Hero Hated

"I've known for a long time I'm not loved with all the fervor I think I'm entitled to. If a man worked hard at it, he couldn't get up a bigger list of enemies than I. I have accumulated a choice collection of critics and enemies, especially among certain rings of contractors, public utility interests and oil interests. I also understand I am under the serious criticism of not being polite. I have had to say 'no' very frequently. I have been asked to make appointments and approve projects which I could not do."

When Harold Le Clair Ickes took office as Secretary of the Interior, he quickly became one of the outstanding Cabinet heroes of the New Deal. He was honest. He worked hard. He refused to play peanut politics. He had billions of Federal dollars to spend. Yet last week Secretary Ickes was ruefully admitting that his popularity had vanished, that he was, in fact, one of the most thoroughly hated members of the Cabinet. Like everyone else, he knew the reasons.

Congressmen had grown to dislike Secretary Ickes because he would not listen to their pleas for political patronage or for "pork" from the $3,300,000,000 Public Works fund he administers. To save time he would receive Congressional callers at his office in batches, require them to come up to his desk and whisper their requests. Senator Sheppard of Texas once had to wait eight days to get a private appointment. So intense was the feeling against Secretary Ickes at the Capitol last week that House Democrats refused to vote an additional $4,000,000,000 for public works and emergency relief until they had been assured by President Roosevelt himself that Public Works Administrator Ickes would have practically nothing to do with this new fund (see p. 24).

Last week President Roosevelt received another complaint about his Secretary of the Interior, this time from Senator Pat Harrison of Mississippi. The point at issue was Mr. Ickes' antipolitical administration of the Virgin Islands. Secretary Ickes had insisted that Paul Martin Pearson, sexagenarian Chautauqua organizer appointed by Herbert Hoover as Governor of the Virgin Islands, should not be removed to make room for a deserving Democrat. Senator Harrison had a job-seeking friend named T. (for Thomas) Webber Wilson of Mississippi who in 1928 gave up a seat in the House to run for the Senate and lost. Lest his friend run for the Senate in 1936, Senator Harrison got Postmaster General Farley to induce Attorney General Cummings to appoint Mr. Wilson a judge in the Virgin Islands.

Judge Wilson is a stern Justice and a Mississippi orator. In one of his first cases in the Islands he had declared: "I am responsible only to Homer Cummings and to God Almighty." He refused to dismiss a case against a minor public works employe charged with pilfering a small amount of lumber and cement. Instead, he put witnesses on the stand, questioned them and then, without a jury, found the employe guilty and fined him $200, saying, "You have become a Judas and Benedict Arnold to your country." This procedure was, according to the Department of Justice, proper under Danish law.

Fortnight ago The Nation printed an article by Raymond Gram Swing, denouncing Judge Wilson's actions in this petty case, rehashing the practical politics behind his appointment. Last week the Department of the Interior gave out The Nation article as an official press release, an hour later sent messenger boys around trying to retrieve it. Washington correspondents were told it had all been a mistake. But the fat was on the fire, because not only Judge Wilson but Messrs. Harrison, Cummings and Farley were denounced in the article. Stuart Godwin, the Interior's pressagent, had a toothache and could not see the Press. Secretary Ickes returned from Manhattan to find matters in a mess and Senator Harrison, mad clean through, hot-footing to the White House. Hastily Mr. Ickes announced: "I did not authorize it. I would not have authorized it. I did not know it was given out until I was told over long distance telephone in New York there had been an escape from the cave of winds."

Then he sat down and wrote notes of apology to Messrs. Harrison, Cummings and Farley.

Other groups that no longer consider Harold Le Clair Ickes one of the heroes of the New Deal: .'

P: The oil industry on which Mr. Ickes as Oil Administrator heaped not only stern regulations but much verbal abuse. P: Public utilities, which are confronted with new competition from hydroelectric plants built with PWA grants from Mr. Ickes.

P: Federal Housing Administrator James A. Moffett whose plans for stimulating private building. Mr. Ickes insisted, would produce no results (TIME, Dec. 3).

P: The New Dealers of New York City whom Mr. Ickes ordered to oust Republican Robert Moses from the Triborough Bridge Authority before more Federal funds would be advanced (TIME, Jan. 21). When the Virgin Islands trouble broke last week Mr. Ickes was in Manhattan telling the Dutch Treat Club: "I was introduced to you as the Secretary of Interior, but ... I should have been introduced as Pharaoh's daughter. How was I to know that New York had only one honest man to serve as a public official?"

P:Businessmen, architects and contractors on whom Ickes investigators were turned loose to try to detect graft in every PWA project.

P: Donald Richberg, the President's coordinator, who has found that Mr. Ickes is all but impossible to coordinate.

P:Newshawks whom Mr. Ickes frequently criticizes for their reports of PWA activities.

P: Secretary of Agriculture Wallace from whom Mr. Ickes would like to steal the Forestry Service as a conservation measure.

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