Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1912-07-18
HILLEs MANAGER FOR TAFT.
His Tact as Presidents Secretary
Made Him National Chairman.


cid Samuel Smiles would have been
pleased with Charles Dewey Hilles,
who has come along in the world in the
old fashioned way; one hard job after
another, and succeeding at each of
them. 1t is easy to count the men who
have made personal successes under
the present administration a Wash
ington. but HilIes is one of them: per-
haps the most notable. 1t is not sur
prising that Mr.. Taft greatly desired
and was successful in having Hilles
chosen as chairman of the Republican
National Committee to manage his
campaign for reelection.
Ever since he went to Washington
about three years ago as an Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury, Hilles has
been one of the mainstays of the Taft
Administration. The President has
leaned upon him, and has sought his
advice. He is the third secretary Mr.
Taft has had since he came into the
White House, and the only one who
has lived up to requirements and ex-
pectations. Hilies has had excellent
preparation for his new work. He has
the required temperament and an ex-
eeptional and peculiarly helpful expert
ence with men and affairs
There is only one thing a secretary to
the President can be sure Of he will
never be bored. Something or other
viii happen to him every day. When
he has served term in the White
House and goes out to other employ
ment, no matter what he has to do. it
viii seem easy to him. Being a Presi-
dents interpreter and steersman is the
most difficult and trying job in the
Government service at Washington.
70 the men who make successes of it,
the subsequent rewards are great and
satisfying. and even the failures seem
to TO fairly well by themselves when
they resign to accept more eongenial
employment
The Presidents secretary, under
present conditions, when he is working
at the job. is as busy as o. Henry's
one-armed aper-hanger with the
hives He must know everybody and
everything He must be able to APP
praise the actors on the Washington
stage. not only at their true value, but
at their own estimate of their value.
He must know what is going on in
politics. legislation and society, and of
all the thousands who come to the
White House on one mission or an
other he must unerringly separate the
sheep from the goats. He must work
sixteen hours a day and keep his tenn
per and his health. He must always
remember that whenever he does any
thing particularly praiseworthy, the
credit must go to the President and the
Administration. Whenever the Presi-
dent makes a mistake or commits an
indiscretion the perfect secretary must
offer himself as the sacrifice.
When the transfer of IIilles from his
post in the Treasury Department to
the White House as secretary to the
President was gaZetted in the news
papers, a woman in Virginia, whom he
did not know, wrote to him to say that
she knew the President had at last
found the right man, because of your
prompt attention and personally writ
ten reply to my letter to you endorsing
the j. V. Bedford site for the new
postoffice at Hampton, Va" This
same correspondent suggested that, in
order to. obtain the consultations of
philosophy" Mr.. Hilles should read
Levitieus, xvi chapter, 20th to I'D
verse. He found this:
600 And when he hath made an
end of reconciling the holy place and
the tabernacle of the congregation, and
the altar, he shall bring the live goat
"(2D And Aaron shall lay both his
hands upon the head of the live goat,
and confess over him all the iniquities
of the children of Israel and all their
transgressions in lltheir sins, putting
them upon the head of the goat, and
shall send him away by the hand of a
fl man intotthe wilderness"
In all the time that Mr. Taft has been
in the White House. Hilles has been
about the only person about him who
has had any political knowledge or
acumen. He was about the only man
Mr.. Taft appointed to office as a re-
ward for political work The new
National Chairman was born in Bel
mont County, Ohio June %. 1867, so
that knowledge of politics came to
HIM as an Inheritance. In Ohio and
Indiana children absorb the rudimen-
tary principles of politics with their
multiplication tables. Once upon a
time Hilles was a country school
teacher. That is the conventional
gambit for opening successful politi-
cal career. Then he went off on a tan
gent and came to his true vocation
after an unusual interlude. He became
interested in juvenile industrial school
work, and from 1900 to 1902 was sup
perintendent of the Boys Industrial
School at Lancaster, o. Later he was
the financial head of the New York
Juvenile Asylum at Dobbs Ferry, n.
Y. from 1909 to 1909. At these two
schools he erected buildings at total
cost of $2.000,oO0, and controlled dis
bursements for maintenance of $4,000,
000
From his work at Dobbs Ferry, Mr..
Hilles came to Washington in April
1909. TO be an Assistant Secretary of
the Treasury. in charge of public build
inss and the miscellaneous bureaus of
the Department Arthur L. Vorys of
Ohio was primarily responsible for Mr.
Hilles's entrance into public life.