The Janizariat

The same night last week that unreconstructed (and unPurged) Senator Cotton Ed Smith, in a flaming red shirt, cried "Lest we forget!" to the midnight sky of South Carolina (see p. 26), a cadaverous man with a crusading light in his eye ad dressed a banquet hall full of women Democrats in Boston's Statler Hotel. He was Harry Hopkins explaining, on the night of the Roosevelt Purge's worst de feat so far, the high motives of that his toric political operation, and its moral justification.

"I do not believe in the totalitarian state," declared Mr. Hopkins. "I don't want to vote in the same party primary, or for the same candidates, as any man whose fundamental political views are opposed to mine.

"The leadership of the opposition is right now putting its full strength, in men and money, behind [Democratic primary] candidates in half a dozen States who have been most hostile to the things for which this Administration stands . . . not in a clean cut general election . . . but stealthily, within the councils of our own party. . . .

"Everybody knew which way we were going. . . . Yet there were men . . . who tricked the voters by wearing our insignia, only to turn against us as soon as they got in office. . . . Even while they hacked away at the foundation of the program with one hand, they were patting the President on the back with the other, protesting to the voters that they were really good Democrats . . . like the young man who abandoned his father and mother and then asked for public sympathy on the ground that he was an orphan.

"Under those circumstances, what would you expect the President, as the lead er and spokesman of his party to do? ... He is merely saying ... 'If you be lieve in the Administration, do not send these men back.' ... I know the President. . . . Adulation has not made him arrogant, defeat has not made him timid. What we have to decide is whether ... we want to abdicate the stronghold of Democracy or to fight for it. And I think we, too, have 'only just begun to fight.' "

Origin of the Purge. One evening late last winter, Harry Hopkins called the following men to his house in George town: PWAdministrator Harold Ickes, Assistant to the Attorney General Joseph Keenan, Solicitor General Robert Houghwout Jackson, Assistant WPAdministrator David Niles, Presidential Secretary James Roosevelt, and two more : sometimes called "Washington Service Station,'' "The Twins of Evil," etc., but better identified as the Administration's unofficial legal firm, Corcoran & Cohen. These persons, with one or two more (see col. 2) constitute what in President Jackson's time was called the Kitchen Cabinet. No name more colorful than the Inner Circle has yet been given this Roosevelt II group -- except General Hugh Johnson's accurate but awkward "White House Janizaries.''*

At this meeting and several which followed the Janizaries decided, with Franklin Roosevelt's full knowledge and approval, that the Democratic ranks in Congress must be rid of unfaithfuls. that is, men like Chairman John J. O'Connor of the House Rules Committee, which was just then holding up the Wages-&-Hours Bill a second time. Putting over a reform program in Congress without a thoroughly obedient majority was tedious if not impossible. The Florida and Oregon primaries were coming up. The Janizaries would teach Democrats unfaithful to the New Deal to watch their step. The Janiz ary James Roosevelt publicly plumped for New Deal Senator Pepper against onetime Governor Sholtz in the Florida primary.

Mr. Pepper won. That jarred loose the Wages-&-Hours Bill, started it toward pas sage. Then Janizary Ickes publicly plumped for New Dealer Hess against Old Dealer Martin for Governor of Oregon.

Mr. Hess won. The Purge was on.

Head Janizaries. The early Brain Trust -- Professors Moley, Tugwell, Warren, Berle, et al. -- were economists. Among the Janizaries named above, not one is an economist. They are executives (Hopkins, Ickes), high-grade political go-betweens (Keenan, Niles, Son James) and smart lawyers (Jackson, Corcoran & Cohen). Among the President's original close advisers last winter were left only two economists, Adolf A. Berle Jr. (who resigned last fortnight/-) and Leon Henderson, now attached to the Monopoly Investigation, member of the commission whose report last week on consumer incomes (see p. 59) is red-hot campaign ammunition. Only other original close adviser left was politically cautious Postmaster General Jim Farley. He distrusted the Purge idea. When that idea had taken root in the President's imagination, the Janizaries dominated the 1938 campaign.

