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Mr. Mitchell went to the Spanish-American war, as half-engineer, half-lawyer. He trained at Camp Zachary Taylor for the World War. In 1925 Justice Butler whispered the Mitchell name into the Coolidge ear and—presto!—Mr. Mitchell found himself Solicitor-General of the U. S. Such a good impression did he make as the Government's advocate before the U. S. Supreme Court that the Justices broadly hinted to President Hoover that he would be overlooking a good bet if he did not utilize the Mitchell legal talents in a top-notch of his Cabinet.
Politics had nothing to do with the Mitchell appointment, because he boasts that he is an "oldfashioned independent Democrat," except that he voted for Hughes in 1916, Coolidge in 1924, Hoover in 1928. Slender, brown-eyed, gently persuasive in manner, a sailor of summer boats on White Bear Lake, Minn., Mr. Mitchell is a practicing Dry, a Presbyterian.
Postmaster-General. Walter Folger Brown of Ohio studied his politics at the knee of Mark Hanna in the 18903. Since then he has improved considerably upon the Master.
Mr. Brown, whose father was once Toledo postmaster, put aside a newspaper career to become a lawyer. The law led to politics. Mr. Brown climbed from ward captain to county boss. In 1912 he went a-maying with the Bull Moose party, but four years later was back in the Republican fold. On the fringe of the "Ohio gang," he was called to Washington by President Harding to draw up a tidy plan for reorganizing the government. Mr. Brown obeyed, diligently. His plan went into a pigeon hole and its author returned to Toledo.
Early in 1927 Mr. Hoover, casting an anxious eye over the prospective political battleground, beheld Mr. Brown wasting his talents on the Ohio air. He called him to Washington officially as an Assistant Secretary of Commerce, unofficially as a campaign manager. Mr. Brown put his candidate in the Ohio presidential primaries, where defeat would have been certain had not Death scratched his rival, Senator Frank B. Willis.
Mr. Brown is slick, suave, smooth, poker-faced. He smiles instead of laughs. As trustee of the Lucas County Children's Home, he is called "Uncle Walt" by its young inmates. Foods and their preparation fascinate him. He has an almost feminine passion for cooking. He refuses to eat a strawberry that has touched water. A Harvard graduate, he is 60, below medium height, dark of hair, slow to wrath.
Every Administration needs an expert on patronage. Mr. Brown will serve Mr. Hoover in this capacity, the Post Office being the largest job-pasture in the Government (365,000 workers). Since President Hoover has evinced an interest in Government reorganization, perhaps the Brown Plan of 1921 will emerge from its pigeonhole. Otherwise, and perhaps even so, Mr. Brown may be counted on as a quiet yes-peg with a political point.
Secretary of the Navy. Charles Francis Adams of Boston fits the sea. sentimentally, as snugly as a well-made yachting cap in a stiff breeze. But to pilot the International Cup Defender Resolute to victory, as Mr. Adams did do in 1920, and to guide the destiny of the U. S. Navy from a swivel chair in Washington, as Mr. Adams will do, are two wide-apart things.