The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-03-17
THE sUBcABrNEr.


THE SUBCABINET.
WASHINGTON. Feb. 2S.-President
Taft s cabinet of nine members has
been announced and the curiosity of
the country is satisfied on that point
It has watched the progress of the
selection for the last three months,
shared interest in the surmise about
this cabinet POSSIBILITY and that, and
expressed comment about the lucky
men finally chosen.
Now, the subcabineti The public
has been too busy to think much about
that. So has Mr. Taft But he win
now give his attention to the naming
of some twenty-odd members of that
body, who, all in all, are pretty i'm
portant men to every administration.
Most of them are called assistant secre-
{! taries, but all are the immediate aides
| of the cabinet officer and not infre-
quently have become cabinet officers
| themselvs. The new Secretary of war,
| J. M. Dickinson, was himself men,
| Der of the subcabinet of the second
| Cleveland administration, for he served
as an assistant Attorney General. Rob-
ert j. Wynne, postmaster general in
the closing months of the first Roose-
welt administration and now Consul
General at London, was a member of
the subeabinet, for he served long as
First Assistant Postmaster General.
Mr.. Frank FL. Hitchcock also occupied
that first assistant s Office for num-
Der of years, and is now to be post
master general.
The subcabinet is composed Of the
following members:
Assistant Secretaries of State, 5; AS
sistant Secretaries of the Treasury, 3;
Assistant Secretary of War, i; Assist
ant Attorneys General, s; Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, /; Assistant
Postmasters General, 4; Assistant Sec
retaries of the Interior, 2; Assistant
Secretary of Agriculture, /; Assistant
Secretary of Commerce and Labor, 1,
Any one of these twenty-six members
of the subcabinet is likely to be called
to preside over the department in
which he is serving as the acting head,
an honor, of course, which any one of
the twentysix is glad to have. For
whenever a cabinet officers goes on a
| trip out of town, whether for business
or pleasure, one of his assistants be-
comes acting secretary. All the places
have more or less responsibility and
| the incumbents are lifted above the
average of Washington officialdom. To
| be sure the salaries are not large. The
compensation runs from $4,000 to $4,000
| a year each, except that the Vice Sec
rotary of State-a new office which
Congress has just been occupied in
creating-will pay $4,000 year, with.
| in $4,000 of the salary of a cabinet
| officer, and except that several of the
Assistant Attorneys General receive
| more. The Solicitor General of the De-
partment of Justice and the assistant
| to the Attorney General receive sala-
ries about equally large as that of the
Vice Secretary of State and rank in
the order named next to the Attorney
General. In most of the departments,
that have more than one assistant to
the cabinet officer. there is some form
of designation The First Assistant
Postmaster General, for instance, ranks
his other three colleagues. The three
Assistant Secretaries of the Treasury
are all designated exactly alike and
have equal rank, except that seniority
of appointment counts for something
The members of the cabinet general
Nv nave COuSlatIdDtC Sd dDOua
the members of the subcabinet. New
ertheless, it is the word of the Presi-
dent himself which goes in such mat
tiers. He has to send the nominations
to the Senate to be confirmed and he
often names friends. personal or polit-
zeal, for those places. Mr.. Taft has
already filed few of the places in
the subcabinet and before long he will
L /
Naturally enough the twenty six
ineumbents are quite anxious to
| know what is going to happen to them.
Some undoubtedly will be retained. No
President, be he Democrat or Repub-
lean, thinks of disturbing Second AS
sistant Secretary of State A. A. Adee,
because he knows all the etiquette and
diplomatic wrinkles of the department
There has generally been a similar as
sistant in the Treasury Department,
but he has never been able to outlive
change of administration from one
to another political party. He is the
assistant who has charge of customs
matters and at present is Jimmie -
Reynolds, who used to be a Washing.
ton newspaper correspondent.
The BUSTING process with the sub
CABINET VIII proDabiy De quite SLOW,
for these assistants are of great use
to a cabinet officer in sEgetting onto
the ropes. Seven of the nine mem.
bers of the cabinet will be green men.
who viii probably welcome little help
from the old hands at first 1t takes
weeks for new secretary to learn
the run of big department where the
volume of business is so enormous he
can not possibly know the contents of
all the papers to which he must attach
his signature as matter of official
formality
The prize position in the subcabinet
will be that of Vice Secretary of State
He will naturally look down somewhat
upon his twenty-five colleagues. He
will occupy a sort of half way ground
in Washington between a Secretary and
an Assistant Secretary. Mr.. Taft and
Senator Knox have had no little