IKE'S CABINET

Ten Men for the Second Term

"Will there be any changes in your Cabinet?" a reporter asked President Eisenhower at his press conference last week. "Not now," said Ike, comfortably aware that he had prevailed on all ten of his tested Cabinet members to stick with him as he starts his second term. An inaugural appraisal of their duties, achievements and deficiencies:

Ezra Taft Benson, 57, Secretary of Agriculture, is still hard at the politically hazardous job of convincing the less prosperous but vote-conscious U.S. farmers that they and the economy will be better off in the long run without large agricultural subsidies. But if Benson has stuck to principle, he has also learned to bend with the political winds. He fought for passage of the 1954 farm law that substituted semiflexible price supports for the Democrats' rigid supports, but agreed to limit the range of flexibility so that actual supports did not drop much. He once considered the soil bank a Democratic gimcrack, now embraces it as a painless way to cut surpluses. And in the 1958 budget he asked for an unprecedented $4.9 billion for agriculture, the largest farm outlay in U.S. history. Benson's vigorous program to sell off surpluses at home and abroad has worked; the surplus cutback augurs well for future farm stability; farm prices are on the upswing.

Herbert Brownell Jr., 52. Attorney General, whose influence and initiative run subtly through most major aspects of the Eisenhower program, energizes the many arms of the Department of Justice that reach into vital areas of U.S. life. Charged with responsibility for cleaning up the celebrated Democratic "mess in Washington," Brownell, by a series of successful prosecutions (among the convicted: five highly placed Truman Administration officials), tightened security regulations, ran down income-tax violators, purged the Government of scores of undesirables. His Justice Department battled Communists (72 Smith Act convictions) and labor racketeers (an average of 30 labor prosecutions a year). And to the surprise of some G.O.P. businessmen, Justice has commenced 157 antitrust cases since January 1953, won 25 convictions and signed 99 consent decrees forcing breakups of business concentrations. Brownell has 1) pushed a program that reduced the backlog of Government cases in federal courts by 25%. and 2) coun seled the appointment of some 68 high-caliber federal judges. His department helped win the Supreme Court decision on school desegregation, and it is his department that will have to work through the federal courts to make the desegregation decisions effective.

John Foster Dulles, 68, the indefatigable Secretary of State, is charging into the second term in a typical role: fighting off doubters and hecklers, educating Congress and the nation as he tries to move U.S. foreign policy ahead in the cold-war battle against Communism. Over four years, Dulles' instincts in this big battle have been unerring. He resisted arguments from both friends and enemies that the U.S. should coexist happily with Stalin's Russia. He backed to the hilt the stout cold warriors of Europe, e.g., Germany's Konrad Adenauer. He threw international Communism into a flap by releasing the text of Khrushchev's historic oration to the 20th Party Congress denouncing Stalin and his works--a text never published by Moscow. Through the successful extension of U.S. power through pacts, e.g., the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, he curbed the rising in fluence of Red China, strengthened even the newest and weakest of anti-Communist nations, such as South Viet Nam, and brought a new stability to Asia.

Sometimes, in pressing U.S. allies to join in solutions, he pressed too hard. In 1953 he threatened an "agonizing reappraisal" of U.S. policy for Western Europe if Europe failed to adopt the over-simplified European Defense Community. (Later he retreated gratefully to Anthony Eden's compromise Western European Union.) In abruptly canceling the Aswan Dam negotiations he provided Nasser with a public relations excuse for seizing the Suez Canal (which he had long intended to do anyway). Then Dulles, in a correct estimate that Britain and France were on the verge of war over Suez, jumped all too confusingly from one Suez Canal settlement proposal to another in his unsuccessful attempt to stave off the war. Today Ike has come to realize that in many areas he is his own best diplomatic agent. He regards the success of the Nehru visit as proof of this, and intends to make the most of the Eisenhower Approach during the long procession of foreign digni taries and heads of state to Washington this year. But Ike still regards Foster Dulles as his most valued foreign-policy adviser and confidant.

Marion Bayard Folsom, 63, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, was brought from his post as Under Secretary of the Treasury in 1955 to succeed retiring Oveta Gulp Hobby. He set to work with less fanfare, more success, preaching a doctrine that is the Eisenhower answer to the Fair Deal: the G.O.P. is not opposed to spending money for worthwhile welfare projects. Though softspoken and retiring, Folsom, when treasurer of Eastman Kodak and chairman of the Committee for Economic Development, learned to be suave enough to counter pressure groups, courageous enough to fight against more con servative colleagues for programs that he thinks are necessary, e.g., direct federal aid for school construction.

