The Daily Alaska empire., 1938-02-03
Never Met a Payroll
CNew York world-Telegram)

We said we were tired of that wheeze about ED R. never having met a payroll and pointed out that of thrty-one Presidents the only one who really qualified payroll -meeter was Harding, who owned newspaper The rest all lawyers CT teachers or soldiers, tailor (Andrew Jackson who was on payroll-bu not for much-and not meeting one) and engineer.
 Now comes captious reader who likes to sharp shoot and says we're wrong, that Herbert Hoover the engineer. a businessman and that he must have met payroll
 Well maybe he did and maybe he didn't. He directed lot of sick mining companies around the world into state of health and adviser and scientific consultant and financial promoter sue ceeded in turning them from red ink into black but don't find in any of his biographies where he actu- ally sat the modern industrial manager sits, with his costaccounting and his budgets and the this and that, which constitute the experimenting act.
 But let's grant for the sake of argument that Hoover did meet a payroll. Maybe that's what was wrong with him-as President We aren't trying to be too personal about MT Hoover whom like and admire in many respects. We merely trying to make point dealing with the meeting payroll idea as the frequently advanced answer to all that's. needed when it comes to good government.
 Let's have businessman" for Mayor. Governor or President is the common slogan But why don't businessmen, highly successful in their various lines, always succeed in public life? Why can't the person who made fortune for himself and employment for thousands by manufacturing panties for lamb chops step into the Statehouse and solve with the same efficiency the budgetary and social and political prob lems of the people whole?
 We don't think the is especially hard or involved
 The businessman, the payroll -meeter. by the very nature of his occupation order-giver there are many things in the ken of capable public ser want that not dreamed of in the philosophy of the order-gver. ~t% xNsI
 The public official is never in position to tell em and let it go at that He has to sell em In the plq Inc bac tn sell Inc IIic ic tl,o time problem in human relations where he, too, takes his risk. That involves a much different kind of talent than employer needs in giving that same voter job and directing his activities from there on
 Then after the public servant is elected he has constant day by-day task in human relationships, success being dependent not merely the intake and the outgo but upon the factors that don't at all into the operation of business
 So long as MT Hoover for example directing big affairs an engineer as a war relief admins trator Secretary of Commerce he was conspcu- ously able. He could tell those under him what he wanted done His judgment good. And his results
 But when he became President the teller tech- nique failed work He was playing at another sort of game
 President of the United States, though called the most powerful man in the world, is powerful only in the degree that he get other people to work not for him-but with him. Congress, his politically appointed associates his party leaders here there and wonder. popular sentiment generaly-those n- tangibles which make public performance much more intricate than private, ordergiving performance they all enter in.
 And so while MT. Hoover always kindly man as boss in private life in bureaucratic position when he got to be President the very qualities which had made him capable in running of show were handicap in running another kind He didn't have that particular skill which had made it possible for his Presidential opponent, Al Smith to wheede out of hostile New York Legislature those laws which made Smiths record great
 We have witnessed so often and with great hope the elevation of the businessman to high public office And with some few and notable exceptions like Tom Johnson, of Cleveland, we have seen them flop. The reason being, every man to his trade,
 And that's why we think, of all the thirty-one who have occupied the highest office in land only one or by liberal construction two has tor have) met payroll