No Jobs, No Work

Into the White House one day last week walked Chairman Dr. Hubert Work of the Republican National Committee for a three-hour conference with President Hoover. When he came out, he joked with newsgatherers about a man who had been "hired and fired in ten minutes." A mystified Press soon learned that Dr. Work had resigned his high political post.

Dr. Work resigned because he is 69 and his post is an empty honor. What he wanted out of the Hoover victory was not office (although Postmaster Generalship had been offered him) but power. As National Republican Chairman he yearned to sit at the jobbery turnstile passing his favorites through to their patronage rewards. And to satisfaction of this desire he felt himself entitled, for it was he, the Colorado doctor and Secretary of the Interior under Calvin Coolidge, who early espoused the Hoover cause, when it was risky to do so, and nurtured it from a shapeless hope to a reality by getting Republican delegates piece by political piece. But now, these several months, the Work desire has been thwarted. He had no hand in Cabinetmaking. In Florida, he spent listless days waiting to see the President-elect whom perhaps he thought he had made. In fact, Dr. Work's life has been unhappy almost since the Hoover nomination. Subordinates in the campaign refused to be subordinate. His resignation was demanded as a result of the Willebrandt anti-Catholic outbursts. And when, after a victory, a National Chairman cannot get jobs for his friends, his only course is resignation.

Other stout Hoover campaigners no longer bound by hoops of steel to the Hoover breast are: Mabel Walker Willebrandt, Col. Horace A. Mann (Klan),

William Joseph Donovan (onetime intimate), Mrs. Alvin T. Hert, Senators Borah, Brookhart, Frazier.

With characteristic independence, President Hoover will pick Dr. Work's successor. Possibilities: Secretary of War James William Good; Claudius Hart Huston of Tennessee; National Committee Vice-chairman Ralph E. Williams of Oregon; National Committee Secretary Franklin William Fort of New Jersey; National Committee General Counsel James Francis Burke of Pennsylvania.