ATTORNEY-GENERAL H. M. DAUGHERTY
Half politician and half business man, he interprets business to the politician, and politics to business. He is a middle grounder. He quit banking satisfied with a moderate fortune, saying, "The easiest thing I ever did was to make money."
His bland voice and mild manner indicate the same moderation in everything that he showed in making money; his narrowing eyes, the caution which led him to quit banking when he went into politics.
Politics intrigues him, but he has not a first-class mind for it, as his experiences in Massachusetts proved.
Frank to the utmost limits his caution will permit, people like him, but not passionately. Men respect his ability, but they do not feel strongly about it. He never becomes the center of controversy, as Daugherty is, as Hoover has been, and as Hughes may at any time be. I have never seen him angry, I have seen him enthusiastic. A Laodicean in short.
Secretary Fall hoped to be one of the chief advisers, but has been disappointed. Mr. Harding had said of him, "His is the best mind in the Senate," but he has found other minds more to his liking in the Cabinet.
With a long drooping mustache, he looks like a stage sheriff of the Far West in the movies. His voice is always loud and angry. He has the frontiers-man's impatience. From his kind lynch law springs.
He wanted to lynch Mexico. When he entered the Cabinet he said to his Senate friends, "If they don't follow me on Mexico I shall resign." He has been a negative rather than a positive force there regarding Mexico, deviating Mr. Hughes into the ineffective position he occupies.
He has the frontiers-man's impatience of conservation. Probably he is right. His biggest contribution to his country's welfare will be oil land leases, like that of Teapot Dome.
The Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Wallace, is an excellent technical adviser, as unobtrusive as experts usually are.
The Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Denby, with his flabby jowls and large shapeless mouth, has a big heart, and more enthusiasm than he has self-command, judgment, or intelligence. He committed political suicide cheerfully, when the Cannon machine in the House fell into disfavor. He would do anything for a friend, not as Mr. Daugherty would because it pays, but because he is a friend. A cause commands an equal loyalty from him. Just because his head is not as big as his heart he is a minor factor.
Mr. Davis, Secretary of Labor, is a professional glad hand man, appointed because the administration meant to extend nothing to Labor but a glad hand. When a crisis presents itself in industrial relations, Mr. Hoover, who spreads himself over several departments, attends to it. At the conference on unemployment, which was Mr. Hoover's, the best and only example of the unemployed present was the Secretary of Labor.