(See front cover)
After much secret and uncertain picking up and putting down, Herbert Hoover fitted ten pegs into ten holes and finally made up his Cabinet. It had been a brain-bullying task and the result, somehow, failed to produce the striking design of supermen and specialists which Mr. Hoover—and the U. S.—had hoped for last November. He had had a surplus of little pegs that would have fallen through the holes, whereas big pegs of individual shapes refused to fit in, even when pushed. But a survey of his handiwork at least brought the new President the consoling knowledge that it was composed chiefly of good obedient yes-pegs who would not hop out of their holes and make trouble for him.
One peg was a New England aristocrat, while another owned a small automobile agency in Missouri. One peg had been worn smooth with a quarter-century's public service, while another had never been outside the steel business. Two pegs were frankly politicians, stuck in as rewards for services rendered, and for convenience in services to come. Two others had snugly filled their holes for eight years under Presidents Harding and Coolidge. One peg was an old college friend, another a Democrat except in Presidential elections.
Nine of the ten pegs went to college (Harvard, 2; Michigan, 2; Yale, Pittsburgh, Coe, Minnesota, Stanford, one each). Three pegs have done military service. One peg is immensely rich; two pegs are rich; the rest, well-to-do. The pegs' geographical centre is further west than in any previous cabinet—Far West, 1; Midwest, 5: East, 3; New England, 1.
Viewed as men instead of pegs, the Hoover Cabinet was seen as follows:
Secretary of State. Henry Lewis Stimson of New York, began crossing water at the behest of Presidents 23 years ago in Rock Creek Park, Washington. There he was riding on the bridle path one drizzly afternoon when he heard his name imperiously called from across the creek. The caller was Mr. Stimson's Manhattan law chief, Elihu Root, then Secretary of State. out for an airing with President Roosevelt. Sergeant Stimson of Squadron A. N. Y. National Guard, spurred his horse over the swollen stream, nearly foundered in the middle, clambered up the slippery bank opposite, gave a mud-bespattered salute, reported for duty. President Roosevelt asked him to dine at the White House and later appointed him U. S. District Attorney in Manhattan.
District Attorney Stimson destroyed the sugar fraud ring, sent Charles W. Morse to the Atlanta penitentiary, extracted a $30,000 fine out of James Gordon Bennett for running immoral "Personal" advertisements in the old Herald. (Simultaneously the outgoing Secretary of State, Frank Billings Kellogg, was engaged in smashing the old Standard Oil Co.)
President Taft summoned District Attorney Stimson across the Hudson. Delaware, Schuylkill and Susquehanna Rivers, from Manhattan to Washington, to serve as Secretary of War. President Wilson commissioned him a colonel of artillery and sent him across the Atlantic to fight with the 77th Division. President Coolidge despatched him first, across the Caribbean to Nicaragua to patch up a peace between Diaz and Sacasa and later across the Pacific to be Governor General of the Philippines. President Hoover recalled him to sit at his right hand at the Cabinet table.