Roy D. Chapin: The Man Behind the Hudson Motor Car Company

XXIV. Secretary of Commerce

CHAPTER XXIV SECRETARY OF COMMERCE AS THE year 1932 went on, however, national conditions b grew worse rather than better. The Administration at Washington was trying valiantly to bolster public confidence in the face of a nationwide business depression. President Hoover was convinced that the necessary corrections had been made for the national economic upsets and that a restoration of faith on the part of the people would be the beginning of better times. From his first days in the White House Hoover had desired to have Roy Chapin in his administrative family. Roy had been a strong right arm for the President in the days when the latter was Secretary of Commerce. In fact, the automobile group, led by Chapin, had done much to help Hoover to build up the Commerce Department. Hoover, for example, had sought to make his Survey of Current Business the leading financial document of the country, with up-to-the-minute facts. He called upon the automobile people to provide him with their private statistics which they had always gathered, and published when they thought advisable, in the name of their association. It was asking a good deal to request the motor people to give up their preeminence in this regard and to pool their figures with a government bulletin; but Roy favored strengthening Hoover's hand wherever possible, and successfully urged his motor colleagues to comply. Again, the identification of Mr. Hoover with the popular issue of better highways, and with his Conference on Street and Highway Safety, which was strongly supported by the automobile makers, helped to broaden the work of the Depart229 230 ROY D. CHAPIN ment of Commerce and to keep alive the picture of Mr. Hoover as the great humanitarian, a repute which he had achieved in his days in Belgian Relief and as Food Administrator in World War I. The post of Secretary of Commerce continued to have growing prestige after Mr. Hoover became President, due to his development of it and because it was realized that this office was now particularly close to the White House. Moreover, as month after month the condition of business and industry was the paramount national concern, Commerce became an exceptionally critical portfolio. At the end of July, 1932, the President phoned to Roy Chapin and asked if he would take the Commerce post, but did not get an immediate acceptance. Chapin was the logical man for the job. There were his friendship for and prior assistance to the President, mentioned above. There was the fact that Roy had served in various national and international trade bodies. He was familiar with finance, taxation, manufacture and selling. There was his chairmanship of the Highways Transport Committee during World War I, and there the fact that he had always been a staunch and active member of the Republican Party. His presidency of the Sixth International Road Congress held in Washington in the fall of 1930 had, moreover, served to emphasize in official circles his capacity for dealing with large and controversial subjects in a tactful and constructive way. Roy was not eager to accept the Commerce secretaryship, in spite of the honor. He went to Washington and conferred with the President on August 3, and after an hour's consideration, decided to accept. "It is going to be awfully hard work," he wrote to his father-in-law, "but if I can help I want to give what I can." There was no doubt that there would be difficulties to come, because the Hoover Administration was bearing all of the unpopularity of the postwar depression. The fact that the Official document appointing Chapin as secretary of commerce. (Courtesy Chapin family) The Hoover Cabinet. Front row, left to right. Mills, Treasury; Curtis, vice president; the president; Stimson, State; Hurley, War. Second row, left to right. Chapin, Commerce; Wilbur, Interior; Mitchell, attorney general; Brown, Post Office; Adams, Navy; Hyde, Agriculture; Doak, Labor. (Photograph by Underwood and Underwood; courtesy Chapin family) SECRETARY OF COMMERCE 1% I automobile industry, however, was looked to to lead the way to recovery made the Chapin appointment particularly acceptable to the nation. Roy at 52 was one of the youngest men in the Cabinet, and he looked younger than his years. The fact that he had made his own fortune, that he had six children, that he was a devoted family man, that he played tennis and golf and liked...