Good Man v. Politicians

When the Senate refused to confirm Calvin Coolidge's appointees, that President could generally be counted upon to put up a stubborn fight for his men or else sulkily decline to name any others to office. Franklin D. Roosevelt is a President of a different stamp. Last week the Senate Commerce Committee voted (11- to-5) against his appointment of Dr. Willard Long Thorp as Director of the Bureau of Foreign & Domestic Commerce. President Roosevelt sidestepped a tussle with the Senate by promptly withdrawing the nomination of Dr. Thorp who thereupon offered his resignation from the post he had been serving since July. From the President he received the following letter:

"It is with real regret that I accept your resignation. ... I want to express my very sincere appreciation for the loyal and conscientious work that you have been doing down here. ... I want you to know that we feel you have made a real and substantial contribution to the great cause to which we have all committed ourselves. With all best wishes for your personal success. . . ." Plainly the President, confronted with the necessity of keeping the peace with Congress until its June adjournment, was not ready to make an issue of one man's appointment. But the significance of the Thorp incident was larger than White House tactics. Dr. Thorp, 34, was Professor of Economics at Amherst when he was recommended for Director of the Bureau of Foreign & Domestic Commerce by Secretary Roper. As head of the office which Secretary of Commerce Hoover's favors had expanded into one of the biggest and most potent in Washington, Director Thorp brought the tabulation of commercial statistics up to new high standards of accuracy. He put an end to the practice of having commercial attaches abroad make surveys and contacts for individual U. S. manufacturers. He discharged employes whose qualifications were political rather than practical. When onetime Mayor John F. ("Red Mike") Hylan of New York City pulled wires to get a job for his old secretary (and son-in-law), Dr. Thorp held it up. His failure to play politics in a bureau once riddled with them made enemies. Secretary Roper, a good giver of patronage, became lukewarm to his subordinate. It was openly said in the Department that H. Russell Amory, Assistant Director and a protege of Senator McAdoo, was ringleader of a group of bureau employes eager to oust their boss. Some manufacturers who no longer got special foreign trade favors were also working for Dr. Thorp's retirement. Someone got wind of the fact that Dr. Thorp while at Amherst had once registered as a Republican. When that information reached small, wry-faced Theodore Bilbo, the onetime Governor of Mississippi dropped his shears and paste-pot in the Department of Agriculture, raced home and announced his Senatorial candidacy. That was bad news for Mississippi's Senator Stephens who was not only up for re-election but also chairmanned the Senate Committee before which the Thorp nomination was pending. Candidate Bilbo began to arouse the Democrats of Mississippi over the heinous proposition that Senator Stephens was about to help put a Yankee Republican into a $9,000 job. A "Democratic Protective Committee" protested to the Senate. Senators could find valid grounds for objecting to the radicalism of Brain Truster Rexford Guy Tugwell whose nomination as Undersecretary of Agriculture was still pending last week before a Senate committee.* But against Brain Truster Thorp they had no grounds except his refusal to play politics. Senator Stephens weasled the issue by declaring that Dr. Thorp was rejected because he was 1) too young, 2) without practical commercial experience. This aroused a third Brain Truster, Assistant Secretary of Commerce John Dickinson, a "youngster" of 39, who cried: "Dr. Thorp is on all hands admitted to be one of the most competent business analysts in the country. He is not a theoretical reformer, but an analyst of facts and figures. No protest against his confirmation was made by any respectable volume of business opinion on the ground that he did not have 'practical' business experience. "On the other hand, fabricated and untruthful, charges of a miserable, petty, partisan character have been persistently circulated against him by a very small clique of disappointed office-seekers, at least one of them closely associated with the Hoover Administration. . . . He has discharged his duties with admirable ability, fidelity and success. . . . "Pending the determination of whether or not it will be possible to secure acceptance of the directorship of the bureau by a man of Dr. Thorp's calibre and his confirmation at the hands of the Senate. I reserve consideration of my own future relation to the department."

The President, not wanting to lose a second good man, hastily issued an executive order authorizing Assistant Secretary Dickinson to take over Dr. Thorp's job until a successor was named. This was a direct blow to Assistant Director Amory who would ordinarily have become acting director. A further blow followed when Dr. Dickinson removed all power over personnel from Mr. Amory, made himself guardian over one of the richest plum trees in Washington and defied hungry politicians to do their worst.

*Last week when the House appropriated $200,000 toward the second edition of Chicago's Century of Progress, Representative Truax of Ohio urged that Dr. Tugwell be sent as an exhibit.

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