THE CABINET: West for Work

It was an unexpected appointment but unsensational. It was so purely personal and political, that it was uninteresting. Yet it seemed adequate. President Coolidge himself had pointed out that the Department of the Interior is so well staffed and organized that it scarcely would need a chief to replace Dr. Hubert Work for the balance of the Coolidge administration.

So Roy Owen West of Illinois became Secretary of the Interior without reasonable doubt that the Senate would confirm him when it meets. Aged 60, circumspect, alert, “regular” pince-nezzed, he had done well as a Chicago lawyer, served faithfully as a G. 0. Politician in Illinois (five times State Chairman, three times National Delegate, twice National Committeeman, and for the Coolidge campaign National Secretary). This year he was to have been vice chairman of the National Finance Committee, but he said he would resign that job at once and “familiarize myself with the great office for which I have been chosen.”

The Summer White House made it plain that the West appointment was in no way meant to presume upon or embarrass the Cabinetmaking of a hypothetical President Hoover.