National Affairs: No. 3 Man

(See front cover)

It does not take a war to keep a Secretary of War busy. Though it was Washington’s slack season, the present occupant of the Cabinet’s No. 3 post—James William Good—last week was more than usually occupied.

With President Hoover he went to an American Legion baseball game, hurried back to his desk after the first inning to search for a new Chief of Engineers. He sat in on a War Council meeting at which the Army’s 1931 budget estimates were mulled over. He prodded General Charles Pelot Summerall along on the General Staff’s investigation of Army costs, was disappointed to learn that the inquiry would not be completed before November. He dissolved five infantry battalions and transferred their 1,960 men into the growing Air Corps. He untangled a badly snarled wharf problem for Kansas City. He weighed protests from Louisianans against the land compensations provided under flood control.

His desk clear, he hurried off to Illinois to make a waterway inspection with Governor Louis Lincoln Emmerson. With him he carried a speech on waterways for delivery later in the week at Minneapolis, whither he and many another bigwig were supposed to go to help a shrewd man named Wilbur Burton Foshay dedicate a new office building designed like the Washington Monument.

“Softest Job.” When a congressman from Iowa, Mr. Good frequently heard people describe the position of Secretary of War as “the softest job in the Cabinet.” After six months’ service, he wonders what these people meant. No small assignment was it for him to memorize just the list of things he is directly or jointly responsible for: the regular military establishment (124,000 officers and men at more than 100 posts); veterans, river & harbor improvements on inland navigation, the Panama Canal, the Philippines, Porto Rico, flood control, waterpower, forest reserves, oil conservation, the Smithsonian Institution, District of Columbia parks. In addition. President Hoover chose Mr. Good to be the administration’s prime political adviser and agent. For twelve years (1909-21) an Iowa Congressman. Western Campaign Manager for Calvin Coolidge as well as Herbert Hoover, he has come in the Hoover Cabinet to represent the rural psychology on political matters far more than does Secretary of Agriculture Arthur Mastick Hyde of Missouri. The other politician in the Cabinet, Postmaster General Walter Folger Brown of Toledo, represents city politics.

Another Good assignment: Contact-man for the President with Congress.

Another Good assignment: To make speeches for the President. This duty Secretary Good takes most conscientiously. He has traveled far and made ten major speeches since March 4 to such bodies as the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Red Cross, the War Mothers, the Republican ”Birthday Party” at Ripon, Wis.

The status of Secretary Good’s three major current problems—Army economy, flood control, finding a new Chief of Engineers—was last week as follows:

Economy. Instructed by the President to cut down the largest present Army costs in the world, Secretary Good spoke an aside filled with stout soldier sentiment. Said he: “I am hopeful I can find places where retrenchment can be made, but I do not know where these places are.” Then he asked the General Staff to work it out.

It costs $454,000,000 per year to run the Army, of which $331,000,000 is for strictly military purposes. Big items: Pay —$133,000,000; Food—$24,000,000; National Guard—$44,000,000; Ordnance— $11,000,000. The Army points out that the per capita U. S. cost of all government is $118.93 Per year of which only $2.25 or less than 2% goes to support the Army. Army pay is high ($21 to $126 per month, plus subsistence) because the Army must compete with Industry for recruits. Besides the Regular Army, the War Department is responsible for 36,000 men at Citizens Military Training Camps, for 120,000 organized Reserve Officers. Scientific development has brought expensive new weapons which do not replace old ones. Tanks, airplanes, railroad artillery, automobiles, chemical warfare have not rendered the Infantry obsolete. The Cavalry, now greatly reduced, is essential for open warfare over rough terrain.

Flood Control. Under the Flood Control Act of 1928 the President was to choose a plan, of which two were offered: Jadwin or Army Engineers (cost: $318,500,000); Mississippi River Commission (cost: $407,000,000 plus). Both called for higher levees, for spillways or “fuse-plugs” which the rising river could blow out, flooding adjacent land, reducing high water downstream. Under the Jadwin plan the owner would retain his river land, but the U. S. would pay him 66% of its assessed value for the privilege of flooding it at will and without notice. Approximately once every dozen years it would be inundated. The Commission plan called for outright purchase by the U. S. of land to be flooded. President Coolidge, on advice of experts, chose the Jadwin plan, issued an executive order putting it into effect.