Harry Hopkins, the social uplift zealot, remains today No. 1 Janizary but his position as head of WPA ties him down a bit. Jim Farley, converted last fortnight to the Purge--wherever it has a chance of working--remains Janizary No. 2 ex-officio, but his duties as Democratic National Chairman are gentle and routine, such as running to New England last week to beg Maine to "get in step." Solicitor General Jackson, now busy getting ready for the Monopoly Investigation, for a time was Janizary No. 3, but none of these can match in energy, facility or ubiquitousness the front man in the firm of Corcoran & Cohen. With nothing to tie him down except a general job on RFC's legal staff, he can come & go on a thousand purge missions without being unduly publicized. President Roosevelt likes him, listens to him, laughs with him, trusts him. delegates him. This makes "Tommy the Cork" (as the President calls him*) sound like a shrewd, insinuating schemer--which he is --but for reasons more tough-minded and lawyerlike than his critics credit. From his point of view, the firm of Corcoran & Cohen started out to do a job for a client --the President of the United States. If remaking the Democratic Party is part of that job, Partner Corcoran is well up to learning and playing politics tooth & nail.

The firm's long-range objective is to put through and then defend the Client's social legislation. Since they wrote a lot of it, it is natural that their fight for it is personally motivated, for even lawyers have emotions. Partner Cohen says: "If we have to become propagandists, we were driven to it." When Senator Tydings of Maryland or Senator George of Georgia snarls at "two little Wall Street lawyers who want the power to say who shall or shall not be Senators," they know well that their quarrel is not with Lawyers Corcoran & Cohen but with Client Roosevelt.

First Object: 1940. The statesmen of Capitol Hill were rudely jolted by the energy and ingenuity of Corcoran & Cohen in the days when the firm was steering New Deal legislation--Ben Cohen sitting at committee chairmen's elbows as prompter at hearings, Tom Corcoran whisking through Capitol corridors to trade, purr, cajole, threaten or crack down for votes. Many a Congressman sensed that these high-powered lobbyists for the President had a low opinion of most U. S. politicians. More shocking to traditional statesmen--especially to old-line, locally intrenched Democrats--was the conception of a Liberal party which Corcoran & Cohen helped Client Roosevelt to rationalize.

This rationalizing is hard-boiled and runs as follows: 1) The Liberal party's present leader and inspirer was the creature of the Democratic political barons. In fact, until Jim Farley did his job in 1932, Franklin Roosevelt was only one more baron; 2) A Liberal party will always be a "poor" party, therefore ideas must make it tick instead of money; 3) If the New Deal is to survive under Franklin Roosevelt or anyone else, as a Liberal party beyond 1940, its ideas must be churned into the local electorates, right down into the precincts whence Congressional and Presidential majorities sprout; 4) Any political baron who will not join in the churning process had best be read out of the new party at once, even if that means local defeats this year. For 1940 will be a far more important, national year and if beginnings, however brutal, are made now, new Liberal machinery may be got ready by then.

In the hot hatchet-work of primary politics, rugged, mercurial Tommy the Cork is the partner who is getting it done. (Shy, cool Partner Cohen jaunted to Europe last week.) Putting inde-goddam-pendent journalists up to playing his game is one of his methods. The journalistic team of Drew Pearson & Robert S. Allen are Tom Corcoran's natural mouthpieces; his temperature and blood pressure are accurately reflected in what they have to say to their syndicate readers daily. This is not just because Allen is the Neanderthal type of Liberal and Pearson the parlor mauve type--a perfect team--but because their mental agility matches Corcoran's, and in dull Washington they would be starved for interesting copy but for him.

Members of Congress tremble before what "Washington Merry-Go-Round" may say about them--and T. Corcoran provides it with plenty to say. Evidence of his press sagacity is his occasional use also of such panting Liberals as Columnist John F. Carter (alias Jay Franklin).

In direct action it was Tommy the Cork who beheaded RFC's Edgar Dunlap for helping Senator George in Georgia. And fear of Tommy the Cork has congealed the blood of Senator Tydings' Federal satellites in Maryland to a point where old observers thought last week that Chesapeake Bay might freeze over.

