THE CABINET: Second Stocking

"Don't kid me, boys. This is the Christmas season and I'm accepting anything."

So said Harry Hopkins one day last week after a Cabinet meeting which, though no member, he had attended as usual by Presidential request. When Reorganization failed last spring with it died Harry Hopkins' dream of becoming the first Secretary of Welfare. Now, for weeks, Washington wiseacres had been saying Secretary Roper of Commerce would be let out to make room for Friend Hopkins, with twofold purpose: to take him out of the Congressional barrage soon to fall upon his WPA; to throw him into contact with businessmen and build him up as 1940 Presidential timber.

The first part of this prediction had now come true. Following the death of his son-in-law, David R. Coker, whose large affairs in South Carolina needed overseeing, kindly, seam-faced Daniel Calhoun ("Uncle Dan") Roper's resignation was at last announced. Instantly a Big Business chorus arose led by President George H. Davis of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, seeking to head off the Hopkins appointment. Franklin Roosevelt, like his most trusted friend, laughed away questions about it and Christmas continued to come, with two Cabinet stockings instead of one for the White House Santa Claus to fill.

In the magnificent $17,500,000 coliseum built to house the Department which was Herbert Hoover's monument and his stepping stone to the Presidency, Uncle Dan Roper of Marlboro County, S. C. seemed like a very small potato indeed in a very big box. His training for the job consisted of clerking in Congress, working in President Wilson's Post Office Department (as the co-equal of his contemporary, Assistant Secretary of the Navy F. D. Roosevelt), later on the Tariff Commission and as Internal Revenue Commissioner. From 1921 until after the election of Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 he was a workaday Washington lawyer. Helping to swing his friend Senator McAdoo's delegates from Garner to Roosevelt at Chicago, and being a Southerner, put him in line for the Roosevelt Cabinet. An assiduous politician but not a brilliant executive, 71-year-old Secretary Roper contributed to the New Deal more than comic relief for cynical journalists, more than platitudinous speeches. He performed the useful function of massaging the bumps on Business' head every time Franklin Roosevelt cracked down on it. The impressive-looking vibrator which he was allowed to use for this purpose was his Business Advisory & Planning Council, chairmanned first by Franklin Roosevelt's friend Gerard Swope of General Electric, later by Uncle Dan's friend Samuel Clay Williams of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. There is nothing in the record to show that the BA & PC and Uncle Dan ever really altered Franklin Roosevelt's attitude toward Business, but several times it revived that sufferer's failing heart with short waves of Confidence.