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Under Homer Stille Cummings, the Roosevelt Administration's first Department of Justice completed function No. 1 in 1933, Function No. 2 early in 1939, when Mr. Cummings retired to his rich private practice in Connecticut. No further big New Deal test cases are slated to appear before the Supreme Court before 1941. Therefore the job that Frank Murphy was left when he succeeded Mr. Cummings was substantially a cop's job, and he took to it with all the fervor of an Irish moralist, all the energy that his red hair, purposeful jaw and 46 years bespeak.
For eleven months in 1924-25, Harlan Fiske Stone introduced a period of zealous prosecuting efficiency in the Department of Justice, even going so far as to press for antitrust investigation of Aluminum Co. of America, dominated by the family of his Cabinet colleague, Andrew Mellon. Mr. Stone was soon kicked upstairs to the Supreme Court and law enforcement became a subordinate job of the D. o. J. for the next 14 years until righteous Frank Murphy came along. There has been plenty of kicking in the Department since his appointment last January, but the kicker has been Frank Murphy and the kickees a great raft of high-&-low-placed malefactors, not a few of them important members of Mr. Murphy's own political party.
Kicking Around. Besides hunting Manhattan's murderous Racketeer Louis ("Lepke") Buchalter (in a race with Republican District Attorney Tom Dewey) and other Public Enemies, Mr. Murphy's men are also hounding down Louisiana's corrupt Democratic politicos. Having convicted Kansas City's Democratic Boss Pendergast and indicted Philadelphia's Republican Publisher Moses ("Moe") Annenberg for income-tax evasion, having prosecuted Federal Judge Martin Manton for "selling justice" in Manhattan and proceeded against big-shot Lawyers Louis Levy and Paul Hahn for their dealings with Judge Manton (rulings on their disbarment await the outcome of Judge Manton's appeal), Mr. Murphy's men are about to go to work on some of Hollywood's richest cinemagnates for alleged income-tax evasion and antitrust violations, and on the powerful stagehands union on charges of labor racketeering. Murphy men are also pressing ahead with their case against William ("Billy") Skidmore, gambling overlord of Chicago. That case might lead to self-righteous purging of the New Deal's loud-spoken Boss-Mayor Ed Kelly of Chicago. And Murphy men are after Atlantic City's Republican Boss Enoch ("Nucky") Johnson. That case might lead to action against the New Deal's biggest black sheep of all: Boss Frank Hague of Jersey City, vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
In these last cases the soul of Frank Murphy may be tested to the uttermost, for the political explosive in them is nitroglycerin, not common black powder as in New Orleans and Kansas City. Yet none of his friends suspects for a second that the soul of Frank Murphy will fail the test.