200 Down, 700 to Go

Before Dwight Eisenhower's inauguration, his top aides surveyed the federal bureaucracy's policymaking jobs. Key question: How many posts would have to be filled by Republicans before the new Administration had effective control of the Government? Answer: up to 900.

Since his inauguration, Eisenhower has replaced about 200 policymakers. Many Democratic bureau bosses have been around so long that they think of themselves as part of the Washington scenery, refuse to move until firmly nudged. Two who were nudged last week:

DILLON S. MYER resigned as Commissioner of Indian Affairs. An agronomist for state governments and colleges in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. Myer went to Washington in 1934, serving with the AAA and then the Soil Conservation Service. After Pearl Harbor, he was given the tough chore of relocating West Coast Japanese. In 1946 he became Public Housing Commissioner, and in 1950 he took over the Interior Department's Bureau of Indian Affairs.

CLAUDE WICKARD resigned as Rural Electrification Administrator. A Hoosier hog farmer who went to Washington in 1933 to help man the old Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Wickard was one of the promoters of the early New Deal's pig-killing experiment, worked closely with Henry Wallace, rose to Secretary of Agriculture (1940-45). When Harry Truman chose Clinton P. Anderson as Secretary, Wickard was taken care of at REA. The law creating REA specifies that its administrator shall be appointed for ten years. With three years of his ten-year term still before him, Wickard at first resisted the request for his resignation. But last week, as he prepared to go back to his 620-acre farm in Indiana, he said: "I wouldn't stay in any place where I am not wanted."

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