(See Cover)
Harry Hopkins, regarded by many as the second most powerful man in America, occupies a 10-by-18-ft. office in the east wing of the White House. The room is entirely devoid of the usual trappings of power and fame. Only a thin coat of white paint covers the walls; bare electric wiring runs up the corners and around the baseboards. Hopkins works at an ordinary-sized desk, reasonably new. The rest of the office furniture is also routine: a brown leather couch, on which Hopkins likes to stretch out when receiving visitors, several imitation brass ash trays, and some WPA paintings on the walls. His office staff consists of one secretary.
Hopkins' daily routine is similarly, and deceptively, simple. He gets to the office at 9:30 a.m., goes back to his Georgetown home for lunch, takes an hour's nap, and is back in the office by 3, remaining until 5:30. Sometimes, but not very often, he takes a sheaf of papers home at night. He has only one fixed appointment a week: the Wednesday morning meeting of the Munitions Assignments Board. But even though he is chairman, he often skips that. He usually sees the President daily, although there are days when they merely talk by telephone.
As the Roosevelt Administration enters its fourth term this week, Hopkins is, more than ever, the President's right arm. But he may miss the cozy, back-porch Term IV inauguration. Washington reports last week had him going to London, to straighten out in advance with Winston Churchill the agenda for the upcoming Big Three meeting.
"Special Assistant." By definition (the Official Register of the U.S.) Harry Hopkins is "special assistant and adviser to the President of the United States." Actually, his job is much more complex. It is a unique position in the U.S. Government. Specifically it calls for the qualities of a secretary, expediter, administrator, errand boy, good listener, executive, idea man, boon companion, and alter ego. There is no law covering it, the occupant need not be confirmed by Congress, he is responsible to no one except the President, and he can make the job what he will. When Hopkins quits (unlikely) or dies, the job will vanish.
The late Raymond Clapper once wrote: ". . . When government is fluid and dominated by the executive branch, [power] goes to the men who have the force to win it—the boldness, the resourcefulness and the sure judgment that command confidence. . . ." Like his boss, Harry Hopkins has boldness and resourcefulness in high degree. His admirers think his judgment is not only uncannily swift, but uncannily sure to fit what the President is thinking.
Hopkins has been in Washington almost as long as Franklin Roosevelt; he arrived ten weeks after the 1933 inauguration. In the early days, as administrator of CWA and WPA, he worked in the glare of white-hot publicity, took the jabs and gave back in kind. Of late, he has labored as secretly and anonymously as it is possible to do in Washington. Journalists began labeling him the "mystery man" of the Administration—a tag taken up and expanded by Hopkins' enemies.