THE CABINET: Wilburs

Eight years separated the births of Dwight Locke Wilbur’s boys, Curtis Dwight and Ray Lyman—eight Iowa years during which the residents of little Boonesboro could foresee that Curtis Dwight Wilbur would grow to be a tall man with large hands, feet, ears and nose. Later, as younger Ray Lyman Wilbur grew up they could see that he, too, would be the “string bean” type. It also became apparent that, despite the years separating them, there was to be fraternal rivalry between the Wilbur boys for position in the world and prestige among men.

When Curtis Dwight was graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy, Ray Lyman was still playing Indian in short pants. But Ray Lyman was not so young that he did not know Curtis Dwight had won the Academy championship, and a handsome tambourine, for high-kicking. Being a quiet boy, Ray Lyman did his high-kicking, if any, secretly.

The tambourine he resolved to win was high place in the medical profession.As a freshman at Stanford, he watched Curtis Dwight begin a law career in Los Angeles — a career that was to take him to the Superior Court bench. Ray Lyman kept his head down, studied in Germany and England, returned, taught physiology at Stanford — and became Stanford’s presi dent.

That brought the brothers about even. Perhaps young Ray Lyman even had an edge. He certainly had an edge when Her bert Clark Hoover, his Stanford contem porary, called him to War-time Washington as an assistant. Superior Judge Curtis Dwight remained, augustly but withal provincially, in California, while young Ray Lyman mixed excitingly in national affairs.

The War ended, Ray Lyman returned to Stanford and Fate gave the nexttwo spurts to Curtis Dwight. In 1919 he ascended to California’s Supreme Bench. In 1922 he became Chief Justice. Then, after the Denby trouble, when President Coolidge was at a loss for a man to put in as Secretary of the Navy, a state-loyal California newshawk sent in the name of Curtis Dwight Wilbur—”Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of California.” On paper it looked magnificent, and Calvin Coolidge had not then been President long enough to know how magnificent paper can make some things and people look.

He sent for Older Brother Wilbur and lived to say he never again would appoint a man he did not know personally.

For Wilbur the elder, the large-handed, the large-hearted, with the eye likethe mock-turtle in Alice, caused more blush-worthy embarrassment during the Coolidge era than any other member of the Cabinet. First came the inept Wilbur speechmaking in the 1924 campaign, necessitating his recall to Washington. Then there was a series of Navy disasters — the Shenandoah, the S-51, the S-4 — for which no Secretary could have been held directly ac countable, but during which Secretary Wilbur handled himself so clumsily that he became the butt of worse than blamed ridicule. Pressmen made sport of the Wil bur high-kicking, the Wilbur Sunday school class, the Wilbur bed-time stories. Repeatedly came disgusted demands for the Wilbur resignation.

There has been no talk at all to the effect that President Hoover will retain Curtis Dwight Wilbur in his Cabinet. But last week came a report — a report from San Francisco — that there would be a Wilbur in the Hoover Cabinet — young brother Ray Lyman Wilbur

It did not seem possible that Mr. Hoover’s blanket endorsement of the Coolidge era could have been meant so comprehensively and literally asto include a Wilbur qua Wilbur, just because President Coolidge had had one. It did, however, and perhaps, mean that Mr. Hoover, who knows his Wilburs well, was going to undo, gently and politely, a quite understandable Coolidge mistake. Mr. Hoover would have the other Wilbur, the younger, science-minded, non-high-kicking one.

Coming from San Francisco, vicinity of Stanford’s board of trustees, this rumor of Ray Lyman’s translation sounded reliable enough to send Ray Lyman’s rating temporarily at least, well above Curtis Dwight’s. Yet it was not such a flattering report after all. The position predicted for Wilbur the Younger was Secretary of the Interior. As most of Washington knows, the Interior is a department from which Mr. Hoover plans to subtract several major functions, some of which will then be turned over to the Hoover favorite and chef d’oeuvre, the Department of Commerce. In other words, Wilbur the Younger, as Secretary of the Interior, would receive a truncated department and be only a Hoover yes-man.

But yes-men are what most of the Hoover Cabinet will have to be. Andrew Mellon, alone, looms as a Secretary in his own right under the Hoover command. And to Wilbur the Younger it will doubtless be better to be a yes-man than never to be Secretary at all. Moreover, in catching up that much of a lap on his brother, Wilbur the Younger will not probably see his brother spurt ahead of him again very soon. The spurt that Wilbur the Elder would undoubtedly like to make next is to the Supreme Court of the United States, but here at least one other man stands, if he wants to, ahead of Elder Wilbur. That man, of course, is Calvin Coolidge.

From Manila last week came word that Governor General Henry Lewis Stimson was to sail for the U. S. in time to attend the Hoover Inauguration. At once his name was picked up and passed around as possible Secretary of State—or War— in the Hoover Cabinet. He served two years in the Taft cabinet as Secretary of War.

The New York Times put its “stamp of positiveness” on this report. Statesman Stimson, it was argued, had demonstrated his talent as a practical diplomatist in Nicaragua, in the Philippines. Mr. Hoover, besides, has rather loudly whispered that his forthcoming Cabinet would contain “surprises.” Onetime Secretaries of State Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes were said to have stressed the logic of the Stimson appointment to the next President at their conferences with him in Washington last month.

Sunday luncheon guests at Belle Isle included Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, who was promptly predicted for Assistant Secretary of Commerce in Charge of Aeronautics, vice William P. MacCracken of the Coolidge sub-cabinet.