George Magoffin Humphrey, 66, in four years as Secretary of the Treasury not only has shaped the grand design of Eisenhower economic policy, but is now the unquestioned strong man of the Cabinet, and one of Ike's closest advisers. Hurnphrey sees the President frequently, talks to him more frequently by telephone. Ike likes Humphrey's blunt honesty and his ability to make decisions in any field. When Secretary Dulles was stricken in the midst of the Suez crisis, the President instinctively turned to Humphrey for counsel, and Ike's own confidence in Humphrey radiates through the Cabinet. After the President's heart attack, Cabinet officers gravitated to the Treasury Secretary's office, there discussed ways and means of carrying on in the Chief's absence. As the Treasury's watchdog, Humphrey has tried to hold down Defense Department spending (which nonetheless stands at a new peacetime high of $38 billion in the 1958 budget) because he suspects that there is still a lot of waste and duplication. He mistrusts foreign aid; last week word got around that he had proposed to the President's advisory committee on foreign aid that all future U.S. economic help should be in the form of repayable loans. If true, this not only puts him at loggerheads with Administration policy, but indicates that he misses the subtleties of foreign aid for political purposes, e.g., to help beleaguered governments solve their economic problems.

Humphrey is in for a lively second term. As a businessman (ex-President of Cleveland's far-flung M. A. Hanna Co.), he stands for a minimum of government control and for taxes low enough to encourage broad investment opportunities and individual initiative. By now he has come to recognize the high stakes and high cost involved in cold war, is willing to postpone tax cuts and settle for a balanced (if bigger) national budget and a fiscal policy that keeps a tight checkrein on inflation. Nonetheless it is plain that Humphrey is not happy with the course of ever-growing Republican government.

James Paul Mitchell, 56, Secretary of Labor, took over in October 1953, when Union Leader Martin Durkin resigned in a dispute about Taft-Hartley law changes. Mitchell turned out to be the biggest sur prise in the Cabinet and is now rated its fastest comer. Despite 20 years as a labor-relations expert with the WPA, the War Department and New York department stores, he had neither a name on the national labor scene nor a reputation for political astuteness when Ike brought him over from the Pentagon (Assistant Secretary of Army for Manpower and Reserve Forces' Affairs). Since then, he has built a healthy respect for the long-moribund Labor Department by 1) keeping hands off in labor disputes so collective bargaining can work (but operating quietly behind the scenes to help it work), and 2) championing such pro-labor proposals as Taft-Hartley revisions, expanded minimum-wage coverage, improved unemployment compensation. His fellow Republicans listen with increased respect since, after diligent Mitchell campaigning, the G.O.P. made heavy inroads in Eastern and Midwestern industrial areas.

Frederick Andrew Seaton, 47, after seven months as Secretary of the Interior, is the youngest Cabinet officer in age and service. Succeeding Douglas McKay, Seaton assumed a difficult job with the light hand and sure footwork that marked earlier Washington assignments, e.g., as Charlie Wilson's public relations counselor and as presidential administrative assistant. Currently Seaton's touchy job is to reverse some McKay water and power decisions that proved to be vastly unpopular in the Far West, e.g., to shift emphasis from McKay's theories of all-out help for quick, private-power development to a more moderate Seaton program of maximum use of each river valley, and possibly increased federal development. Along these lines, Fred Seaton may yet reopen the celebrated Hell's Canyon dispute (TIME, Oct 22 et ante), come out for a modified federal high dam of some sort.

Arthur Ellsworth Summerfield, 57, followed the traditional path of victorious presidential campaign chairmen to the Postmaster General's chair, there largely abandoned politics to supervise sweeping Post Office reforms. To the public, modernization shows up in such improvements as red, white and blue mailboxes and trucks and trim new uniforms. To business experts it shows up more impressively in such innovations as administrative streamlining and cost accounting. Return ing for a new term. Summerfield must tackle a task he has failed at before: convincing Congress that rates should be upped (present thinking: 5-c- for all first-class mail) to put the red, white and blue Post Office on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Sinclair Weeks, 63. Secretary of Commerce, has never completely overcome his conservative New England business views. (A portrait of Herbert Hoover occupies the honor spot in his office.) But in four years he has marched much closer to Eisenhower progressivism, especially in the sphere of international trade. He has mellowed towards lower tariffs, fought for U.S. membership in the antiprotectionist Organization for Trade Cooperation. To Weeks goes major credit for fostering U.S. participation in foreign-trade fairs that have combated Communist propaganda and helped raise U.S. exports. He has made such long-needed improvements as a Patent Office speedup, broader Weather Bureau services, steady support for the merchant marine.

Charles Erwin Wilson, 66, Secretary of Defense, is the Cabinet officer whose quips and forthright answers have earned the most smiles, howls and congressional yowls. Wilson probably will be the first in the Cabinet to retire, possibly this summer or fall. But he will go not because of carps or criticism against him, but because of age and a desire to rest. As a military man, Ike understands Wilson's problem of holding a lid on the highly competitive services, and can see that he is doing it with better than average success. Wilson has buttressed civilian supervision of the armed forces, headed off Pentagon feuds, supervised a military arsenal that has changed more drastically in four years than at any other time in U.S. history. He has kept a rein on unnecessary crash programs of weapon development, insisted that if proven new weapons were phased into the defense program, old weapons should be phased out. All the while, Wilson has exercised an asset that was a prime reason for recruiting him. Handling the largest chunk of U.S. budget expenditures, he has gone a long way toward helping the nation get the maximum military strength for its money.

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