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With NRA's collapse, he was drafted by Harry Hopkins to work as WPA's economist. He moved on, getting his education, which he estimates has cost the New Deal about $2,000,000—investigations, surveys, etc. He was a Presidential adviser, executive secretary and moving spirit of TNEC, and SECommissioner.
Belligerent, ruggedly individual, he was one of the New Dealers in only a general sense; as late as February 1938 he had never had a full discussion of his economic ideas with any of the Corcoran-Cohen-Jackson group. For one thing, he had learned too much about business and industry from the businessman's point of view to be patient with the legal-financial jargon some of the New Dealers talk instead of English.
No matter how neatly Henderson is sent away from home in the morning, his appearance is that of a medium-sized ruin the minute he sits down. He loves huge cigars, and waves them about so carelessly that his suits are usually sprinkled with what appears to be an unusually heavy dandruff. He plays golf vigorously and erratically, hooking and slicing impartially but powerfully. Recently he has had almost no relaxed home life. One of his friends said last week: "When he gets down there to his Chesapeake Bay cottage, Wild Rose Shores, he likes to put on a pair of rubber boots, get into his little boat, put a glass of whiskey on the gunwale, turn on the radio and sing. ... I can see him now. There is a man who has a great lust for living."
He married Myrlie Hamm in 1925; has three children, Beebe (10), Lynn (7), Leon Jr. (3). Many a morning he charges from his home, shortly before dawn, in the direction of the venerable red brick James G. Elaine mansion on Massachusetts Avenue. Here he is within shouting distance of his chief assistants, youthful Joseph L. Weiner, until last week a sparkplug of SEC's utility program, mentally fast, tough and smart; Cousin John Hamm, a 32-year-old Princeton product, who is Henderson's chief deputy; Dave Ginsburg, a trigger-minded economist, 29, out of Harvard; and John K. Galbraith, 32, ex-Harvard instructor, who unfolds to the impressive height of 6 ft. 8 in.
Henderson is without legal authority except as he operates as the President's arm. This lack of authority is not yet a problem, and may not be. Henderson believes — and Baruch's experience bears him out — that persuasion and patriotism are many times more effective than coercion. Henderson's chief weapon, of course, is priorities. But perhaps second only to priorities is publicity. No industrialist wants to be nationally named as a saboteur of defense. Henderson has the best frown in Washington, and he is a virtuoso of the soft art of sweet talk. And he has very definite and clear ideas about the U.S. economy.