Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-05-11
Wilson Handles Visitors Quickly.

At his desk promptly at o'clock in the
ment's newest department. William B.
Wilson. Secretary of Labor, starts in i'm
mediately upon his mail. Any visitors
who come in the meantime are not re-
quired to wait for he stops attending to
the mail and other matters long enough
to see visitors of whom there has been
a constant string every day since he as
sumed office. They keep coming, too,
until he leaves the department nearly 6
way of disposing of them and every little
while he gets a breathing spell which
he uses to catch up on the mail and other
business
Along about I o'clock he gets across
the street from his Office to the New Will
lard, where he takes his luncheon
Il am making this arrangement for the
present" he said, because it is the
nearest cafe where ! can get some quick
lunch and get back to the department.
Houston Finds Pastime in Golf.
David Franklin Houston, the new Secre-
tary of Agriculture. is for purposes of
is quite possible that after little this
will be reduced to ID H." and an in
decipherable wiggle. Signing mail is the
Ger has to do. 1t is a sort of official
drudgery that eats up at least an hour
a day and that most cabinet officers come
to hate with a deadly hatred.
lusions of personal dignity and insist on
reading each letter and signing their full
name. Usually they soon drop to two ini-
tials and sometimes to one and then shift
all this work they can possibly delegate.
In the State Department for some Years
otQr re
Of this work by putting most Of the cor
respondence in the third person and dele
eating the signing to clerks and secre-
taries. Nearly every cabinet officer soon
Der stamp signature that any messenger
can operate, but no plan Of this sort has
ever been adopted.
Mr.. Houston did not come into office
with any signature illusions to shatter
He had been the chancellor Of Washing
ton University in st. Louis and had a
good deal Of mail signing to do there, SO
he started in with the plain I'd. F.
Houston
He has proved to be quite a conserya-
tive. matter-of-fact Secretary. He is usu-
ally at work before $3.50 o'clock and keeps
1t up until 4:3O o'clock or even ) o'clock.
as the occasion may call for. He lives at
the Cosmos Club and takes his lunch
there allowing himself an hour for this,
from i until =, but sometimes cutting it
shorter.
The regular biweekly cabinet days
break in on his Office time. In the first
month of the Wilson administration there
were a good many extra cabinet meet
ings, but these now have simmered down
to the regular days, leaving the Secretary
more time for departmental work.
In spite of his living at the Cosmos
Club the new Secretary is not a club
dom bachelor. He has a family of three.
AS to his personal habits. golf is the
only dissipation Of which he has SO far
been convicted.
Lane Lunches Lightly.
If one were to judge from the favorite
pastimes OF the two men, Secretary of
the Interior Lane should swap jobs with
Secretary Of the Navy Daniels. The
latter finds his greatest pleasure In agri-
cultural operations, while Secretary
Lane. according to his own confession, is
never SO happy as when on the water
sailing yacht or any old kind of boat.
Secretary Lane II one OF the hard
workers of the new administration.
Never later than $40 or $50 o'clock
am. In reaching his ONCE. the Secretary
is usually at work when the hands OF the
clock indicate $50 In the evening" And
his working day Is a real one, too: ex-
he IL at his desk from the time he gets
down In the morning until he leaves at
night. He wastes no time going out for
lunch, although lunchrooms are thick
about the Interior Department building.
He sends a messenger out for his midday
refreshments, and this is what the Secre-
tary almost always has for luncheon:
One fried-egg sandwich, on bread; one
small pot of tea, very weak. That's all.
Secretary Lane is a member of the
University, National Press and Metro
pclitan clubs, and will shortly be made a
member of the select coterie that makes
the Cosmos Club it's headquarters. He is
a western man-Californian-use to be a
Newspaper man-gO0d one, too-and is one
OF the parents of, quote. two Of the finest
youngsters in the universe. end the
quote.
To conclude. Secretary Lane entered
on the duties Of his new Office as the sue
cessor of Walter Fisher. man who had
made himself SO solid with his subor
dinates that any successor. 1t was be-
lieved, would have a hard time living up
to the Fisher standard.
.Burieson Constant Worker.
Postmaster General Albert Sidney Bur-
Lesson believes in being early at his desk