Valuable Wilbur

Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur last week got a new lease on Cabinet life. When his great & good friend President Hoover made him Secretary of the Interior, Dr. Wilbur, as president of Stanford University, was given a year's leave of absence by his trustees. That leave expired Aug. 31. Last week the Stanford Daily, undergraduate publication, editorially demanded that Dr. Wilbur resign either his Cabinet position or his college presidency.

Secretary Wilbur held his tongue while President Hoover answered for him. Said the President: "Dr. Wilbur will remain in the Cabinet. The University will gladly extend his leave as long as is necessary.

He is too valuable a man to lose from the Federal service. Being one of the trustees of that institution, I think I can speak with more authority than the student publication."

Lack of a quorum was advanced as the only reason why the Stanford trustees had not already approved Dr. Wilbur's application for another year's leave of absence. The Secretary was described as "particularly loth" to resign from the Cabinet until the disposition of charges against him and his department's administration of Colorado shale oil lands by Field Chief Ralph S. Kelley (TIME, Oct.13)

Dr. Wilbur's dual role, however, brought him under fire from a new quarter last week. The People's Legislative Service (insurgent Republican mouthpiece) loudly complained that as Stanford's president he had invested $7,000,000, one-quarter of the college's endowment fund, in public utility bonds, while as Secretary of the Interior he acts as chairman of the Federal Power Commission to supervise the finances of the same companies in which Stanford is an investor.

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