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Secretary of Commerce. Robert Patterson Lamont of Chicago was Herbert Hoover's last and most deliberate appointment. To find a big peg to fill to a nicety the hole he himself had steadily enlarged was no easy task. An ordinary run-of-the-mill peg would never do. Mr. Hoover's advisers plowed Who's Who without turning up a suitable candidate for him. Three days before the Inaugural, Mr. Hoover on his own initiative reached out and drew Mr. Lament to his side, because he was a trained engineer, a business man with a world outlook, an old friend.
Mr. Lament is no politician, whether he is wet or dry seems of small consequence. He has qualifications of education and experience which Mr. Hoover believes will fit him to carry the Department of Commerce forward.
Nearly 40 years ago Mr. Lamont went to Chicago as a graduate engineer from the University of Michigan. His first job was at the World's Fair. In 1905 he entered American Steel Foundries, then tottering; became its president in 1912. lifted it to a position of sound industrial importance. In the war he was a Colonel of Ordinance, received a Distinguished Service Medal for procurement work. His son, Robert Jr., had a hand blown off one fiery night in October, 1917, at Jouy, near the Chemin des Dames.
World trade Mr. Lamont sees with the sharp eyes of a practical exporter. The U. S. Chamber of Commerce and the Department of Commerce have benefited by his active co-operation on economic surveys. He was a member of Herbert Hoover's Business Men's Flood Committee. His business connections have been manifold: Armour, American Radiator. Dodge Bros., International Harvester, Montgomery Ward, Chicago Daily News. A patron of scientific research, he was one of the chief supporters of the University of Michigan's astronomical observatory in South Africa,
A smooth-mannered man. with a high bald forehead, a roman nose and a cleft chin, Mr. Lamont makes his home near Lake Forest, Ill., in a huge structure composed largely of sections of imported English farmhouses.
Secretary of Labor. James John Davis of Pennsylvania holds a Cabinet position hard to fill. Mr. Hoover did not try very hard to find a new man. Labor is divided into many jealous factions. A Labor portfolio vacancy invariably starts loud shoving and shouting among organized workingmen's representatives. Mr. Hoover, rather than risk ill will and resentments retained in office the bighearted, big-voiced Welshman who is quite unfatigued by eight years' sitting at the bottom of the Cabinet table.
Mr. Davis' personal history is the G. 0. P.'s conventional bid for Labor support—immigrant boy, iron puddler, tin mill worker, economic and political rise to fortune and power.
Occasionally Mr. Davis forgets that he is the little boy of the Cabinet who should be seen and not heard, but for the most part he proves himself a genial yes-peg who does just what, the President tells him to do, or not to do, about coal strikes, full dinner pails and Immigration (see p. 18). A great Davis enthusiasm and vote preserve is the Loyal Order of Moose whose distinguished monarch he has been since 1906.