THE CABINET: Restoration in Iowa

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While Franklin Roosevelt and the U. S. Navy last week performed at sea an act designed to impress a world audience (see col. 1), at home, in Iowa, Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins took the spotlight in the Administration's biggest act for domestic consumption since the 1938 elections.

The name of the Hopkins act was Restoring Business Confidence. Nothing quite like it had ever been staged under New Deal management. Heretofore Franklin Roosevelt's morsels of encouragement to Private Profit had been tossed out as asides in speeches which concentrated on the New Deal's grander social objectives. Even the famed "breathing spell" of 1935 came only in answer to a letter from a publisher.* Now, Depression and an election having intervened, the fairest-haired lieutenant of the whole New Deal was being sent out to effect Recovery through the strange and unfamiliar medium of Business itself. To succeed he must embrace Business within the New Deal's social philosophy. To be believed, he must have a careful Administration buildup.

The build-up began with Harry Hopkins' own well-dramatized swearing-in as Secretary of Commerce on Christmas Eve. It was continued in Franklin Roosevelt's rousing message to Congress about an 80-billion-dollar country. It was renewed by his remarks about "no new taxes," on the train south last fortnight (TIME, Feb. 27). Last week the build-up was intensified by Secretary Morgenthau, who proposed not only to avoid new taxes but to mitigate those which give businessmen a "what's-the-use" attitude. The Administration's tax man in the House, Chairman Bob Doughton of Ways & Means, echoed Mr. Morgenthau. At a meeting of Senate committee heads, Chairman Pat Harrison of Finance, arch foe of the Administration's social-control tax theories, was permitted to cry a truce on all legislation unsettling to Business. Secretary of War Woodring even made a speech last week in which he deplored "spending and taxing," apologized that spending was necessary "because we are not prepared to face the graver alternative —depression and chaos." By the time Harry Hopkins arose (in a rented tuxedo) at Des Moines to address its Economic Club, the U. S. (and by shortwave, Europe, South America) was attuned to hear a speech of historic New Deal appeasement.

Top Two-Thirds. It was a choppy, diffuse oration, composed by many minds (see p. 49), but it got right down to the job it had to do. After planting himself firmly in Iowa ("I was born and raised here. My father and mother spent their lives here"), Harry Hopkins gave his own picture of his new job. Running WPA he had served the nation's bottom third. Now he served "the two-thirds of the population earning their living by what we consider to be the normal process of our economic system." To bring his former clients up to par with his new ones, "if new jobs are to be provided, the national income must be increased." National income will not rise without Business confidence, and on this paramount point Mr. Hopkins made an admission never before heard so frankly from a New Dealer. Said he: "Among many businessmen there exists a widespread lack of confidence . . . a hard, stubborn fact."