(See Cover)
One evening last week Attorney General Frank Murphy arrived at the Green Inn, a comfortable shingled seaside hotel at Narragansett, R. I. With him were his chauffeur, his secretary, Eleanor Bumgardner, and his legal assistant, Edward G. Kemp. They registered, were assigned rooms and started up to them. It was then that the night clerk noted that Frank Murphy was so exhausted that it seemed for a moment he might not make the one-flight climb upstairs.
Next morning Frank Murphy was up at 8 a. m., breakfasted in his room (No. 12) on one ascetic glass of orange juice, then went out on the veranda to work diligently over mail and official-looking reports. Occasionally he would go inside, make long telephone calls. He had a portable radio which he tuned to catch all news reports, and he carried it with him when he went to the beach at n :30. There he stood for 15 minutes, knee-deep on the hissing shingle. After his circulation was thus methodically aroused, he plunged in, swam past the breakers, churned up & down parallel to the beach for 45 minutes, ably swimming side stroke, breast stroke, Australian crawl. Then he went to lunch (fruit only) at the moderately swank Dunes Club, then back to the beach to sun on a mattress, read (Grapes of Wrath) through dark glasses, listen to radio newscasts, until 5 o'clock. He swam for an hour again before returning to the Green Inn to dine on vegetables.-
This was the Attorney General's recuperative schedule for five days, varied only when he ate his vegetable dinner at the Dunes instead of the Green. Several eager Narragansetters invited the rufous gentleman, whose eyebrows rival John Lewis' and Jack Garner's for density and concentration, to break bread, but he politely declined them all. U. S. District Attorney J. Howard McGrath from Providence was his guest two evenings at the Dunes. Otherwise he kept alone. By week's end, when he departed in his big official Packard for a Michigan visit, he was fairly well rested. His nose was red, his freckles refulgent. He felt he had conscientiously obeyed the orders of his Chief, who had firmly told him: "Frank, I want you to get out of town [Washington]. . . ." But he could not relax entirely, for of all the top men in the U. S. Government, not excepting even the President, none was engaged upon tasks more pressing and important than Frank Murphy.
Cop's Job. The functions of the Attorney General's office are three: i) It pays off heavy political debts (even more liberally than the Post Office) with assistant attorney generalships, U. S. judgeships,- district attorneyships. 2) It advises Congress on the constitutionality of pending legislation and defends the constitutionality of that legislation when passed. 3) It enforces the laws of the land.