Larger Object: Laws-- After the present political season passes, Corcoran & Cohen have greater work to do. The Wages-&-Hours Law is less dramatically monumental than the Securities Exchange Act or the Public Utility Holding Company Act. It is less exciting than fighting for Attorney General Cummings' clumsy Court-Packing Bill. But it is even closer to the hearts of the partners. Ben Cohen wrote the similar act adopted by New York and many another State, and defending the Federal act's constitutionality this winter will be his next major assignment. Partner Corcoran will be with him in the thick of the Wages-&-Hours defense, which they regard as an entering wedge for a guaranteed annual wage. Besides completing the defense of their law-writings to date, the firm expects to tackle between now and 1940 the following unfinished tasks: Anti-Trust Law revision, Tax revision (for a broader base), Reorganization, Regional Planning (more TVA's). In their path, like dead old rampikes to be chopped down, they also see three historic 5-to-4 Supreme Court decisions: on child labor in interstate commerce, tax exempt Government securities and stock dividends. All their activities, political and legislative, are aimed at these objectives.

After 1940. Sometimes an enemy says that the ardor of Janizaries Hopkins, Ickes, Corcoran, Cohen, Jackson, Keenan, Niles, J. Roosevelt, et al. in preparing for 1940 is due to the fact that they will be nowhere if "His Nibs"--as they sometimes refer to Roosevelt II--does not get a third term. From the viewpoint of the extremely able law firm of Corcoran & Cohen that is delicious. They are two relatively young men with no ardors except for work* and anonymity. They exist very comfortably on $9,000-$10,000 per year--having moved perforce out of the "Scarlet Fever House on R Street" (a rich woman bought it for $75,000) to diggings where the telephone bill ($300 per month) is their only big expense, and they are carefree enough to share it 50-50, sight unseen. They are, as one observer has put it, enjoying the unique experience of "experimenting with the nation." Simultaneously, they are establishing a legal reputation which should easily be worth six figures a year when Corcoran & Cohen decide to set up in private practice. This they fully expect to do--with Robert Houghwout Jackson as Partner No. 3-- when the time comes.

If voluble Partner Corcoran's preachments about successful Americans then are practiced, both Lawyer Corcoran and Lawyer Cohen will be ready again for their country's call to service, about 1960. They will have served their Governmental novitiate. They will also have made their pile. They should by that time be senior bastions in the "bridge of men" between private and public life about which Partner Corcoran likes to talk when his mind can get off the Client.

Jewish-Irish-- Muncie, Ind. is "Middletown," U. S. A. Benjamin Victor Cohen was born there in 1894, son of a scrap iron merchant. He broke all scholastic records at University of Chicago Law School (1915), took a postgraduate year at Harvard Law School and became secretary to U. S. Circuit Court Judge Julian Mack (receiverships). The War and the Jews' plight brought Cohen into contact with Louis Dembitz Brandeis. He is still a director of Palestine Economic Corp., wherein he first tasted planned economy. In the reckless 19205 he was not above playing the stockmarket. A killing Chrysler stock (he was so excited about it at the time that he used gleefully to point to every Chrysler he saw on the street) made him temporarily rich. He kept enough pelf for comfort, is not "socialistic because of the Crash." Revisiting Harvard in 1924, Ben Cohen walked into his old room. The current occupant was out. His name was Thomas Gardiner Corcoran. They did not meet until nine years later, when T. G. Corcoran had been for a year a cog in the legal staff of President Hoover's RFC. Ben Cohen had signed on to help James Landis draft the Securities Exchange Act. Thrown together on this job, Corcoran & Cohen have been inseparable since.

