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system for considering the people we now had when it came to promotions before we hired from the outside. He did things very sensibly and very quickly.

So I was in favor of the general idea, but this order to have a personnel officer, and to define his duties, and to the rank him at a very high level and practically, in order that the President signed that was drawn up by the Bureau of the Budget, he directed us to make the personnel officer almost first assistant secretary of the Department. He was to be one of the principal people and to have his okay on everything. Needless to say, I never did that. I just took that part of the directive as so much persiflage or rhetoric, or window dressing, and continued to operate the Department as seemed practical. You couldn't give everything up.

The rest of the Cabinet did about the same thing. There may have been an occasional Cabinet member who thought it was just fine and did what we were told, but I doubt it.

I really don't see a plot in all this. I don't think that the personnel officer was to be beholden to the Budget Bureau rather than to the Department he was in. Harold Smith just honestly thought that the way to administer anything is to have a centralized control, and to have a policy that starts at the top and that goes down through the branches of government. I know this because I have talked with him about the philosophy of this and the humanitarian aspects of this many times. He didn't believe what I told him. I said to him,