Exeunt

President Roosevelt has had a long run of hard luck with his financial advisers. Death took William Woodin, his first Secretary of the Treasury. Young James Paul Warburg, who worked hard for the success of the London Economic Conference of 1933, left the New Deal as its fiscal tendencies became apparent. Harvard's Oliver Mitchell Wentworth Sprague, monetary adviser to the Treasury, quit when dollar tinkering began. Special Assistant Earle Bailie had to retire because the Senate would not confirm a Wall Street man. Undersecretary of the Treasury Dean Gooderham Acheson, differing with the President on financial policies, departed without even a perfunctory expression of Presidential regret. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Thomas Hewes fell into disfavor with Secretary Morgenthau, was stripped of most of his duties, took the hint and resigned. Unable to tolerate the New Deal's lavish spending policy any longer, Budget Director Lewis Douglas finally retired. Last week two more names were added to the Treasury's casualty list and Franklin Roosevelt scrawled his signature to two more informal farewell notes.

"My Dear Jeff." From Boston youngish T. (for Thomas) Jefferson Coolidge went to Washington to become Undersecretary of the Treasury in March 1934, to lend the New Deal his technical knowledge of finance on the long road of borrowing that lay ahead. A descendant of Thomas Jefferson but only the remotest kin, if any, to Calvin Coolidge, "Jeff" Coolidge, despite his staid New England background, qualified for service in the New Deal by his independence in politics, by his vote for Roosevelt in 1932. In the Treasury his job was figuring out the terms on which new loans should be floated, bonds refunded, a highly technical task of gauging the delicate appetite of the money market for Government securities. That he did a good job Washington last week agreed. That he was willing to do it so long, in spite of his naturally conservative leanings, was explained by the fact that he looked upon himself not as a policy maker but as an expert who merely put his skill at the service of his country. Last week, however, he quit, simply saying in his letter to the President: "Circumstances have now arisen which make it advisable for me to tender you my resignation." An open secret in Washington was the fact that the "circumstances" were, in substance, the 1936 political campaign. Expert or no expert, he did not wish to stand in the light of one who supported an Administration whose policies he did not approve. President Roosevelt wrote him a warm little note of thanks beginning "My dear Jeff."

"My Dear Chip." Lawrence Wood Robert Jr. of Georgia, who traces his family back to Pierre Robert, first Huguenot pastor to arrive in South Carolina (1686), went to the Treasury to put different talents than those of Mr. Coolidge at the service of the New Deal. Called "Chip" because his father had been called "Wood," he made his career as a construction engineer. William Woodin made him Assistant Secretary of the Treasury to take charge of public building construction. Along came Secretary Morgenthau and stripped him of that function, left him the routine duties of supervising the mint and the Government printing office, a job of little interest to a man who had spent his life building cotton mills.

But Mr. Robert did not take the hint and resign. He stayed on and unfortunately made several faux pas, to the distress of upright Mr. Morgenthau. A convivial soul, "Chip" Robert on one occasion addressed a stag dinner without realizing that its proceedings were being broadcast. Result: the Negro ministers of Washington wrote a letter to President Roosevelt accusing his Assistant Secretary of an obscene and slanderous attack upon their race. Again last summer after separation from his longtime wife but before her divorce in Reno, he and the young woman he was soon to marry were discovered by a Senate investigator and newshawks at a private hotel party being given by the lobbyist for Powerman Howard Colwell ("Scarlet Pimpernel") Hopson (TIME, Aug. 26). Long has Washington professed that Mr. Robert would soon resign. Last week he did so in writing to his personal friend, Franklin Roosevelt.

"I return to the business world, with the highest confidence in the security of business and society, in the economic and social rehabilitation for which you have so wisely planned and wrought." Replied the President: "My dear Chip. . . . Your expression of confidence in the soundness of the work we have been doing is ... gratifying to me. . . ."

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