downs. Frank Murphy's steadfast point is that the use of force would certainly have caused heavy bloodshed. He was there, he knew the ugly temper of the men, and Captain Frank Murphy, who saw two years of the War with the infantry and is by nature gentle as a girl, would not shed blood.

As his qualification to head the Department of Justice, the youngest (45) Cabinet member can point to studies at University of Michigan (law degree, 1914), Lincoln's Inn, London and Trinity College, Dublin. As a chief assistant U. S. District Attorney (1920-23), his greatest feat was sending two big Army grafters to prison. He served seven years (1923-30) on the bench of Detroit's Recorder's Court, handling criminal cases with the enlightening aid of a psychiatrist and a sociologist, his own innovation. In two terms as Detroit's mayor, three years as Governor-General of the Philippines, and two more as Governor of Michigan, he has had executive experience.

By fate's irony, Walter Chrysler's son-in-law Byron Foy, now high in the councils of the motor industry, roomed with Frank Murphy in his District Attorney days.* To Mr. Foy and many motor men, the new Attorney General may not seem much better than a Communist. Frank Murphy maintains that Abraham Lincoln, not Karl Marx, gave him his concern for "human rights against property rights."

This concern is no political pose with Frank Murphy. Ascetic, perfectionist, he really believes that, instead of becoming a Roman Catholic priest he became a social priest, ordained by his late mother, who taught him to honor Jews and Negroes as highly as other men. In his first mayoral campaign, Detroit called him "Dew and Sunshine" after a speech in which he said that was the kind of new morning Detroit needed. If the so-called Monopoly Investigation imposes upon him the duty of prosecuting any large vested interests, the latter may be sure he will do it with painful purity of purpose.

* By another quirk of fate, Franklin Roosevelt's brother-in-law, Gracie Hall Roosevelt, father of last week's White House debutante (see p. 17), was chosen by Mayor Frank Murphy to be his comptroller.

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