THE CABINET: Labor Layout

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If it did nothing else, the Old Deal provided the New Deal with a magnificent set of government buildings in Washington. Last June Postmaster General Farley moved into his monumental new Post Office Building on Pennsylvania Avenue and found it good. Last October Attorney General Cummings moved into his monumental new Department of Justice Building on Pennsylvania Avenue and also found it good. This month Madam Secretary Perkins was to move into her monumental new Labor Department Building on Constitution Avenue. By last week, however, moving day had been postponed because the first woman in a President's Cabinet had just inspected her new quarters and found them not at all to her liking.

The Labor Department Building was planned when Herbert Hoover was in the White House and the Cabinet was all of one sex. When Miss Perkins looked over her own office in the new building she found it satisfactory. Opening a door she stepped happily into an adjoining bathroom with full-length mirrors, frosted window panes, a shower stall with seven needle sprays and pastel-tinted tile. Then with consternation she noted that there was another door to her bathroom. She opened it and found it led into the future office of her Solicitor General, Charles E. Wyzanski Jr. Officially Mr. Wyzanski is her right-hand man, her invaluable aide who accompanies her on many of her visits to the White House, who represents her in nearly all important labor disputes. Yet she, a New Englander born and bred, recoiled from the idea of sharing her shower with him. Such a layout might have been satisfactory with the Old Deal but not with the New.

Madam Secretary Perkins called in the architects, demanded an immediate change. The bedeviled architects protested. Madam Secretary insisted. Moving day for the Department was postponed. Carpenters tore down the second door and masons replaced it with a brick wall two feet thick to protect the Secretary's privacy. Hastily a corner of the Solicitor's office was hedged off for a second bathroom for Mr. Wyzanski's private use.