The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-10-19
HE IS ONLY E
 :. BUT EUROPE IS <: :s..s::A FAT HIS MERCY
s. Parker Gilbert, IT,, Is Regarded Among Worlds s'', Financial Genuises

NEW YORK, Oct. 1s.-Parker
 Gilbert, Jr., who leaves i'll il few weeks
 10 take up his duties in Berlin as oagept general for republicans under the Dawes plan, will be 32 years old on October 13, writes Harold Phelps Stokes in a Washington dispatch to the New York Times. That is the
 amazing point at which all discussion of this extraordinary young man starts, ,32 years old, and the financial fate of all Europe largely in his hands. Gilbert
 succeeds Owen D. Young, who will
 hold the post of agent general only long enough to set up the machinery of the transfer bureau.
 F7At 19 Gilbert was graduated from Rutgers. When the war broke out in I914. he had just come of age. At 22 he xas graduated from the Harvard Law School. At 9 he came to Wash ington to work under Russell c. Jeff ingwell, then Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, as a member of the war loan staff, At P. when Leffingwell left to 20 back to his law practice, Gilbert took his place as assistant secretary.
 At 2S- he was promoted to be under sec. retary, second in command under Sec retary Mellon. At 30 he resigned to resnr6e the practice of law with such career behind him as might be the envy of a statesman of 70.
 And yet he remained obscure. That is the strange part about him. Those on the inside knew his worth-men like Houston and Mellon, Leffingwell and Norman Davis, Senators on the Hill and-members of the house of Morgan. But he retired almost unknown to the country, which seldom saw his name Ill the headlines, except possibly when he was filst appointed and again when he wAs in an automobile smash-up in the Ruhr one day.
 STo few persons in Washington was ke a familiar figure. Night and day rsostly night-he worked in his office ogerlooking. appropriately enough. the sfatue of Alexander Hamilton, his illus tfious predecessor in youthful public fiscal genius. Occasionally. if you hap pened along at just the right time, you might meet him in the Treasury cor ritlors or pass him rounding the corner of the Treausry building on his way to work. The best chance for that was ekrly in the morning or after dinner, when it was his habit to return to his office to labor late into the night. You sAsv q spare chap, almost lanky. He stops a bit as he walks, but head first and rather giving the impression Ot pfishing his legs out behind him. His face is thin and bit pale, with the nose and ees of scholar. His eyes are blue gray and have q twinkle all their own, as much as to say, Don take me too seriously-l never do.
 Goes Fishing Sometimes
 kIf Gilbert ever took any exercises wien he was at the capital. nobdy knew its unless what little walking he did came under that heading. Often you wauld catch a glimpse of him swlnglnS d6Wn Pennsylvania avenue, hls hands deep in the pockets of long overcoat, his head down. threading his rather odd gated way through the crowds. Like Herbert Hoover. his one form of recre- atfon. and that indulged in only rarely, V wlss fishing Once in while he would run off down to Solomon's Island and catch a mess of sea trout.
 SAlthough scholarly sort of person. T4iere is a report from his native town of Bloomfield. N. J., that the folk there used to see him going about the streets reading books as he walked. l never saw him do that, and guess the | leEend is aprocryphal. It sound bit too pedantic.
 Gertainly he was not the sort of per son you would expect quickly to thread | his way through the political maze of Washington, much less to march boldly | through it. Yet that is precisely what he did. Any winters day you could | sec in his office, when he was under secretary of the treasury, congress- man or Wall Street banker, or avisit- ing statesman, or some gray-haired senator sitting patiently waiting for a chance to have word with this young ster. He handled these senators and | congressman who came to see him as though to the manner born. Much of | the time he conducted the treasury's | relations with the Hill in such ticklish | enterprises as the tax program or the banus bill. Few men have acquired the political sense that he manifested, save bS native gift or by years of exper- fence.
 Turned Tables on Politicians
 sOf course the hard-boiled politicians | had no use for him, but one day he tdfned the tables exquisitely on them. Who now remembers Elmer Dover? The | Ohio crowd had him placed in the treas uFy department under Mellon to loosen things up a bit and pry open some places for deserving republicans. A gSeat howl went up about the en- trenched democracy-how McAdoo, act | ing through Daniel Roper, his commits sioner of internal revenue and' later
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