National Affairs: Red Rover

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"Mr. President, what are Mr. Amlie's qualifications for this important post?"

That question, put at a White House Press conference last week by Correspondent Frank Goodwin of Central News of America, brought down upon its asker's head the stern reply from Franklin Roosevelt that the President of the United States does not appoint unqualified men to high office. But the qualifications of Thomas R. Amlie of Elkhorn, Wis. to go on the ICC remained a major issue in Washington despite the snub.

For even by loyal followers of Franklin Roosevelt, Wisconsin's Amlie is bluntly called a Red. Chairman Burton K. Wheeler of the Senate Interstate Commerce Committee at once appointed a sub-committee under Colorado's Johnson (a moderate Democrat) to get all the answers to Correspondent Goodwin's question. These hearings will start next week.

As a gesture to cultivate the confidence of Business in any drive for Recovery and national unity, Mr. Roosevelt's choice of Thomas Amlie to succeed Wisconsin's Balthaser Henry Meyer, dean of the ICC, at first looked like one more capricious nose-thumbing. With absolutely no experience in transport, 41-year-old Amlie is a third-party rover who has played around with Farmer-Laborites, Socialists, Friends of the Soviet Union. Farm-bred in North Dakota of Norwegian stock, he is a tall, sandy-haired, gloomily sincere, deep-reading prairie ponderer who foresees the overthrow of Capitalism in the U. S. (which he admires for what it was while it lasted) by a collectivist order which will produce an Economy of Abundance. While a member of the House (1935-38), he flayed the New Deal as half-baked and reactionary, introduced a Constitutional amendment for Congress to take over any private enterprise in the land by right of eminent domain.

Last week the Democrats in Wisconsin's Republican Legislature introduced and passed an indignant resolution asking Franklin Roosevelt to cancel, and the Senate not to confirm, the "communistic" Amlie appointment.

Significance. For explanation of Franklin Roosevelt's provocative Amlie gesture, observers had to look no further than the Janizariat, of whom hard-boiled Tommy-the-Cork Corcoran is known to regard the ICC as "the greatest collection of mori-bundium in Washington." In the Corcoran view of government, one able administrator is worth a dozen Commissioners. (He gives even SEC only five more years to reach its dotage.) And among ten other ICCommissioners, Red Mr. Amlie could do the distressed railroads no harm and a good hot fight over his appointment, even if lost, might aerate a stagnant agency.