Third H

"This is your show now," said Harry Hopkins to Colonel Francis Clark ("Pink") Harrington when he turned over WPA to the new administrator last month, "but I'll be glad to help out should you ask me to.'' Last week Colonel Harrington wanted it clearly understood that Harry Hopkins had not "helped out" in his selection of Relief's No. 2 man, to replace Mr. Hopkins' lanky, idealistic, foot-in-mouth friend, Aubrey Williams (now sidetracked to the Youth Administration). Harrington's own choice was Howard Owen Hunter, a dark, lean, hard-hitting Southerner, who since 1933 has had charge of all Federal relief in 13 Midwest States (WPA's Region No. IV).*

Harry Hopkins' friends say that his genius as an administrator lies in his endless patience with subordinates, his capacity for getting such work as they are capable of out of men whose limitations he understands. "Pink" Harrington is a West Pointer and his No. 2 man is no fuddy-duddy. Howard Hunter spent 18 months with the A. E. F. as an officer in Tulane University's medical unit, was a Boy Scout executive, for ten years a professional fundraiser for Community Chests--picked by Harry Hopkins, who was once an expert in private charitarian money-gathering.

In five and one-half years, Howard Hunter administered in the Midwest the spending of about one-third of all Federal relief and work-relief appropriations. On his payrolls were 35 to 40% of all WPAsters. The drought of 1936 and the floods of 1937 were his to handle.

Only loud voice ever raised against his performance was that of Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick's raucous, Roosevelt-hating Chicago Tribune. After two straight weeks of vilification by the Tribune, Administrator Hunter called in 19 reporters including one from the Tribune, gave the Tribune a thoroughgoing tongue-lashing for "filthy editorializing" and "vicious propaganda." handed out a 25-page memorandum of specific rebuttals to the Tribune'?, charges including the news that one of the Tribune's WPA-baiting reporters had been suspended by WPA for drunkenness, fired for negligence (TIME, Oct. 3).

Besides having an "H" name like Messrs. Hopkins and Harrington, Howard Hunter likes to play the horses. He also knows how life is lived on both sides of the social crust, has what it takes to get along with both sides.

One page from his past which may embarrass him: his report to Harry Hopkins last June after a flying visit to Kentucky, saying that he found no evidence of political improprieties by WPAsters in the notorious Barkley-Chandler primary brawl.

Another appointment which was strictly Harrington's, yet stemmed inevitably back to Harry Hopkins, was that of husky, grey-haired Mrs. Florence Kerr to be assistant administrator in charge of WPA's women's and professional division. Harry Hopkins knew Florence Kerr 30 years ago when both attended Grinnell College, where she later taught, where her husband is now assistant to the president. He knew her again after the War, when both worked for the Red Cross in Louisiana. Howard Hunter has known her well ever since 1935, when Harry Hopkins picked her out of State relief work in Iowa, put her at Hunter's elbow in Chicago running the women's division of WPA's Region No. IV.

*Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska.

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