Commerce Promotion

The President made up his mind last week on an appointment pending since Inauguration when William Patterson MacCracken, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, asked to be relieved. Mr. MacCracken, 40, lawyer, has been in the department for three years and handled his aeronautics duties so well that commercial aviation has been inviting him into lucrative business. However he has continued in office, including an arduous two-month inspection of European Airways (TIME, Aug. 26) until the Chief had time to consider a successor.

Last week the President summoned to the executive offices Col. Clarence Marshall Young,* 40, lawyer, Director of the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Civil Aeronautics. Did Mr. Young want the job of Assistant Secretary? Of course he did. So on Oct. 1 he takes his promotion, to Mr. MacCracken's relief.

The Young appointment had no overt politics in it. However, Des Moines, Iowa, may jubilate over Midwest preference. Clarence Young was born nearby, attended Drake university there, and after being graduated from Yale's law school in 1910, practiced law there until the War. After the War he was executive secretary of the Des Moines Municipal Research Bureau, which has made that community one of the few in the U. S. with little political graft.

The promotion was one of merit, prime Hoover administrative policy. In the Department of Commerce, Mr. Young created the present system of enforcing air commerce rules, inspection, license of civil aircraft, licensing of pilots and mechanics. Last week, before his promotion, he announced new, strict rules for transport pilots. After Sept. 1 they must get their licenses renewed every six months. They will get renewals only by reproving their ability at trick takeoffs and landings. They must have flown at least ten hours solo in the types of planes for which they are licensed. And they must be able to fly at least twelve different approved types of planes. These new stringencies are part of Mr. Young's effort to make passenger flying visibly secure.

*He is the third Yale man in the sub-cabinet with charge of aviation. The others: Frederick Trubee Davison, 33, Yale '18, Columbia Law School; David Sinton Ingalls, 33, Yale '20, Harvard Law School. All three were War flyers. Mr. Young, overseas 18 months, was prisoner in Austria for five months.