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"If we are to have here in the North west a great public power empire, it means we must buy out the private utilities . . . as complete entities, at a price that would be fair and just, but which would contain no gratuitous squandering of public funds." The speech ended amid a terrific ovation for his tribute to Ross. But at least some of the handclaps were for the lonely, applause-hungry little Secretary.
Sometimes Harold Ickes gets wistful, wonders why he is nobody's sweetheart. Said he recently: "I'm not a backslapper. I'm not a popular man and I know it. ... I'm short-tempered. I don't want yes-men around me. . . . I'm arbitrary—but I get things done." His intimate adviser, big, handsome, dark Mike Straus, interrupted: "I'll say he's arbitrary. He's ornery, hardheaded, the damnedest, most unreasonable hot-headed man you ever saw." Ickes spoke up mildly, with almost childlike eagerness, peering over the tops of his spectacles: "You see? Listen to him. See how he talks to me. But I don't want any yes-men working for me. . . ."
Very little credit has ever gone to the gruff, dour little Chicago lawyer. He was 67 on March 15, and the most careful search of the records fails to show any major occasion in the 67 years where any substantial group of citizens or high officials (or even low officials) ever paid him any great tribute, named a street or a baby after him, sent him flowers or just told him they loved him.
The scion of generations of Pennsylvanians (Great-Grandfather Nicholas Ickes shouldered a musket at the age of 16 for the Continental Army in the Revolution). Harold went to the University of Chicago, became campus correspondent for the Chicago Record, graduated, went to work as a reporter on space rates, some weeks earning as much as 75¢. Just as the ax was about to fall, he came on the dream of a cub reporter: a big scoop. Chicago newspapers had been looking for a missing Mamie Doane for weeks. Returning from the morgue one day, where he had inspected a drowned possible Mamie, young Harold had a bright idea: why not call on the Doanes? Mrs. Doane greeted him: "Come in, young man. Mamie just got home."
The exclusive story brought Ickes the promise of a regular job at a full $12 a week, a better offer from the Chicago Tribune. By faithful plugging he worked himself up to the post of assistant sports editor, which was then (and in some shops still is) ranked slightly below that of composing-room office boy.
Ickes still refers to himself as an ex-newspaperman, maintains stoutly that his literary style is a product of his years as a reporter. This style, studied closely, resolves itself into a trick of calling names more luridly than anyone else. He once said that the late Huey Long had "halitosis of the intellect"; that General Hugh Johnson had "mental saddle sores"; that when Racket-Buster Thomas E. Dewey announced his Presidential candidacy he "tossed his diapers into the ring."