Cabinet Carpenters

(See front cover)

In the weeks and months immediately ahead further unauthorized and unfounded suggestions may appear in print and otherwise. I desire to make it clear that no decision has been reached and no decision will be reached in regard to any appointments for at least two months. I shall neither confirm nor deny any such reports. Here and now I ask the public to disregard any and all such speculations.--President-elect Roosevelt.

To operate the Federal Government requires about $4,000,000,000 and 600.000 workers per year. Nine-tenths of these employes are clerks, stenographers, letter carriers, janitors, messengers, chauffeurs, laborers, agents and inspectors, all of whom are under the classified civil service and therefore hold their jobs regardless of elective changes. At the top of the personnel pile, however, are approximately a thousand key positions from which the Government is really run. To fill these executive jobs with men of his own choosing is a new President's official privilege and political duty.

A President-elect is besieged by an army of applicants. His mail is swollen with local recommendations for "deserving" partisans. Each & every likely candidate must first be investigated because a President is held personally responsible for the character and calibre of any man he puts in office. Thus a President-elect gets his first idea of the awful magnitude of the four-year job ahead of him.

A new President starts to build his administration from the top down by getting ten good men and true for his Cabinet. These first-rank appointees then help him fill up the lower grades in their respective departments. Next to be found are the 32 members of the Sub-Cabinet ranging from the Undersecretary of State to the Second Assistant Secretary of Labor. A clean sweep in the foreign service requires 15 new Ambassadors. 42 new Ministers. A new President must pick & choose until he gets men to serve him as Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Commissioner of Customs, Comptroller of the Currency, Governor of the Federal Reserve Board, Director of the Mint, Director of the Budget, Director of Engraving & Printing, Governor General of the Philippines, Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Director of the Census, Governor of Puerto Rico, Commissioner of Education, Director of the Bureau of Standards, Director of Prohibition, Commissioner of the Land Office, Administrator of Veterans' Affairs, Commissioner General of Immigration, Civil Service Commissioners (3), Farm Loan Commissioners (6), Federal Trade Commissioners (5) and so on & on & on. In addition the President has the appointment of 90 U. S. District Attorneys, 15.031 post-masters and a host of minor officials down to and including notaries public of the District of Columbia. The only high executive official who is legally safe in his job after March 4 is John Raymond McCarl. Comptroller General of the U. S., appointed in 1921 for a 15-year-term and removable only by impeachment.

Old Friend; Splendid American. On election night at his Biltmore Hotel headquarters Governor Roosevelt feelingly announced : "There are two men in particular who made possible this great victory. One is my old friend and associate Col. Louis McHenry Howe. The other is that splendid American, Jim Farley." Col. Howe is the President-elect's "off-the-record" man. James Aloysius Farley, very much "on the record," is chairman of the Democratic National Committee. This team, together with Col. Edward Mandell House, will be Governor Roosevelt's closest and steadiest advisers during the next four months not only in the selection of the Cabinet but also in the makeready of the whole administration.

Alter Ego. Col. Howe, the President-elect's alter ego, was born in Saratoga, N. Y. Twenty-two years ago he was Albany correspondent for the old New York Herald, when State Senator Roosevelt arrived at the Capitol. A warm friendship developed between them. "Franklin" took "Louis" to the Navy Department with him in 1913 as private secretary, had him at his side during the 1920 campaign. Col. Howe is credited with digging up the "Happy Warrior" phrase with which Mr. Roosevelt twice nominated Al Smith. He handles the Governor's private mail, private business, private house in Manhattan. During the pre-convention campaign he was the "inside man," while Jim Farley was working in the spotlight. It was straight to Col. Howe the McAdoo men went at the Chicago convention when they were ready to dicker on a shift from Garner to Roosevelt.

During the campaign proper, as a sort of Master Mind, he was out of public sight in offices across the street from national headquarters where wise Democrats sought him out for advice. He and he alone can get directly and instantly to the President-elect's ear.

Louis Howe is a slight, frail man, with a wrinkled face, who wears rumpled clothes and an old-fashioned stand-up collar. He is not as crusty as he looks. No "yes" man, he gives Governor Roosevelt plenty of unwelcome advice. He has a wife and two children in Fall River whom he visits weekends. After March 4 he probably can be found in a cubby-hole office at the White House, quiet and self-effacing but exerting a sound wholesome influence over the Presidency far beyond the country's realization.

Col. House, a political godfather to '"Frank" Roosevelt since he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy, will serve as the connecting link with the old Wilson regime. Throughout the campaign and since Governor Roosevelt has been in almost daily communication with him. If an important Democrat balks about entering the Cabinet, Col. House will be quietly dispatched to try to make him see his public duty.

