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Show Washington Comment The death of our most beloved Secretary of the Navy Swanson leaves a cabinet vacancy which, at this writing, appears likely td be filled by the present assistant secretary, Charles A. Edison. This ?ives rise to rumors of other changes in the administration line-ip. line-ip. The current gossip has it that Secretary of War Woodring may be slated for the ambassadorship to Great Britain, or possibly France. In event of such a transfer, trans-fer, the assistant secretary, Louis Johnson, may get the portfolio of war. Many, however, seem to think that Mr. Roosevelt will offer it to Attorney General Murphy and give Murphy's post to the pro-sent pro-sent solicitor general, Robert Jackson. Jack-son. The high commissionership of the Philippines will, of course, be vacant soon, owing to the retirement re-tirement of Paul V. McNutt, who has been taking a whirl around Washington for the past week. McNutt has been suggested- for secretary of navy, but he appears to have his eye definitely on something some-thing Ibetter: at this writing, the White House bv wav of the F S A appointment. M ianwhile, the 1940 presidential possibilities are not neglected in Washington .gossip, and, during the w-eek, due to the fact that they lunched together at the capitol last week, Vice-President Garner and Postmaster General Farley are being coupled for the Democratic ticket: Mr. Garner for president, of course, and Mr. Farley as his running mate. Since the two gentlemen are known not to be especially friendly, the luncheon, staged in the vice-president's private pri-vate room off the senate chamber, was thought to have significance. On the Republican side, the prestige pres-tige of former President Hoover has shot up enormously during the week, and he seems to be definitely definite-ly "in" the campaign picture again. Mr. Hoover represents and typifies the popular idea of the most conservative of all the candidates candi-dates in the field, both Republican and Democratic. Following him, according to the Gallup poll, Senator Sena-tor Taft is the next conservative; Senator Vanderberg stands third, and Vice President Garner foots the list. Of the liberals, the leaders, lead-ers, by the voters' estimate, are President Roosevelt, Secretary Hull, Postmastr General Farley and Harry Hopkins for the Democrats, Demo-crats, and Thomas E. Dewey, by big odds, for the Republicans. Federal social security being directly di-rectly in the public eye, it is interesting inter-esting to learn that the system already al-ready has paid out $844,649,116 in the three years and four months of its operation. In this same period, $1,483,813,860 has Ven collected col-lected in social security taxes. Most of this has gone into government govern-ment bonds which have been placed in a reserve fund for old-age insurance in-surance benefits. Expenditures to date have mainly been from appropriations ap-propriations made from general funds by congress. $665,358,118 has been paid to the states to match state contributions for the needy; $17,844,954 was paid as benefits arising from workers' deaths; and the remainder was used for administrative costs, such as $55,891,864 for the social security secur-ity boards and its staff, and $105,-554,180 $105,-554,180 to states to cover costs of their unemployment compensation agencies. The federal-state aid rolls of the aged have increased from 602,672 in June, 1936, to 1,-848,700 1,-848,700 in June, 1939, and in the same period, the number of dependent de-pendent children receiving aid increased in-creased from 177,466 to 690,400. There are also the blind, whose number increased from 17,507 to 44,400. One of the less busy governmental govern-mental agencies in Washington, at present, is, strangely enough, the federal land office. Time was with the westward trek of homesteaders, home-steaders, that the land office was frantically active, but now its job is largely map-making a task that will require 50 more years to complete, although begun in 1882. Which just goes to show how big the United States reall is! The navy will buy 270 more submarine sub-marine escape "lungs" as a result of their effectiveness in the Squa-lus Squa-lus disaster. |