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Show (Seliind lite Jdeadtined Suddenly the political fortunes of at least four members of the President's cabinet, and maybe a fifth, appeared to hinge on their statements about a great culinary controversy last week, and another statement a cabinet member probably wishes he had never made. We refer to the nation-wide cranberry tempest, more of the which later. For it seems far from over, and doubtless will have politcal repercussions, and may affect the 1960 presidential congressional campaign. At the same time the cranberry cran-berry furor exploded, Labor Secretary James Mitchell contemplated con-templated his own diet, while eating a hat made of cake on the steps of the Labor Department. Depart-ment. Mitchell had promised the AFL-CIO that he would "eat his hat" if unemployment did not fall below 3,000,000. It didn't, largely as a result of the steel strike. So Mitchell contributed to the week's silliness and humbly hum-bly ate the cake fedora which just as well could have been crow, or humble pie. He tried to keep his dignity as best he could while humbling himself and proved himself "a good sport." But by drawing new attention to the unemployment unemploy-ment issue the Republicans would rather forget, Mitchell may have hurt his own admitted hopes for winning the GOP vice presidential nomination next year. This, topping the failure of Mitchell's Mediation Service to settle the strike without a Taft-Hartly Taft-Hartly injunction, has hurt his popularity with Labor, which accused him of making a farce out of unemployment. Even Vice President Nixon, Mitchell's best supporter for the vice presiden-. presiden-. tial nomination has begun booming boom-ing House GOP Leader Halleck of Indiana as a possible vice presidential running mate. While the Labor Secretary was "letting 'em eat cake," the really big national rhubarb developed when cranberrv ernwprs and the berries "only the last Sunday Sun-day and expected to have them with his Thanksgiving turkey." I And the industry stood up and cheered when the Agriculture Department was first to declare that the Government should repay re-pay the industry for the harm the Health, Education and Welfare Wel-fare Department over publicized tainted berries had done. Still, this hardly helped undo the harm done sales of the $150,-000,000 $150,-000,000 a year industry just as the cranberry eating holidays were beginning. HEW Secretary Flemming's own wife hardly helped her husband when she said during the peak of the crisis cri-sis that she might still serve the cranberries at their own Thanksgiving Thanks-giving table. , But Flemming was hurt most of all by the same chemist, Dr. Boyd Shaffer of the American Cyanamid Co., who first reported report-ed that the weed killed used on some western crops gave cancer to rates. Shaffer, later said "a fiuman would have to eat 15,000 pounds of cranberries a day for many years" to suffer any ill effects ef-fects of the chemical, aminotria-zole. aminotria-zole. This set off a whole new, more formidable round of demands de-mands that HEW Secretary Flemming should be fired or resign. re-sign. This brought the thoughts of many back to Dr. Flemming's predecessor, once removed, and the controversy, similar to the berry tempest that also forced her to resign. Charges of maladministration malad-ministration of the Salk polio vaccine helped force Mrs. Oveta Culp Hobby out as first Secretary Secre-tary of Health, Education and Welfare in 1955, and the admitted admit-ted failure of HEW to foresee the public demand for short supplies sup-plies of the Salk Vaccine which resulted in shortages, black marketing, mar-keting, price rigging, etc., became be-came a key issue of the 1956 presidential campaign. It is pointless to recount those days of travail, except to recall that the nature of the polio controversy, con-troversy, affecting children and man's triumph over disease, and failure in the initial distribution of the vaccine, were far greater than the cranberry controversy. The fury of the polio distribution distribu-tion furor forcer everyone in the top echelons of the HEW to quit "under fire." Assistant Secretary Roswell Perkins was one of the last to go as Treasury Undersecretary Undersec-retary Marion Folsom succeeded Mrs. Hobby. But Surgeon General Gen-eral Leonard Scheele also left "under fire" and under blackening blacken-ing clouds of dissension. Nelson A. Rockefeller, Governor Gover-nor of New York and an unannounced unan-nounced candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, was fortunate. for-tunate. He served as Undersecretary Undersec-retary of the Department HEW from its creation in 1953 and many say he really ran HEW for Mrs. Hobby. But Rockefeller luckily resigned his, post in December, De-cember, 1954, which was only a few months before the Salk vaccine vac-cine tempest rocked the country. Otherwise, the Salk vaccine crisis would still surely hang like an albatross around Rockefeller's Rocke-feller's political aspirations. canners found themselves on the firing line, and denounced another an-other Cabinet member, Flemming, Flem-ming, for irreparably hurting them. Suddenly, there were cranberries cran-berries everywhere. Democrats twitted the Republican business man's administration for hurting business. Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts toasted the GOP with cranberry cocktails as scores of others proclaimed themselves the true friends of the cranberry. Vice President Nixon had well publicized extra helpings of the delicacy, politically important, cranberry growing Wisconsin. Congressmen demanded investigations. investi-gations. Others pledged themselves them-selves to seek reimbursement for losses suffered by the industry. Frederick Mueller, Commerce Secretary, was denounced for evading an active pro cranberry role in the controversy. Friends of Attorney General Wm. Rogers say he was fearful that the Justice Jus-tice Department would be run into an unpoular prosecution of the underdog berry industry. Businessmen contributors be-seiged be-seiged the GOP National Committee Com-mittee to protest. And surprisingly, Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson, the long time cabinet "whipping boy," emerged as the real hero of the big cranberry war. Benson was the first to declare during the first few days when everyone every-one else was silent that he had' |