Friend of Perkins

To administer the new Fair Labor Standards Act (Wages-&-Hours), Franklin Roosevelt last week named New York State's Industrial Commissioner Elmer Frank Andrews.* Thus a man of whom the country at large knows nothing was picked for a job of which industry at large knows little more but will soon learn a great deal.

Elmer Andrews is the kind of man for whom General Hugh Johnson never had much use in NRA days. One quality and fact alone would drive bellicose General Johnson to profane distraction. Fussy Mr. Andrews reveres and likes to work for fussy Frances Perkins, to whom the General refers as "Muddom Secretary."

Called "Jap" in his youth because his schoolmates thought his roundish face, round dark eyes had an Oriental cast, Elmer Andrews got a civil engineering degree in 1915 from Renssaeler Polytechnic Institute. His first job was classifying workmen's compensation ratings for Maryland Casualty Co.; his second, Wartime Air Corps instructor at a Texas flying field.

Back in engineer's harness, after the War, he went to Cuba to build warehouses for Tajaco Sugar Co. The island was still dizzy from its fabulous Dance of the Millions, when sugar reached 22 1/2-c- a lb. At a party one night, a sugar aristocrat inquired: "What do you do, Mr. Andrews?" Replied Elmer Andrews: "Oh, I'm just a carpenter." At least one of several railroad construction jobs taught him how bond money can be juggled. By 1929, when he went to work for New York State, Elmer Andrews yearned to do something about the world as he found it. Governor Franklin Roosevelt's State Industrial Commissioner was Frances Perkins, and she hired Engineer Andrews as her deputy. He was made for the job, moved up to Commissioner when President Roosevelt put Madam Perkins in the Cabinet.

Nine years at or near the top of a growing and complex system of social legislation, vitally concerning New York's millions, Elmer Andrews was seldom dramatized in the press. Stories galore told that he had issued this order or that; the letter columns reflected his passion for writing to the editor. But mild, seemingly innocuous Elmer Andrews was no figure for the supplements. He spent weekends with his wife and three children at suburban Flushing, N. Y., he rode in day coaches to Albany, generally absorbed in statistical reports which are his favorite reading matter. Politically, his highest ambition until last week was to be Lieutenant Governor of New York. He had announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination before Franklin Roosevelt last week reached for him.

No lobbyist, he has a persuasive way with facts and legislators and he did much to put on New York statute books unemployment insurance, minimum wages for women, a State labor relations act, etc. A thoroughgoing New Dealer, he believes in what he administers, sometimes gets mildly tough with those who differ. During hearings last year on laundry wage and hours standards, a frenzied Little Man cried: "All right, you put this regulation through, I tell you what I do. I give up, I close down, I lock the door, and you can have the key." Said Commissioner Andrews to a blonde stenographer: "Miss Jones, go down and get the key from the gentleman."

During the same hearings, another Little Man moaned: "Four workers in my laundry, I have to pay them each $12.60, no matter what I make. Me, I'm called the employer, I work no maximum hours, maybe the end of the week I get six or seven dollars. What do you call me, where do I get in the picture?"

"Well," said Elmer Andrews, "I call you a business man."

Second choice for the new job (the President first begged Sears, Roebuck's Vice President Donald Nelson to take it), Elmer Andrews is lucky that so far he has not antagonized either C. I. O. or A. F. of L. But he will have his work cut out for him enforcing the Wages-&-Hours law and managing the boards he will pick to adjust wages and hours in specific industries.

*Specifications: age, 48; height, 5 ft. 9 in.; weight, 155; hair, black & thinning; sport, golf (usual score: 95-100): wife; son, 17; daughters, 15, 13. Home, Flushing, N. Y.

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