Loud have been the protests of Mississippi Valley Senators and Congressmen, led by Senator Harry Bartow Hawes of Missouri, against what they called “this steal.” As their constituents favored the Commission plan’s purchase scheme, they importuned President Hoover and Secretary Good to switch to that. Secretary Good asked Attorney-General Mitchell for an opinion. Last month Mr. Mitchell ruled that neither the President nor the War Department had authority to shift from the Jadwin to the Commission plan with out further authority by Congress.

Promptly the War Department opened offices at New Madrid, Mo., commenced to negotiate for flowage rights from land owners. Last week residents of the Atchafalaya andBoeuf basins again protested to Secretary Good. He decided that he would not attempt to force them to accept the Jadwin land plan, but suggested that it was unlikely that any other scheme of relief would be forthcoming. Thus Mississippi Flood Control shapes up definitely as a congressional issue for this fall and winter.

New Chief. The necessity of finding a Chief of Engineers arose from the arrival of Major-General Edgar Jadwin at the age of 64 and his retirement as a Lieutenant-General. The Army Engineers spend each year $50,000,000 on river and harbor development, authorize all bridge and pier construction on navigable streams, have a larger civil activity than any other War Department branch. President Hoover, who knows a good engineer when he sees one, entrusted to his War Secretary the business of selecting a squad of candidates from whom would be picked the man to carry on flood control. Most logical was Brigadier-General Herbert Deakyne, 62, West Point ’90, who since 1926 has been Assistant Chief of Engineers. His military record is bright with engineering feats from the Philippines to Philadelphia. One fact alone threatened his advancement: in two years he will be retired and President Hoover wanted a man who would be with the Flood Control project until its completion ten years hence.

He Satisfies. In a multiplicity of problems such as the Secretary of War’s lies a great excuse for nonperformance. But Secretary Good, trained to this sort of thing by political headquarters work, comes close to the Hoover ideal of an executive who can delegate responsibility and then keep track of his delegations. As every Washington hostess knows, the Secretary ot War and Mrs. Good have in the first six months of the Hoover Administration dined out more frequently than any other Cabinet couple. Not fond of society, Secretary Good goes as a military duty, as part of his general plan to “sell” the Army to Washington, to the country at large.

Most of the Cabinet have been enjoying unostentatious holidays. Secretary Adams has been sailing off New England while Postmaster General Brown was motoring through it. Attorney-General Mitchell went fishing in Minnesota. Secretary Davis relaxed for three weeks in Michigan. Secretary Stimson got away for ten days in the Adirondacks. Secretary Mellon visited his daughter on Long Island; Secretary Lamont, his son’s Colorado ranch. But even with vacations in order, “Jim” Good is not the vacationing kind. With him the job is the thing—the desk, the memoranda, the letters (he reads and answers every one that comes), the telephoning, the callers (his door is always genially ajar).

From an exterior viewpoint, “Jim” Good represents an element in the administration satisfying to a large portion of the public. The West, of course, is pre-eminently satisfied by claiming the President. Among the ranking Cabinet members, the East can look with pride upon the Messrs. Stimson and Mellon at the No. 1 and No. 2 positions. At No. 3 comes Mr. Good, of the Midwestern midwestern, more citified than Vice President Curtis, less tycoonesque than Secretary Lamont. While Yale men point with pride to Statesman Stimson, and Harvard men to Secretary Adams, Secretary Good is satisfying to that large group of citizens whose background includes the state universities. Indeed the University of Michigan, where “Jim” Good studied law after being graduated from little Coe College (’92), was quick and glad to claim him, in a sort of for-God-for-country-and-for-Michigan alumni article last spring, along with Secretaries Lamont and Hyde (full-fledged Michiganders). as part of the new Michigan delegation in the Cabinet— a delegation far more satisfying to Michigan than its last one, which consisted of the Messrs. Harry Micajah Daugherty ’81, Edwin Denby ’96, and Hubert Work 1882-84.