Flashlit Faces

To the most mercilessly public spot a U. S. citizen can go, before Senate Committee for public inspection, last week went the three highest appointees of Franklin Roosevelt's Fourth New Deal. Before blinking flashlights, surrounded by a battery of anti-New Deal Senators, the new Supreme Court Justice, new Attorney General, new Secretary of Commerce--three men of the boldest New Deal stripe --made their bows to the nation. Their confirmation was a foregone conclusion, but they and their opponents knew that the impression that they gave might well affect the future course of politics. Each put on an able, articulate, characteristic show.

Frankfurter. In deference to the dignity of the Supreme Court a Judiciary subcommittee offered, and Felix Frankfurter accepted, a chance to let him appear not in person but through counsel. Dapper Dean Acheson, onetime Under Secretary of the Treasury, appeared for him and heard an assortment of minor patriots condemn his client as a Red, a Jew, an alien. One condemner was rich, blonde Mrs. Elizabeth (The Red Network) Dilling of Chicago, who based her Frankfurterphobia largely on his long membership in the American Civil Liberties Union (which once defended her right to attack the New Deal on the radio).

After such aspersions, the committee felt obliged to call the Professor in person. Small, well-brushed and jaunty, his pince-nez sparkling in 40 flashlights, he appeared. The audience could not have been bigger or more enthusiastic had he been Shirley Temple. With some acerbity he questioned the propriety of Senators publicly examining a nominee for the nation's highest court.* With feeling he told how his father, a Viennese Jew, had "fallen in love" with America on a business trip, brought his family over in 1894.

When it came to questioning, the examiners were no match for their witness. Nevada's tawny old Pat McCarran was confounded by the Professor's Socratic questions. Asked by Senator Borah how the Civil Liberties Union stood on Communism, the Professor neatly replied, "So far as I know it has no attitude except to carry out its function of seeing that Communists get their Constitutional rights, along with Henry Ford, the Nazis and the Klan." Climax came when, pointing his finger at McCarran, Lawyer Frankfurter said slowly and succinctly:

"I do not believe, Senator, that you have ever taken the oath to support the Constitution of the United States with less reservation than I have, or would now, nor do I believe you are more attached to the theories and practices of Americanism than I am."

The audience cheered and applauded.

Felix Frankfurter remained composed. An hour later the committee voted to confirm him.

Murphy. The Judiciary sub-committee did not bother to call Frank Murphy before approving him as Attorney General. But he, whose nonenforcement of a court order to eject sit-down strikers from a General Motors plant at Flint in 1937 had been cited against him, was not satisfied. He asked to appear to give "the real, inside story" of his sit-down conduct, which he had never told because "I never wanted to impair my position as mediator." Now that he was no longer Governor he would speak.

Frank Murphy's sister says that he "looks more like Jesus Christ every day." Before the committee he looked like a man who, his mind on highest things, has suffered and forgiven much. He told how, having been asked by Flint authorities to back up the court order, "I did not ignore that writ. ... On the contrary, I warned the union representatives that I would enforce it." He merely delayed enforcement over the week-end (the writ was issued on a Friday) because he believed a negotiated settlement was imminent. National Guardsmen stood by, and sure enough a settlement was reached without bloodshed.

"When there is widespread disobedience to law, it is not enough to enforce the law; it is also necessary to discover and eliminate the causes of that widespread disobedience. ... I do feel sure that the sit-down strike has now been thoroughly discredited and I believe we have seen the end of it. . . ."

So said Frank Murphy and left the chair with a saintly aura about him.

Hopkins. No paler, no more haggard than usual, Harry Hopkins stepped to the witness chair knowing that, unlike Frankfurter and Murphy, he was going to receive a going-over. With an air of deliberate calm he lit cigaret after cigaret; inhaled deeply; exhaled slowly; looked saturninely at his questioners from lowered brows; stroked his jaw; hunched his shoulders; thrust out his chin--a homely figure.

Facing him in the chair of the Commerce Committee was North Carolina's tight-mouthed Senator Josiah Bailey, whose long nose, for a long feud, Hopkins once tried to punch in the Mayflower Hotel lobby. Beating last summer's Purge had made Senator Bailey feel no more kindly toward one of its prime instigators. Chairman Bailey turned him over for questioning to Michigan's beetling Vandenberg, spokesman for the Republicans. Mr. Vandenberg, with an elaborate air of ironic courtesy, asked Mr. Hopkins what business experience had qualified him to fulfill such constitutional duties as, for example, running the Bureau of Fisheries.

Then & there Harry Hopkins, cool and careful, took command of the situation. He met this attack on his weakest point with a drawling, good-humored retreat into modesty and sincerity, a patient implication that he knew this was a political trial. He let go several disarming bursts of frankness, several amusing lapses into sturdy slang. Said he: "If any one has had intimate experience with business in the last six years, it is I. I have bought and sold millions and millions of goods. I have negotiated with businessmen on hundreds and thousands of deals. I have always had employes under me, ranging from ten or 15 to as high as 70,000."

When the subject became WPA, he agreed that his deputy, Aubrey ("Keep our friends in power") Williams, had been "indiscreet," insisted that Mr. Williams was "a very great man" entitled to at least one indiscretion. He refused to apologize for his administration of Relief, admitted that had he the same road to Tavel again, he would not make any political speeches.

Senator Bailey: You will agree that this set-up [WPA as a whole] had the potentiality of tremendous political power?

Hopkins: I disagree with you.

Bailey: Then Al Smith was wrong when he said that nobody wants to shoot Santa Claus?

Hopkins, grinning wryly: Oh, but they do!

Other big chapter of the ordeal of Harry Hopkins was on his famed "spend & spend, tax & tax, elect & elect" statement quoted by Columnists Frank Kent of the Baltimore Sun, Arthur Krock of the New York Times and others (TIME, Dec. 5).

Hopkins: I simply know I never made any such statement. ... I think it is ... time the person alleged to have made that statement came out and said so. ... The man can't be delivered, or if he can, he won't say I made the statement.

Columnist Kent by letter, Columnist Krock on the stand, repeated that their informant, a horse race friend of Mr. Hopkins, still stood by the quotation as accurate, but both continued to hold the informant's name in professional confidence.

Some Hopkins observations during three days under fire:

(On the Kentucky primary election) "It's sumpin! . . . They threw everything at each other except the kitchen stove."

"I don't think politics in relief is funny. ... I don't like it and I know you don't like it!"

(On his conscience) "I've got one. But I sleep at night."

(On sit-down strikes) "A bad business . . . illegal."

(On Franklin Roosevelt) "I work for him all the time. I believe in him. . . . This court fight . . . [was one of the things] in which advisers of the Administration take part as a team and I am on that team. . . . And when that team starts to move, it moves."

* Only other nominee actually examined within living Senators' memory was Harlan Fiske Stone. Stanley Reed attended a hearing on his nomination but did not testify. Senatorial courtesy saved onetime Klansman Hugo Black from inquiry.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.