The Pittsburgh Press (February 16, 1946)
Background of news –
‘Kitchen Cabinet’
By Bertram Benedict
Secretary Ickes’ charges on resigning have caused the phrase “kitchen cabinet” to be revived to describe the inner circle of Truman advisers against which Mr. Ickes launched his blasts.
The term “kitchen cabinet” came into use with the beginning of Andrew Jackson’s administration for the group of unofficial advisers with whom the seventh president surrounded himself. For a time this group had more influence with the president than did his official Cabinet.
Jackson was a man of little learning or culture who looked on government as a personal matter in which one’s friends should be rewarded and one’s opponents punished. However, he was compelled for political reasons to give several Cabinet posts to followers of John C. Calhoun, so that the Cabinet was unharmonious.
Discord increased when Secretary of War Eaton married Peggy O’Neill, daughter of a Washington cafe-owner, and the other Cabinet wives boycotted the newcomer. The president found social contacts more congenial with rough-and-ready supporters outside of the Cabinet who were all too glad to advise him.
*****In minor government jobs
In the Kitchen Cabinet were three newspaper owners. The real leader was Amos Kendall, who had a newspaper past. Kendall was a man of considerable ability, who later as postmaster general rooted out much graft in the postal system. Members of the Kitchen Cabinet were given minor posts in the government, in which they carried out the Jacksonian spoils system.
After several years Jackson managed to oust the Calhounites from his official Cabinet, which then became more influential than the Kitchen Cabinet in the presidential counsels.
The term “kitchen cabinet” was applied later to the inner advisory circles of John Tyler, Andrew Johnson and other presidents. Every president inevitably has close advisers outside of the Cabinet, composed of the heads of the 10 executive departments.
The Constitution contains no provision for the Cabinet as such, and the word itself does not appear in a federal statute until 1907.
Harding and his cronies
The men who brought disrepute to the Harding administration could hardly be called a Kitchen Cabinet, because they were given high posts in the government inside and outside of the Cabinet. Albert B. Fall, avowed anti-conservationist, was secretary of the Interior. Harry M. Daugherty, the president’s political sponsor and utterly without standing at the bar, was attorney general. Charles R. Forbes, presidential crony, was veterans’ administrator.
Fall persuaded Secretary of the Navy Denby to agree to turn over to the Interior Department the naval oil reserves, and then persuaded the president to approve the transfer, which the Supreme Court later ruled illegal. Fall received fat money gifts from certain oil magnates after giving them oil leases.
Fall went to jail. So did Forbes and Alien Property Custodian Miller, for graft. Daugherty escaped going to jail after a trial in 1926, at which he refused to take the stand, at which he was found to have burned his bank records, and after which the jury was said to have voted 11 to 1 for conviction.