Tom Corcoran was born in Pawtucket, R. I. in 1900. His father's father was Irish (Presidential Purgee John J. and ex-Presidential Law Partner Basil O'Connor are distant Corcoran cousins). His mother's people were pre-Revolutionary New Englanders. His education, after Brown University (where he worked his way through, centred on the football scrubs) and Harvard Law School (where he led his class) was topped off by a year at the knee of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, great Liberal colleague of Ben Cohen's Brandeis. He used to read Greek classics aloud to the old gentleman, who followed him with an English trot to study the parsing. Dante and Montaigne were the young scholar's favorite writers. From those golden days he carried away a store of literary sparklers which today he sprinkles through Franklin Roosevelt's speeches. From Justice Holmes he passed into the Wall Street law firm of Cotton, Franklin. Wright & Gordon. His take from the booming '20s was some promotion stock in a company he helped organize for one of his bosses. This stock became worth $250,000 but he could not sell it, still has it, depreciated but paying dividends. These he now lays by to pay, some day, for the stock which was given him.

Eugene Meyer took him to Washington, and in the scrambled days of Mr. Hoover's exit and Mr. Roosevelt's advent, alert young Lawyer Corcoran made himself extremely useful as a personnel man to staff the new administrative agencies with legal talent. For this he was equipped by having run a placement bureau for Harvard Law graduates. Washington became full, and still is, of his "boys," who not only get work done the way he wants it but constitute an argus-eyed personal intelligence service. He particularly delights in drafting able sons of Tory fathers and infecting them with Liberalism. Example: Joseph Cotton Jr.

His personality is the master key to the success and fame of Corcoran & Cohen. Historic is the White House party at which Tommy the Cork, playing his accordion and singing his ballads, charmed the Great Charmer. His tenor voice is honey smooth. His quick mind and tongue have a tenoctave range, from airiest wit to profoundest judicial deliberation. He handles people as a virtuoso plays a violin. Beneath his silkiness lies a mental toughness, a counterpart of the muscular toughness that enabled him to build a cabin on Mt. Washington with his two hands, makes him a tireless mountain skier and climber, lets him work 20 hours a day for weeks at a stretch. His shock of water-spaniel hair is greying but he still looks young at 37. Coffee with lots of sugar instead of alcohol for a bracer is one of his rules, though he does drink sociably. He doesn't smoke. Girls have no part in his life, or he successfully conceals the fact. Of his secretary, pretty, red-headed Peggy Dowd with sparkling blue eyes, he says. "God bless her, she's a wonder!" because she can match his working pace.

Conjunctions of dreamy, intellectual Jews and effervescent Irishmen may have ocurred before but never more effectively than in Cohen & Corcoran. Their mutual admiration is boundless. Ben says: "If it hadn't been for Tom, I would never have been heard of." Tom thinks Ben ought to get Cardozo's place on the Supreme Court. They call themselves catalysts--agents who cause reactions to occur without themselves being altered. Despite the seeming change in Corcoran, into a politician with power for the moment as great as Jim Farley's, this remains essentially true. Ambition for high office does not trouble him now because he has more exciting occupations. If he held an important office, he would have to observe rules of the game. As it is. Corcoran & Cohen are beyond the rules. They are engaged in making them.

*Soldiers (at first mostly castrated personal slaves, later conscripts and sons of subject Christians) of the Turkish Sultans from the 14th to 19th Centuries, the Janizaries became so potent that, when they revolted in 1826, thousands of them had to be killed, the rest dispersed, their organization abolished. Says Tommy Corcoran: "We welcome the term. . . . They were really the Civil Service of the Ottoman Empire!"

/-But who was still sticking around Washington last week lest the European Crisis require his presence.

*The ablest phrasemaker writing for the U. S. press, General Hugh Johnson last week had fun playing with the President's nicknaming whimsey. The President calls his Secretary of the Treasury "Henry the Morgue." Columnist Johnson toyed with "Harry the Hop," "Fanny the Perk," "Danny the Rope," "Leo the Hen," "Harold the Ick," "Alben the Bark"--then gave up and said: "Try this new White House game on your acquaintances, mah frens."

*Addressing some Young Republicans last June, Representative Bruce Barton held up Tommy Corcoran as a model of industry for Young Republicans to emulate if they want to save their party. "It can be said truthfully of him," said Mr. Barton, "as was said by a contemporary of Sir Walter Raleigh: 'I know that he can toil terribly.'

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