(3 of 7)
Old D. o. J. Without unfairly aspersing Homer Cummings, it can be said that the D. o. J. under him suffered severely from acute politicomyelitis. This was only natural, since' Mr. Cummings shared his patronage with his crony, James Bruce Kremer, one of Franklin Roosevelt's heaviest political creditors. Fact is Mr. Cummings was a third choice. After iron-jawed Senator Tom Walsh died (on his honeymoon), Mr. Roosevelt was going to appoint Frank Murphy to Justice and send Mr. Cummings to the Philippines. Mr. Murphy had been only Mayor of Detroit and before that judge of a Recorder's Court, but he had performed early and valuable service herding other mayors to the Roosevelt standard and his administrative ability, at a raw outpost of Depression in the most highly industrialized U. S. city, had been proven. On second thought Mr. Roosevelt deemed the Philippines, whose independence was about to begin, more important than the Attorney Generalship (he did not foresee his Court fight). So he sent Frank Murphy out there first.
Mr. Cummings managed to improve prisons and streamline judicial procedure. Solicitors General under him (after North Carolina's old Judge James Crawford Biggs was got rid of) defended the New Deal's laws as best they could while the courts were being New Dealized. But conscious or unconscious procrastination and delay hampered Justice all down the line. The "Second Louisiana Purchase," by which Huey Long's political heirs returned to the New Deal camp at the same time that their incomes ceased to interest the Government, looked pretty conscious to many an observer. If Republicans return to power, they say the Department of Justice 1933-38 will most certainly be their prime hunting ground for New Deal ghouls. Realization of this was as strong a motive as sympathy for a jobless friend in Franklin Roosevelt's call for Frank Murphy after the latter was licked for reelection as Governor of Michigan last year.
New D. o. J. Aside from his barrage of major prosecutions the major news about Attorney General Murphy is his ripping out of Cummings personnel, replacing it with high-grade material selected largely by that able legal manpower scout, Tommy ("Uncorkable") Corcoran. This overhauling has extended to five of the seven executive offices in D. o. J. (The other two were overhauled while Cummings was still in: Stanley Reed for Biggs as Solicitor General, and later Robert Houghwout Jackson for Reed; Thurman Arnold as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division.) Mr. Murphy's substitutions were:
Oetje John Rogge for Brien McMahon in the Criminal Division. A rugged, redheaded, German-blooded trial lawyer of 35 from Peterboro, 111., Mr. Rogge was PFC's fighter in collecting $9,600,000 from Dawes Bank stockholders following the Chicago institution's famed $90,000,000 RFC loan. He licked some of the country's most expensive legal talent on that case, was given SEC's investigation of Chain Banker Giannini of California. The Louisiana mess is also his to handle and last week came the one touch needed to dramatize him as a knight of justice: he received two bullets in his mail and advice to get out of New Orleans. He stayed, of course, and told the newspapers. The New Deal counts on Oetje John Rogge to help neutralize the Republican knight, Tom Dewey, in Illinois.