Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1909-12-15
IT'S man
AND NOT
CLOTHES
Taft. Is Commonplace In Com
pariSon With the Other
Cabinet officers.
UNITED PRESS LEASED w1Rp.l

Washington, Dec. ia sartorial
analysis of President Taft's cabinet
which may be permitted on the
familiar ground that clothes have
much to do with making the man
leads to some odd conclusions and
brings to light strange characterize
les not altogether obvious from the
annual reports of the several gentle
men.
President Taft, by way of compar-
ison, doesn't seem to wear clothes
at all-not meaning of course that
he doesn't observe the conventions.
1t is only that one doesn't have any
impression of clothes when his eX-
pansive figure looms up in the door
way One has, rather, an idea of
something very big wrapped up in
more or less conventional fashion
with garments. Nine out of ten per-
sons who see the president every
day are unable to recall what sort
of clothes he usually wears, or any
distinctive feature of them.
The only time he ever achieved
an appreciate effect through the
raiment he wore was when he came
home from the Orient by way or
coat with a fur collar and cuffs,
which he still utilizes when Wash
ington is in the grip of a winter
storm. The coat was so ample in
its proportions that one lost sight
of the man altogether and was con-
scious that a tremendously large
coat with a fuzzy collar was emerg-
ing out of, or rather, obliterating,
! I,D hoo
of Mr.. Taft, who was then secre-
tary of war, by so enshrouding his
bulk that nothing else was visible,
and today it remains the most strik-
ink feature of the presidents ward
robe.
George Won L. Meyer, secretary of
the navy, is without question the
best tailored of the cabinet officers.
His taste runs to the English idea,
and his ordinary garb is a cutaway
frock suggesting London in so
marked fashion that it must sure
w have been made by an exclusive
New York tailor. If there is any one
thing that the observer cannot over
look in Mr.. Meyers clothes, it is
the absolute certainty that the
clothes are proper according to the
class of persons who refer to their
costumes" rather than their
suits" which is a very bourgeois
term.
The clothes don't overshadow the
Secretary of the Navy, but they are
just sufficiently apparent to enable
one to understand at glance that
he is a most proper and most ortho
dox person from the sartorial point
of view. who could not commit an
! error of dress without creating an
impression of catastrophe and disso-
luton.
Hitchcock doesn't quite come up
to the serene level of Secretary
Meyer He gives an extraordinary
amount of attention to clothes, or
to his valet, if he has one-and it
is hard to imagine him without one
but to the discriminating and the
cognoscenti it is apparent that he
misses the point by being over-Zeal-
Gus. One is always conscious of the
coat 1t usually runs to the art
craft idea and suggests a refinement
of the advertisements in the street
cars. One sees the coat first and
after a time the man in them-a
tall, good-looking chap he is, too,
and it's a shame that he runs to
/ that over-perfection. The creases
are always there, in the right place.
How he can get into his trousers
without wrinkling them is a mys
terry, The oVercoat always hangs as
ii does when the tailor puts it on
and smoothes it down and steers you
over to the mirror to show you the
/ triumph he has accomplished. One
would almost gamble, seeing Hitch
cock for the first time, that they
could find basting thread on him
/ somewhere.
Secretary of State Knox is in
class of his own. 1t is remarkable
that a man of his dimunitive size
can so effectively escape asserting
/ himself through his clothes and be
at the same time well dressed. But
he does. One is not especially aware
of clothes in his case He suggests
4 dapperness, trimness, whatever it
may be called His boots-perhaps
! it is better to say shoes in his case
are always Immediately polished.
His coat is always brushed His
hands always look as if they had
/ just been washed and touch the
little black cigars he smokes good
ones, too-as If they disdained
them. The clothes are subordinated
to the man and the impression that
( is conveyed by them comes in at
I the tail end. Mr. Knox seems to ex-
hale the assertion that he is per-
fectly calm and proper even in the
matter of clothes the latter being
subjected by the evident determina-
ton OF the man to see that others
understand that he knows what he
I is. and what he is about In any
case, whether the other doubts IL
or not.
Dickinson is the sort Of man with