Small Businessman

As Mamie Eisenhower stepped off the train at Philadelphia on the way to christen the nuclear ship Savannah last week (see The Atom), a telegram from the President was handed to her. Turning to a stocky, crop-haired man in her party, she said, "I want to be the first to congratulate you," and passed the telegram along to him. Thus was Frederick H. Mueller, 65, informed that he had been chosen to fill the hole in the Eisenhower team left by the Senate's rejection of Lewis Strauss (TIME, June 15 et seq.).

Two good reasons made Michigan Republican "Fritz" Mueller a natural choice for Commerce Secretary: 1) as Assistant Secretary for three years (1955-58), then Under Secretary, and finally Acting Secretary after Strauss's resignation,'he is better equipped than anyone else to step into the top job as time runs out in the Eisenhower Administration; and 2) he should have little trouble getting Senate confirmation; his nomination as Under Secretary was quietly confirmed while the Strauss fight was going on. Moreover,

Mueller had blue-ribbon endorsements from ex-Secretary Sinclair Weeks, Strauss, and Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield, a fellow Michigander.

Mueller describes himself as "a small businessman at heart." and he spent most of his adult life, and some of his childhood, in small business. He was born in Grand Rapids in 1893, one year after his German-born father established a furniture factory there. At 13 he was put to work in the factory, 16 years later was its general manager. The family firm still employs fewer than 100 workers, but Fritz Mueller has spread its name and fame by being a prodigious civic-affairs man--president of the Grand Rapids Furniture Makers Guild, the local United Hospital Fund, the Chamber of Commerce, and football-boosting member of the governing board of Michigan State University (he holds an honorary M.S.U. doctor of laws degree and a gold-engraved lifetime pass to all M.S.U. athletic events). But neither his conservatism nor his clubbiness prevented him from pulling out of the National Association of Manufacturers when he disagreed with its labor policies.

Outside the office, Mueller likes to read economics, enjoys bridge, plays golf in the 80s. In 1938, when his wife (who died last year) gave him a plane as a Christmas present, he qualified as a pilot, survived one crash and went on to organize the Grand Rapids Civil Air Patrol, still has a passion for flying, though he gave up piloting in 1951. Friends say Fritz Mueller looks younger than he did when he came to Washington in 1955. "I happen to enjoy the stimulation of challenge," said he, "and Washington is the place to find stimulation."

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