Evening star., 1943-04-18

fully, then acted with GOV !
decision. The habits
acquired in the district attorneys Office
stick with him.
Dewey, who overcame the political cry
OF "ineXperience" to capture the admin
istration of a S37O0OO ,0OO-a-year State
government employing $1,000 persons,
has definite ideas about his job.
While many Republican leaders-fret-
full after two job-hungry decades-look
with hungry eye at Democrats still head
Ing most State departments, he has
given the first three months of his ad-
ministration to other tasks, including
emergency problems spawned by war.
Three Busiest Months.
Those three months certainly have
been the busiest-and they may prove
the most significant, poltically-in the
life of a man regarded by many Re-
publicans as presidential timber
National interest in Dewey, who lost
the Republican nomination to Wendell
Il. Willkie in 1910 and has said he is not
in the 1914 field, hitherto has flourished
chiefly on his record as district attorney
Of populous Manhattan.
Three months on the second floor of
New York's Capitol, in what many con-
slider the Nations second most important
office, have provided the first real meas
IRE of his stature as a party leader and
his administrative and executive ability.
The Republican, controlled Legislature,
first to sit with Republican Governor
since 1922, approved every legislative
recommendation of the Governor, in
cluding 1894 budget of 1910 100000.
The stiffest test of Deweys leadership
came on his demand for reapportion-
ment of legislative representation. Senate
and Assembly districts had not been re-
shaped since 1917. although the State
constitution says the job must be done
every 10 years, following the Federal
census
Dewey had promised action when he
campaigned for Governor last fall, ignor-
Ing the fact that the Democrats could
not agree on reapportionment, when
they-like Republicans today-controlled
both the executive and legislative
branches of Government in 1885.
The bitterest opposition to the Dewey
sponsored bill came from within his own
party. Some Republican Assemblymen
assailed it as party suicide" which
shifts State control from normally Re-
publican upstate to New York City.
Wins Test Overwhelmingly.
Dewey only smiled at cries OF pressure
from the second floor" Nor did he
bother, at the moment. to argue Demo-
cratic assertions the bill was unconstitu-
tional. And, when the votes were called,
the reapportionment was approved over
whelmingly by majority of both Re-
publicans and Democrats.
Democrats fumed also at Republican
renewal of a proposal, vetoed by Demo-
cratic Gov. Herbert H. Lehman last year
to advance the start of New York's fiscal
year from July to April l. They pro-
tested the change would wipe out an
expected heavy State financial surplus
But Dewey recommended the change
signed it into law in February and-in
an April l review of his first three
months in office-reported a March 81
treasury balance of 500 100000.
That nest egg, he told pressure groups,
will be saved against a rainy day of
falling revenues.
Il shall resist to the limit any effort
by any one to raid the Treasury" he
declared.
The Legislature, on the Governors
recommendation, also voted quarterly
installment payment Of personal income
taxes; S5,000000 of new deductions and
exemptions from that levy; a State pro-
gram of care for children of mothers in
war industry; sl0,0O00O0 of pay increases
for State employees and machinery for
the collection from private power COM
panies of an equitable rental for de-
velopment of State water resources.
There is little to suggest the Owosso,
Mich, farm boyhood of New Yorks 47th
Governor as he sits, meticulously neat,
confident and smiling at his big desk
But it shines through his enthusiasm in
tackling the States wartime farm labor
and food production problems.
To handle the latter, he has named
an 11-member emergency food commits
sion. H. E. Babcock. former president
of the Grange League Federation EX
change and chairman of the commission,
saws its creation represents the first
correlated attack" in the Nation on the
problem of food production.
Recruits Farm Army.
Dewey who operates farm of his own
at Pawling, N. Y, meanwhile has been
the moving spirit behind a program
which. utilizing both State and Federal
agencies, is recruiting thousands of men,
women and children as farm workers to