To Arthur Larson, dean of Pittsburgh University law school, came a long-distance call from a highly placed stranger. Secretary of Labor James Mitchell wanted to ask whether Larson could come to Washington "for a talk." Larson, although puzzled, could and did. Last week painters were still working on Larson's newly bought suburban Pittsburgh house, but Larson no longer planned to live there. He had been appointed Under Secretary of Labor.
At 43, Larson is slim, tall, well tailored and handsome. He likes to write songs, plays them on a guitar for his family (wife Florence, a onetime radio actress who still holds a union card, children Lex, 14, and Anna Barbara. 13). Born and raised in South Dakota—his mother was once the state's Mother of the Year-Larson made his A.B. magna cum laude in South Dakota's Augustana College, moved on to South Dakota University's law school, there won a Rhodes scholarship. At Oxford, he took first-class honors in jurisprudence, later got his M.A. At the Union Society, Oxford's top debating forum, he made treasurer but failed to become president. "I got trapped in a three-way split between Labor and Conservatives," he says, "and what in the hell was I?"
The answer has turned out since to be middle-of-the-road Republican. An authority on labor law, he has written carefully worded texts on the subject, including a 1,593-page, $40 two-volume treatise on workmen's compensation, which he weighed in on the bathroom scales at $3.30 a Ib.