The Rooseveltians

The Roosevelt Administration was dead with its leader; after a scant three months, the Truman Administration was in full flower. Harry Truman, while following Roosevelt policies in general, was determined to pursue them with his own men.

Last week two of Franklin Roosevelt's most trusted personal friends departed. Ailing Harry Hopkins, perhaps the closest political friend Roosevelt ever had, the man who lived in the White House for three and a half years, took up his pen in his neat Georgetown home and wrote: "The time has come when I must take a rest. . . ."

Harry Truman agreed. He was never one of those who had sniped at Harry Hopkins for his disciple's relation to Roosevelt, his overwhelming influence in the "Palace Guard." Truman had continued to use Hopkins' knowledge and counsel. It was Hopkins, more than anyone else, who saved the San Francisco conference from a precipitous breakup (TIME, June 1). But Harry Truman also knew that Harry Hopkins would eventually leave. He wrote warmly in reply ("I know how much your tireless energy had to do with the carrying on of the war in all parts of the globe"), and that was that.

Thus the harness maker's son from Iowa, who had risen to a position more powerful than many kings's, bowed out. His friends said he would write his memoirs, if his health permitted. He would have much to tell about: the Hundred Days of the New Deal honeymoon, the fractious days of WPA, the vindictive days of the 1938 purge, the bustling days after Pearl Harbor, and the days of high-policy travel when Casablanca, Cairo, Teheran, Quebec and Yalta became places of international decision.

Harry Hopkins did not plan to quit work altogether. He promptly accepted the quasi-public position of czar of New York's garment industry, a well-paid ($25,000) job which requires no more attention than it got from his predecessor, New York City's onetime playboy Mayor Jimmy Walker.

Back to the Farm. Two days after Hopkins quit, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. hurried to the White House. Worried Henry Morgenthau wanted to know where he stood with the new boss. He demanded a presidential letter asking him to stay on until V-J day. Harry Truman replied that he would be glad to deny all the rumors--but no letter. That was not good enough for sensitive Henry Morgenthau. In that case, the President told him, his resignation would be accepted immediately. There was no outward bitterness; the exchange of letters was cordial.

The man who had been Secretary of the Treasury for eleven and a half years, longer than any other except Albert Gallatin (1801-13), would go back to his tulips and tomatoes at his Fishkill Farms in Dutchess County, N.Y. He left no great record behind him. But he had helped mightily to fight inflation, and the proposal to stabilize international finance (Bretton Woods), for which he took credit, seemed sure of enactment. His chief difficulty had been his inability to get along with Congress.

To succeed him, President Truman named a man who is ace high with Congress: Kentucky's able, solemn Frederick Moore Vinson, director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, and Congress' onetime tax expert. There would be no doubt of his confirmation. There would also be no doubt about where he stood. In his first quarterly report as OWMR director (TIME, July 9), he had called for a wholesale overhauling of the U.S. tax structure to make it more simplified, more understandable, more equitable. The probability was that Fred Vinson would take his OWMR duties with him to the Treasury.

Politically, the departures of the two top Rooseveltians spoke volumes. Only last week G.O.P. National Chairman Herbert Brownell growled: "It's still the New Deal we have to beat in 1946." He spoke too soon. Harry Truman had called for a new deal, but it would never be written in capital letters. By the time the 1946 elections roll around, Republicans would have no New Dealers to attack.

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