The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-08-09
SECRETARY NAGEL,
 63 TO-DAY IS A SON
 OF THE SOUTHWEST.

Members of President Taft's cabinet will. to-day congratulate their collea- que, Charles Nagel, Secretary of Com merce and Labor, upon his sixty third birthday. While the man from Missouri occupies a place at the ex-
 treme foot of the table among the Presidents advisers, his job is not the least important, and his salary Of $12, ,000 per annum is the same as re- ceived by other officers of Uncle Sam s cabinet. When he accepted the ap-
 pointment to his present place, as successor to Cortelyou, Metcalfe and
 Straus, MT. Nagel had a hourishing and profitable legal practice in St. Louis, and his friends estimate that
 his income under the government is considerably less than half of what
 he could earn as a lawyer.
 MT. Nage1 is of German descent and
 son of the Southwest, having been
 born at Colorado City, Tex, Aug. g., 1S49 His father was Dr. Herman Ma
 gel. Since boyhood MT. Nagel has re-
 sided in St. Louis, where he gradual
 ed from high school and a law col
 lege, with a post graduate course at
 the University of Berlin. He was ad-
 mitted to the Missouri bar in 1873.
 AS a young man he was a member of
 the Missouri House of Representatives
 and later served three years as pres ident of the St. Louis City Council. In 1908 he became a member of the Re- publican National Committee, and Tn
 March of the following year entered the cabinet of President Taft.
 Radical Labor leaders allege that MT. Nagel is more the secretary of
 commerce than of labor, and point for proof to his activity in St. Louis street car strike. On that occasion
 MT. Nagel went to the sheriff and of- fered to put an end to the riots that had marked the strike. Given per- | mission, he organized the Nagel Pro- tectiye Corps, armed his men with small cannon loaded with buckshot, and sallied forth into the streets The Nagel army, so far as is known did
 no shooting, but they arrested lot of strikers, and MT. Nagel, as attor- ney for the prosecution, succeeded in | bor men still hold this against the l Secretary of Commerce and Labor, and
 declare he is a friend of the "plutes.' MT. Nagel is a hefty, tall man, but he is all meat, with no surplus fat about the waist line, and stands six 1 feet four inches in his hosiery, which, say his St. Louis political opponents, 1 are of silk Politically, St. Louis is divided between these who wear silk stockings and those who don't. and ! MT. Nagel has always been classed with the former element. He looks | like a Teutonic philosopher, given to abstract and lofty thought, but in reality he is a very practical man, al- though they do say he once refused life job of $20,000 a year as legal adviser to a corporation.
 MT. Nage1 believes that government
 bueiness should be transacted in a
 business-like way, without regard to
 precedents and red tape, and he has attempted to put his ideas into effect
 in the Department of Commerce and
 Labor with more or less success. He
 owes his cabinet position to his activ-
 ity back in 1908, when he aided large
 ly in carrying Missouri for Taft. The
 President was so pleased at gathering
 in the 'tShow-Me" State that he told the Missourian to name what he want