The Camel's Back

Of course there had to be someone to succeed Sinclair Weeks. The country must have a Secretary of Commerce because otherwise there wouldn't be anyone in the Cabinet to speak for big business. And big business does need spokesmen.

There really isn't any good reason, though, why the Secretary has to be Admiral Lewis Strauss, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. In fact, there are a number of good reasons why it shouldn't be, but none of them seem to have occurred to the White House staff.

Aside from keeping the fat cats as happy as they can be in the welfare state, Strauss will have a powerful voice in the development of the nuclear reactor program. Presumably, he is well-qualified for such an assignment, but his overweening predilections for privately financed reactors will not encourage those who conceive of atomic power as potentially beneficial to all the people, rather than the property of a small group of financiers. In some cases, of course, private development is both an economical and an advantageous proposition. Strauss, however, is overly prone to give private capital priority in all cases.

To those who though they were well rid of Strauss when he resigned as AEC head in June, his latest promotion comes as an unpleasant shock. There is no reason to honor the man whose treatment of Oppenheimer was not exactly gallant, and who has clouded the facts about atmospheric pollution and nuclear test explosions. In giving him this new position, President Eisenhower has done the country a considerable disservice, one which only the Senate can remedy.