Jobs & Jews

There is a section of U. S. public opinion which distrusts the more radical measures of the New Deal and blames them on the Jewish advisers of President Roosevelt. Year ago the American Hebrew pointed with pride to the list of Jews serving in the Administration or acting as advisers to the President. By last week the undercurrent of talk about the "Jewish influence" in Washington had become such a steady buzz throughout the land that the same magazine was prompted to publish another article entitled "Exploding the Myth of a 'Jewish Hierarchy'." By calling the roll of Jews in the Administration, Arthur T. Weil aimed to prove their number is piteously small. The roll:

One Jew in the Cabinet.

None in the Sub-Cabinet.

None in the Senate.

Ten in the House.

Two on the Supreme Court.

None as head of any of the 20 Emergency Relief Administrations.

Three as diplomatic envoys.

Only 30 in the 1,000 top jobs of the Federal Government, or 3%.

This proportion of Jews to jobs is slightly less than that of Jews to Gentiles in the whole U. S. population. To those who suspect the President of Semitic sympathies, the list makes poor evidence. With the presence of ten Jews in the House-- he has nothing to do. Nor is he responsible for the presence on the U. S. Supreme Court of Mr. Justice Brandeis (appointed by President Wilson) or Mr. Justice Cardozo (appointed by President Hoover). President Harding first brought such a prominent Jewish Brain Truster as Mordecai Ezekiel into Government service as a Department of Agriculture economist. The President's personal Jewish appointments do include Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., Ambassador to France Jesse Isador Straus, Minister to Sweden Laurence A. Stenhardt and Minister to Costa Rica Leo R. Sack. (Newshawk Sack was Mr. Weil's predecessor as Washington correspondent of the American Hebrew.) Of his personal but unofficial advisers Bernard Baruch and James Paul Warburg have little, if any, influence with him at present.* There remain Charles William Taussig, board chairman of American Molasses Co. of New York; and Felix Frankfurter of the Harvard Law School. The former the President consults occasionally on foreign trade and tariff questions; the latter he uses less as an adviser than as an agent through whom to find and employ bright young legalites to do spade work for the Brain Trust. Undoubtedly the young Jews in second-string positions are not so much personal appointees of the President as they are the choices of the President's Gentile advisers. It is these young Hebrews on whom part of the public looks with distrust. Although Author Weil can show that they are not many and do not hold high posts, the fact remains that because their brains and ability are used by their superiors and because they are frequently deputed to carry out the Administration's policies and write its bills, their importance exceeds their numbers and their official rank. In the Department of Agriculture they are strong. There is Jerome Frank, chief counsel, and Louis H. Bean, economic adviser of the AAA. There is Dr. Mordecai Ezekiel, a Sephardic Jew of an old Virginia family, who entered the Department twelve years ago at the age of 23. In 1930 he was made assistant chief economist of Hoover's Farm Board. A recognized authority on quantitative statistical analysis as applied to agriculture. Dr. Ezekiel used to write articles for Wallace's Farmer When Henry Wallace became Secretary of Agriculture he made Ezekiel his official economic adviser, and left to him, more than any other one man, the job of drafting the farm relief bill.

Secretary of Interior Ickes has Nathan R. Margold, Harvard Law School graduate, as his solicitor, and Robert D. Kohn as his director of PWA housing. Madam Secretary Perkins has two able Jewish helpers, Isador Lubin Jr. as labor statistician and Charles E. Wyzanski Jr. as solicitor. Lawyer Wyzanski has spent most of his 28 years winning prizes: as a high school boy, from the Daughters of the American Revolution; as a student at Phillips Exeter, the Walter Hines Page, Merrill and Teschemacher prizes (all in one year) and a four-year scholarship at Harvard; as a junior at Harvard the New York Times's intercollegiate current events contest ($750). He was serving the Boston law firm of Ropes, Gray, Boyden & Perkins when Miss Perkins asked Professor Frankfurter to suggest a solicitor for her. Wyzanski was the answer.

Secretary Hull's leading Jew is Dr. Herbert Feis (Harvard '16), author of Europe: The World's Banker. Primarily on the strength of that book, Secretary of State Stimson in 1931 took Dr. Feis into his Department as economic adviser, a post he still holds and in which he exercises great influence.

General Johnson, too, has a number of Jews in his Recovery army, foremost of whom are Sol Arian Rosenblatt, Administrator of Division V (Amusements & Transportation), and Alexander Sachs, Chief of the Division of Research & Planning. Head of NRA's Labor Advisory Board is Dr. Leo Wolman (prolabor but not a radical), who also sits on the National Labor Board and heads the Automobile Labor Board. And finally there is Rose Schneiderman (Labor Advisory Board) who last January went to Puerto Rico to iron out its labor difficulties and, more recently, has threatened to sue Dr. Wirt for calling her "Red Rose of Anarchy."

Although these are virtually all whom the American Hebrew considers worthy of notice, there are still others, most of them young, and in nominally unimportant positions. Example: Benjamin Victor Cohen, 40, a Brain Trust attorney who is PWA's assistant general counsel. He had a large hand in drafting the Stock Exchange Control Bill and, contrary to all rules, sat on the floor of the House during consideration of that measure to prompt its "sponsors" in debate. Not until his presence seemed likely to cause a Republican stir did he retire. Besides Cohen, there are others like him: Dr. Jacob Viner (Treasury Department), Norman Meyers (Interior Department), Abe Fortas and Lee Pressman (AAA).

No hierarchy, indeed, are the Jews of the Administration, but they are by no means insignificant. Their power rests not upon their jobs but upon their great industry, their extraordinary mental ability and their crusading fervor for what they conceive to be the high and remote ideals of the New Deal.

*New York's Celler, Bickstein, Sirovich, Peyser, Bloom; New Jersey's Bacharach; Connecticut's Kopplemann; Pennsylvania's Ellen- bogen; Illinois' Sabath; California's Kahn

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