Appointments

A great advocate of The Home during the campaign, President Hoover has surprised nobody by the fewness of his appointments of women to public offices. But lately he put aside his feeling against women as officeholders long enough to listen to arguments by his Secretary of the Treasury Andrew William Mellon in behalf of Miss Annabel Matthews of Gainesville, Ga. The arguments seemed so irresistible that President Hoover last week appointed Miss Matthews to the U. S. Board of Tax Appeals ($10,000 per year), the first woman ever named to this potent buffer agency between the Treasury and the taxpayer.

A graduate of Brenau College in her home town, Miss Matthews taught school for a dozen years in Georgia, went to Washington 15 years ago as a clerk in the Treasury's Bureau of Internal Revenue. Ambitious, she studied law, became a double taxation expert, accompanied U. S. delegations abroad to international tax conferences.

When her nomination reached the Senate, Miss Matthews's experience in and connection with the Treasury were paradoxically the very things that militated against her immediate confirmation. Confirming her once, the Senate withdrew its approval for further consideration after Senator Couzens, Treasury foe, unearthed a Senate resolution barring appointments directly from the Bureau of Internal Revenue to the tax board lest the board be packed with Treasury appointees.

P: Other appointments by President Hoover last week caused the Senate to bark, if not bite. Because he had named Albert L. Watson a U. S. District Judge in Pennsylvania, President Hoover was charged with heeding the demands of William Wallace Atterbury, Pennsylvania R. R. president, Pennsylvania's Republican National Committeeman, rather than his own Attorney-General, and of treating the G. O. P. North, better than the G. O. P., South. Likewise abuse was heaped upon the President's appointment of Richard Joseph Hopkins as a U. S. Judge in Kansas, charged with accepting speaking fees from the Anti-Saloon League while a staff official.

P: President Hoover last week reappointed Joseph Bartlett Eastman to the lately active Interstate Commerce Commission (see p. 11) to the great disgruntlement of reactionary rail men. Also appointed to the I. C. C. was Robert M. Jones of Tennessee.

P: In the East room a sober public Christmas tree, adorned with a scene of the Nativity, was set up while a family tree upstairs was decked with tinsel, colored lights. Mrs. Hoover had bookstores searched for travel and mystery books, the President's favorites. From all over U.S. poured in gifts for the President, mostly neckties and wristwatches. Fifty children of Cabinet members and other officials were invited to a special White House Christmas party.

P: To the White House went conscientious Major O. Lee Bodenhamer, National Commander of the American Legion, to ply the President with dozens of plans for Legion-sponsored reforms.

P: How U. S. citizens live, thrive, tend their families, amuse themselves, go insane, was a study President Hoover last week assigned to another new commission--The Research Committee on Social Trends--financed by the Rockefeller Foundation.

P: From nine of her War debtors the U. S. one day last week received a semi-annual installment of $98,657,973. Two days later the President signed the Mellon-Berenger agreement by which a tenth debtor, France, will pay $6,847,674,104 in 62 years.

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