(4 of 9)
They're singing to the rainbow shining there again.
So let us be like bluebirds, happy all day long,
Forgetting all our troubles in
a sunny song.
Secretary Woodin collects U. S. gold coins, particularly $5 pieces which have been experimentally minted but never put into circulation. Once he wrote a book on numismatics which begins: "Coins are the metallic footprints of nations." He has a rare collection of the etchings of George Cruikshank, Dickens' illustrator. A standing joke of Mr. Roosevelt's to ward off press queries: "I've been discussing Mr. Woodin's Cruikshanks." Prominent in his delicate, heartshaped countenance are Mr. Woodin's twinkling blue eyes and his small mouth, a cupid's but firm. He plumes himself on his punning. Last week he declared: "I'm going to be more concerned with Federal Reserve notes than with musical notes for a while." When a newsman named Acuff introduced himself, Mr. Woodin quipped: ''Acuff? Well I've got a collar, ha-ha!"
Mr. Woodin's assignment is Cabinet's hardest. In the next eleven months the Treasury will be confronted with refinancing more than half the public debt of $20,907,000,000. In addition there must be new taxes to balance the Budget, new economies to cut the Deficit. Mr. Woodin was not ready last week to talk policies. All he would say: "I've more respect for this job than anything I've ever undertaken. Let me get my feet on the ground. ... I must saw wood and keep quiet. . . . What Secretary of the Treasury do I admire most? Why, Alexander Hamilton, of course."
Secretary of War. George Henry Dern, 60, got his appointment over the long distance telephone in Salt Lake City just as he was starting for Washington and the Inaugural. His was the wife who let the news out while he napped. Mrs. Dern, mother of five, and Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Roosevelt, mother of five, are fast friends.
When long-jawed Mr. Roosevelt met broad-jawed Mr. Dern at a Governors' Conference in 1930, the Governor of New York chanced to remark that he thought the Governor of Utah was of "Cabinet size." Governor Dern has treasured that aside ever since as his promise of a White House seat after March 4. For a time, though, it looked as if party factionalism in Utah would keep him out. When the Dern appointment was announced last week Ormond Ewing, Democratic National Committeeman, declared: ''He won't last more than six months. I'm glad to see Utah recognized but I'm not glad Dern got the job."