Men & Jobs

One morning last week in the East Room of the White House a small mountain of flowers was banked between the huge portraits of George and Martha Washington. Before the flowers the ornate South American coffin of Gus Gennerich lay in state. Over it a Lutheran minister read the second funeral service for the Presidential bodyguard who dropped dead in Buenos Aires. Among the 300 listeners seated on gilt chairs were George and Augustus Gutrie, bereaved brother-in-law and nephew, Cabinet members and their ladies, Vice President & Mrs. Garner, Mrs. Roosevelt, the President himself, sunburned, leaner, refreshed from 28 days absence, by 12,000 miles to Argentina and back.

Political friends, political enemies, political bystanders had been waiting four weeks for him to give them their cues for his second term. When the funeral was over Vice President Garner took him aside for a long chat. For the rest of that day and the next and the next, cue-seekers passed in procession through the White House offices. Those interested in immediate or routine questions--inauguration ceremonies (Admiral Gary T. Grayson), CCC continuation (Director Fechner), tax revision (Senator Pat Harrison, Representative Bob Doughton), budget (Secretary Morgenthau, Chairman Eccles of the Federal Reserve)--got immediate answers. But Franklin Roosevelt, having waved aside for a whole month matters of second-term policy, gave no sign that he was ready promptly on return to give cues on such major projects as reviving the substance of NRA, or undertaking new adventures in foreign policy.

But one problem came to meet him more than half way: the problem of personnel. Among his first callers was Indiana's smooth, handsome, ambitious Governor Paul Vories McNutt. The reason for Governor McNutt's call puzzled no one. One of the ablest politicians of the Midwest, soon to be out of a job because an Indiana governor cannot succeed himself, he would like a seat in the Cabinet, is typical of Franklin Roosevelt's new patronage problem. For this year a new generation of deserving Democrats lays claim to jobs which cannot be supplied by the simple process of ousting Hoover Republicans as they were in 1932. Moreover, Franklin Roosevelt has committed himself to a thorough reorganization of the Government.

Speaker Bankhead, after calling on the President last week, shook his head lugubriously about the chances of getting such a bill through Congress. For if reorganization means anything it will reduce, not increase, the number of jobs, and new jobseekers as well as old jobholders will be around the necks of Congressmen.

Said Speaker Bankhead sourly: "Every member of the Cabinet and every bureau chief will bring pressure to bear on their friends in Congress."

But this was only half of Franklin Roosevelt's problem of jobs and men. Newshawks who harried Secretary Stephen Early on the subject of Cabinet changes got from him the answer that hardly any Cabinet members wanted to resign or would.* He was not speaking, however, of the bright young men who do the real work in many a department. Often has Franklin Roosevelt urged Business to hire more men. Little did he foresee that Business would hire not from Relief rolls but from the ablest young lawyers and executives on the Government's payrolls. For Business, which could spare them during Depression, now wants them back, because they are able and know the New Deal ropes.

Many a young official who has been getting $6,000 or $8,000 a year and paying for long distance telephone calls and trips on Government business out of his own pocket (because the Comptroller General would not approve them), has been tempted by such offers.

Nor was money the root of all defections. Many have a feeling that the best excitement of the New Deal is over, its adventure petering out. Some likewise are disgruntled because political deadheads occupy the posts above them.

The exodus is already well under way. Going last week was John Burns, general counsel of SEC, father of five children, to a better paying job. Going were five of SEC's younger officials; gone Reginald Laughlin, RFC's assistant to the general counsel; going the assistant general counsel from the Treasury; gone AAA's director of the North Central Division to a packing firm, its assistant Southern director to a big cotton ranch, the head of its sugar section to the Sugar Institute. Gone after his chief was one of Rexford Tugwell's economists, to represent the Puerto Rico Sugar Producers. Said to be going are Madam Secretary Perkins' brilliant statistician, Isador Lubin. RFC's General Counsel James Alley and Solicitor Max Truitt. Tempted with flattering offers have.been the Department of Justice's able Robert Jackson, TVA's General Solicitor James L. Fly, practically the whole cream of the Government crop.

Direly though Franklin Roosevelt needed more such men for his second term, his need and their departure were kept as dark as possible. "Help Wanted" signs would merely multiply his troubles with jobseekers.

His most pressing and personal employment problem President Roosevelt solved last week by picking as successor to Gus Gennerich the Massachusetts State trooper who served as Son James's bodyguard during the campaign. Thomas Joseph Quakers, who will see the President more often and more intimately than any other associate in days to come, is a 5-ft. 10-in. 185-lb., 32-year-old Boston Irishman whose mates say he is as much at ease addressing a women's club on highway safety as sparring with a friend in barracks. He developed the muscles he will need to lift 184-lb. Franklin Roosevelt in & out of wheelchairs and automobiles by playing substitute halfback at Notre Dame in the mid-1920's. A crack horseman, boxer, wrestler and pistol shot, he taught and coached in various Massachusetts schools after graduation, joined the State police in 1933. Though his duties will be solely to the President's person, Bodyguard Qualters will, like Gennerich, be sworn into the Secret Service, assigned to the White House detail. That he may not long be able to give his boss the single-minded devotion which Bachelor Gennerich did was intimated last week by his father, who declared: "He's single, but he doesn't intend to remain so. They're not engaged, but he has a girl all right."

* Exception: Secretary of War Woodring whose appointment was announced as temporary when he was given it after Secretary Dern's death.

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