New Administration: Ornaments on the Tree

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Archie Cox served as clerk to famed Jurist Learned Hand after graduating from Harvard Law School, wandered between private practice and Government work (including tours as an attorney with the Justice and Labor Departments) before joining the Harvard faculty in 1945. A brilliant, ever-questioning teacher of labor law, Cox took time off in 1952 to serve as chairman of Harry Truman's Wage Stabilization Board but resigned in protest after four months when Truman overruled one of his wage recommendations. After the labor bill battle he became a Kennedy enthusiast, took leave from his Harvard chair (the Royall Professorship, oldest endowed chair in the law faculty) last July to serve full time as speechwriter and idea man on Kennedy's staff.

Rex Marion Whitton, 62, Federal Highway Administrator. Highwayman Whitton is among the oldest of the Kennedy appointees, but may well be one of the spryest. A graduate civil engineer, he started out surveying for the Missouri State Highway Department in 1920, rose to become its chief engineer and prime builder of 12,000 miles of state roads. Democrat Whitton has won nearly every top professional award his trade has to offer, was strongly recommended for his new job by outgoing Republican Administrator Bertram Tallamy.

Robert V. Roosa, 42, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs. A Rhodes scholar who never went to Oxford (the war intervened), Michigan-born Banker Roosa (pronounced roe za) joined the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1946 as an economist, and rose to vice president in charge of research. He is widely respected in international banking circles for his sensible "sound money" views and for detailed knowledge of debt management problems—his chief area of responsibility as the Treasury's No. 3 man.

William Averell Harriman, 69. Ambassador at Large. Gaunt, grey Fair Dealer Harriman, ex-Governor of New York and twice a losing candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has had more than his share of diplomatic experience. An F.D.R. favorite, Millionaire Harriman undertook special Presidential wartime missions to London and Moscow, later served three useful years (1943-46) as Ambassador to Russia. Harry Truman assigned him briefly to the Court of St. James's, later gave him a variety of international chores: Economic Cooperation Administrator in Europe with the rank of ambassador, Director of the Mutual Security Agency. Last fall, Harriman made a special fact-finding mission to West Africa on behalf of his new boss.

Robert C. Weaver, 53, administrator of the U.S. Housing and Home Finance Agency. At the age of 32, Harvard-educated Sociologist Weaver was a top strategist in the so-called Black Cabinet of the Roosevelt era—the able squad of Negro intellectuals who held administrative jobs in the New Deal. Since F.D.R.'s day, Weaver has been a teacher and writer (The Negro Ghetto, Negro Labor: a National Problem}, a highly regarded housing expert, and a spokesman on civil rights problems (he is board chairman of the N.A.A.C.P.). Kennedy plucked him from his $22,500-a-year job with New York City's Housing and Redevelopment Board to give him the highest federal post ever held by a U.S. Negro.