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Son of a top Manhattan investment banker (Dillon, Read & Co.), Dillon was born in Geneva while his parents were on a Grand Tour, went to Groton and Harvard (magna cum laude, '31). After graduation he bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange for $185,000 and joined the family firm. He went into the Navy as an ensign in 1942, served with the Seventh Fleet, was discharged as a lieutenant commander. Married in 1931, he has two daughters, maintains homes in Washington, New York, New Jersey, Maine and France.
A solid Republican, Dillon wrote foreign-policy speeches for Dewey in 1948, was an early bird for Ike in 1951. After the 1952 campaign, he was rewarded with the ambassadorship to Paris. No post could have made Dillon happier. His family owned one of the finest vineyards in the Bordeaux region, Château Haut-Brion, and his cousin, a resident of France who served his adopted country with distinction during the Occupation, was possibly the only native of the U.S. ever elected mayor of a French village. Though Dillon spoke fluent French, he took an hour's instruction daily so that he would not have to use an interpreter.
Nevertheless, the Quai d'Orsay was skeptical of a 43-year-old investment banker who was innocent of diplomatic experience. France was in a state of upheaval: Indo-China was falling, Algeria was on fire, and Suez was threatening. Dillon handled himself with unspectacular competence, won French government gratitude at a parlous moment by proclaiming U.S. support of France's "liberal" aims in Algeria.
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, aware of his own insufficiency in economic matters, recalled Dillon in 1957 to be Deputy Under Secretary in charge of economic planning, gave him control over foreign aid and the tariff and trade programs. In 1958 Dillon's testimony helped persuade a skeptical Congress to pass the longest (four years) extension of the reciprocal trade program in history. He has taken an extremely tough line on the necessity of eliminating discrimination against U.S. exports. His Tokyo speech in October 1959 was the first public U.S. threat of drastic steps to come if the thriving free-world nations did not "move ahead to get rid of outmoded trade restrictions."
Yet when Dillon and Treasury Secretary Robert Anderson flew to Bonn four weeks ago to demand that West Germany pay a bigger part of the Western defense bill, Dillon made it plain that he was out of sympathy with Anderson's gruff demands—a fact that may return to plague him as he takes Anderson's job.
SECRETARY OF LABOR
Arthur Goldberg, 52. Goldberg is skilled at the Cuban dice game of carabino, a collector, in a modest way, of the works of Picasso, Matisse and Shahn, a gluttonous reader of books of all kinds, and a loyal fan of the Washington Redskins. He is also the leading labor lawyer in the U.S., a man who has had a major voice in every significant labor-management decision of the past decade, but who has never been a legitimate member of a labor union. As Secretary of Labor, he may have to make some difficult decisions, such as enforcing Taft-Hartley injunctions in strikes and using his police powers under the Landrum-Griffin law. But Arthur Goldberg has a profound belief in the law—and he plans to enforce it.