HEROES: Man-of-the-Year

To which of his fellows might the discerning U. S. citizen point as Man of the Year?

Civic loyalty would automatically turn the citizen toward Washington and the White House, where 1929 saw Herbert Clark Hoover installed. But the First Citizen is obviously in a class by himself and really, psychologically, belongs to the year of his election.

For heroism plus skill, 1929 was undoubtedly Richard Evelyn Byrd's in the popular mind, just as 1927 was Charles Augustus Lindbergh's. Through their Congress the citizens paid acknowledgment by raising Byrd from Commander to Rear-Admiral, an act unprecedented since Robert Edwin Peary discovered the North Pole.† But air-minded citizens might dispute Admiral Byrd's preëminence by bringing in Pilot Bernt Balchen, who actually flew the Byrd ship to the South Pole, or by pointing to Endurance Flyers Dale ("Red") Jackson and Forest O'Brien who kept the St. Louis Robin aloft longer than any living thing has ever flown (420 hr. 21 min. 30 sec.).

Undoubtedly there may be historians who will find the name of Frank Billings Kellogg brightest in 1929, for it was the year in which 57 nations signed the world-peace treaty with his name on it. But researchers and analysts could show that Mr. Kellogg did not originate the outlawing-war idea ; that a comparatively obscure lay figure named Salmon Oliver Levinson, Chicago lawyer, was invited to the White House the day the signatures were affixed in recognition of certain conversations he had had years prior with Senator Borah of Idaho and others.

An enormous body of citizens might turn to Alexander Legge, prime "new patriot" of the Hoover era, the man selected to cope with the country's most pressing politico-economic problem as chairman of the Federal Farm Board. But Chairman Legge only began his task in 1929.

Contemplating education as an important field, many a citizen might hail the feat of Robert Maynard Hutchins, who became president of one of the country's hugest universities at the age of 30.

All these and many another were Men of the Year, but the discerning citizen would pause long before putting any of them ahead of the man, apparently the one man, who could and did perform the year's largest politico-economic job for the world's leading nations. Economics underlies war. War leaves economic tangles which must be straightened out before society can proceed in peace. The man who spent four months as foreman of the high financial wrecking crew which was the Second Reparations Conference, was Owen D. Young of Van Hornesville, N. Y.

Last January when European powers, President Coolidge not objecting, asked Mr. Young and John Pierpont Morgan to come to Paris, Mr. Young was reluctant to accept. He knew and his countrymen were beginning to know how large a part of the so-called Dawes Plan had been his handiwork in 1924. There was no patriotic compulsion to go and do some more hard work, especially since it then looked as though no amount of work could bring success. When he did accept and reached Paris, it became apparent that the other nations' delegates could agree on him alone for chairman.