(See Cover)
Mr. Truman's Secretary of Commerce drove down from Palm Beach, Fla. last week to Miami. Carefully combed, immaculate in a brown tropical suit and two-tone shoes, and so characteristically erect that he seemed to be leaning slightly backwards, white-haired Charles Sawyer walked into the Flamingo Hotel to dine with 42 officials of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and their wives.
He was diplomatically attentive to the wives, earnestly attentive to their husbands. What he said to them, although not new, was off the record. The burden of his speech was the Administration's friendly feeling towards U.S. business, a point which he made without humbleness and without apology for the past history of the Fair Deal. The evening ended in a brisk flurry of hand clapping, and Charles Sawyer drove glowingly home to his Palm Beach apartment.
Brisk flurries of hand clapping had followed Mr. Sawyer across the country. The scene was becoming familiar: Secretary Sawyer, leaning backwards, speaking reassuringly—waving a green light for U.S. business.
He had waved the light at meetings of the Business Advisory Council, during a four-month, 15,900-mile tour of businessmen's luncheons, before such groups as the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Iron and Steel Institute. Over hundreds of fruit cocktails and plates of chicken a la king, his metallic, Ohio-bred voice had proclaimed: "I am a believer in private enterprise . . . Profit is the ignition system of our economic engine . . . Businessmen know more about their own business than Government officials." The Administration had faith in "our American system," and in capitalism's strength and good. Sawyer—who writes his own excellent speeches—could see capitalism whistling along a clear track towards better & better times, until it reached that distant, happy horizon where (he quoted H. G. Wells) men "shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool and shall laugh and reach out their hands amid the stars."
Sawyer for President. If the reaction to such fine words was no more than a brisk hand clapping, it was because U.S. businessmen, more accustomed to red lights, sidings and switchpoint derails were reserving final judgment. There were some skeptics. One listener, who thought of the situation in terms other than railroading, observed: "He seems to be inviting us to get into bed with the Truman Administration—just to get warm. Nobody ever came out of that situation just warmed." A Houston banker emerged from a closed meeting with the Secretary snarling over his cold cigar: "If that guy means what he says, how can he stay in the Truman Cabinet? I don't see how he can look himself in the eye in his shaving mirror every morning."
But most applauded hopefully and decided that personally they approved of Mr. Sawyer. At least he talked their language. He listened to their complaints. He had his feet on the ground. And after watching him in the Cabinet for 20 months, they were ready to say that he was the best Secretary of Commerce since Herbert Hoover. One Southern businessman commented: "Now if we only had a man like that for President, we'd be all right."