Job No. 1. Before it was silenced by Governor Roosevelt the Press of the land had lugged out all the Democratic Cabinet timber available. Public interest centered chiefly around the State and Treasury portfolios. Last week Secretary of State Stimson announced that he was ready to coach his successor as soon as he was appointed. For this No. i job President-elect Roosevelt, weak on foreign affairs, needs a particularly able Secretary with an expert international knowledge. President Harding had such a man in Charles Evans Hughes. The favorite candidate for Democratic Secretary of State, at least with the Press, is Owen D. Young. Three other well-qualified gentlemen: John William Davis, onetime Ambassador to the Court of St. James's; Norman H. Davis, onetime Undersecretary of State, now a U. S. arms delegate at Geneva; Newton Diehl Baker, onetime Secretary of War, always devoted to peace.

Job No. 2, During the campaign Democrats brick-batted the Treasury for "deceiving" the country as to its fiscal position, for misleading a harassed Congress with bad estimates on receipts and expenditures. President-elect Roosevelt, it is known, wants the best possible man for Secretary of the Treasury to revive confidence in that department. The Press promptly pointed its long finger at white-crested Bernard Mannes ("Barney") Baruch. Mr. Baruch contributed $61,000 to the campaign. By rights the job was his. But Mr. Baruch, now 62. evidently does not want it or any other. He may prefer to be an informal dictator of Democratic policy from the Wall Street side lines.

Next man on the Treasury list is Melvin Alvah ("Mel") Traylor, president of First National Bank of Chicago. Banker Traylor's appointment would be satisfying to Kentucky where he was born in a log-cabin 54 years ago, to Texas where he got his start as a grocery clerk and smalltown banker and to Illinois where he reached, with dignity and without greed, the front rank of his vocation. A precedent in his favor: Lyman Judson Gage stepped out of the presidency of the First National to become McKinley's Secretary of the Treasury.

"It." With hair and eyes brown, smile quick and crinkly, language frank and occasionally profane, "Mel" Traylor has political "it." At the national convention he got 42! votes for the Presidential nomination. Because he is easy, informal, likable, all Chicago wants to see him in the Cabinet. On paper his qualifications look ample. He knows the theory and practice of banking from the cashier's cage to the board room. He helped set up the Bank for International Settlements at Basle. He took a large hand in forming National

Credit Corp., gave Congress wise tips on R. F. C. He has heard the muttered fear of depositors demanding all their cash, boldly faced them down in First National's lobby. An early advocate of wage cuts, he startled the International Chamber of Commerce last year by declaring that stock exchange "floor trading has about it most of the characteristics of plain crap shooting" (TIME. May 18. 1931). Traylor Week, Out of his professional role he lives simply with his wife, son and two daughters in a modest frame house near Lincoln Park. He keeps his trim young figure trim and young by a morning and night work-out on a rowing machine. His cars are a 1927 Packard, a 1926 Hupmobile. He plays bridge, prefers poker. Last week, exclusive of long hours at work, he: 1) lunched at the Casino Club with Singer Lawrence Tibbett & wife, later hearing the Tibbett concert; 2) went to a charity ball only because "First National contributed the music"; 3) met with the board of Gypsum Co.; 4) played 14 holes of golf at Old Elm (first nine: 44) with George Alfred Ranney, International Harvester vice president, before rain ended the game: 5) spent an evening at City Hall with his good friend Mayor Cermak; 6) declared the Roosevelt victory would help restore business confidence; 7) went duck-shooting at Quincy. Secretaries of the Treasury.paid $15.000 per year, are often rich men who are expected to entertain lavishly out of their (own pockets. Secretary Mellon's salary failed to cover the rent on his Massachusetts Avenue apartment. To Secretary Mills his bi-monthly pay check is just small change. But Banker Traylor is not rich. His First National salary is estimated at less than $100,000 which he would have to give up if he went to Washington. Chief among his capital assets is a $1,000.000 life insurance policy which requires heavy premium payments out of earnings. As a Cabinet officer he could, of course, accept no outside subsidy. Therefore if and when he is offered the No. 2 Cabinet post by President-elect Roosevelt, Mr. Traylor would first have to ponder a very solemn question: What can the Secretary of the Treasury live on?

Conservative or Radical? A third ticklish appointment is that of Attorney General, largely because of that official's power over business under the Anti-Trust laws. Would Governor Roosevelt pick a conservative like Maryland's Governor Ritchie or a radical like Montana's Senator Wheeler?

P. M. G. Most political Cabinet post is that of Postmaster General. By all rules of the game this job should be offered to Chairman Farley, master politician.

"Alsos." Among the "also mentioned'' for the Cabinet are: Frank Lyon Polk, Felix Frankfurter, Senator Joseph Taylor Robinson, Frank C. Walker, James Middleton Cox, Harry Flood Byrd, Utah's Governor George Dern, Arthur Mullen, Miss Frances Perkins (New York State Labor Commissioner), Evans Woollen, Jesse Isidor Straus, Clark Howell (Atlanta Constitution), John Sanford Cohen (Atlanta Journal) James Mcllhany Thomson (New Orleans Item & Tribune).

The most conspicuous Democrat whom all dopesters seemed unable to work into the Roosevelt Cabinet was Alfred Emanuel Smith.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.