THE CABINET: End of the Line

When Julius Albert Krug was called in to replace terrible-tempered Harold Ickes as Secretary of the Interior, there seemed no limits to the glistening future of the Wisconsin wonder boy. Behind him was an impressive record of public service as a member of the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, manager of TVA’s power operations, head of the War Production Board. At 38, he was the youngest officer in the Cabinet, a hard-driving New Dealer who quickly mastered Interior’s operations and spent at least half of his time in the field, brushing up on department problems at first hand.

But as time went on, hulking (6 ft. 3, 250 Ibs.) “Cap” Krug began to get into hot water. Word leaked out of an intricate financial transaction which gave Krug and his lawyer control of a Tennessee cotton mill; his name got in the papers in a lawsuit over a $750,000 loan made to him by a New York businessman. It also turned up on the expense accounts of Howard Hughes’ Rabelaisian contact man Johnny Meyer for parties in Palm Springs, Hollywood and Manhattan, complete with $100 notations for feminine “entertainment.” (Krug indignantly called Meyer’s accounts a “swindle.”)

Krug got in rows with other federal officials over reclamation projects, got the President’s back up by going to Congress for more money over the head of the Budget Bureau. He was also found wanting when political accounts were added up after the 1948 election campaign.

One afternoon last week the end finally came; the surprise was not that it came, but how it came. An assistant telephoned top Interior officials: “The Secretary has asked me to tell you he has resigned.” Before Harry Truman got Krug’s personal letter of resignation, he had already read Krug’s 13-word statement to reporters: “I am leaving. I have been wanting to leave for a long time.”

Next day, after a friendly exchange of letters with the man who had served him longer (44 months) than any other member of the Cabinet, Harry Truman picked as Krug’s successor a man who fitted an increasingly familiar pattern of presidential appointments. Like Agriculture Secretary Charles Brannan (a fellow Coloradan) and Postmaster General Jesse Donaldson, 53-year-old Oscar Littleton Chapman was a longtime career man in his department.

A devoted New Dealer from 1933 on under Franklin Roosevelt, Chapman had also proved his undying loyalty to the Fair Deal by covering nearly 26,000 miles in 1948 as advance man for the Truman campaign train. A teetotaler, Chapman at a White House gathering was once asked by Franklin Roosevelt, “Oscar, mix us a drink,” and had to confess he did not know how. The President pretended to be vexed: “I can’t have anyone in my little Cabinet who doesn’t know how to mix a Martini.” Earnest, literal-minded Oscar Chapman had to be assured later that the boss was just kidding.