(3 of 5)
George Magoffin Humphrey, 66, in four years as Secretary of the Treasury not only has shaped the grand design of Eisenhower economic policy, but is now the unquestioned strong man of the Cabinet, and one of Ike's closest advisers. Hurnphrey sees the President frequently, talks to him more frequently by telephone. Ike likes Humphrey's blunt honesty and his ability to make decisions in any field. When Secretary Dulles was stricken in the midst of the Suez crisis, the President instinctively turned to Humphrey for counsel, and Ike's own confidence in Humphrey radiates through the Cabinet. After the President's heart attack, Cabinet officers gravitated to the Treasury Secretary's office, there discussed ways and means of carrying on in the Chief's absence. As the Treasury's watchdog, Humphrey has tried to hold down Defense Department spending (which nonetheless stands at a new peacetime high of $38 billion in the 1958 budget) because he suspects that there is still a lot of waste and duplication. He mistrusts foreign aid; last week word got around that he had proposed to the President's advisory committee on foreign aid that all future U.S. economic help should be in the form of repayable loans. If true, this not only puts him at loggerheads with Administration policy, but indicates that he misses the subtleties of foreign aid for political purposes, e.g., to help beleaguered governments solve their economic problems.
Humphrey is in for a lively second term. As a businessman (ex-President of Cleveland's far-flung M. A. Hanna Co.), he stands for a minimum of government control and for taxes low enough to encourage broad investment opportunities and individual initiative. By now he has come to recognize the high stakes and high cost involved in cold war, is willing to postpone tax cuts and settle for a balanced (if bigger) national budget and a fiscal policy that keeps a tight checkrein on inflation. Nonetheless it is plain that Humphrey is not happy with the course of ever-growing Republican government.
James Paul Mitchell, 56, Secretary of Labor, took over in October 1953, when Union Leader Martin Durkin resigned in a dispute about Taft-Hartley law changes. Mitchell turned out to be the biggest sur prise in the Cabinet and is now rated its fastest comer. Despite 20 years as a labor-relations expert with the WPA, the War Department and New York department stores, he had neither a name on the national labor scene nor a reputation for political astuteness when Ike brought him over from the Pentagon (Assistant Secretary of Army for Manpower and Reserve Forces' Affairs). Since then, he has built a healthy respect for the long-moribund Labor Department by 1) keeping hands off in labor disputes so collective bargaining can work (but operating quietly behind the scenes to help it work), and 2) championing such pro-labor proposals as Taft-Hartley revisions, expanded minimum-wage coverage, improved unemployment compensation. His fellow Republicans listen with increased respect since, after diligent Mitchell campaigning, the G.O.P. made heavy inroads in Eastern and Midwestern industrial areas.