Word: mckay
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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This election year, Doug McKay is engaged in a basic political struggle with the shade of Harold Ickes and his heirs. The issue: federal management of resources v. the Eisenhower slogan of partnership between Government and business. In the West, this conflict is much sharper than in the rest of the U.S. The West grew up under the Federal Government's wing. McKay's opponents are betting that it wants to stay there. Eisenhower, McKay & Co. think they see signs that the West, even on such issues as who develops water power, is ready to emerge from Washington...
...Country Boy." When McKay was governor of Oregon-his biggest job before coming to Washington with Ike-two of the toughest decisions he faced were whether to proclaim daylight time (thus annoying farmers) and whether to ban hunting when forests were tinder-dry (thus annoying Oregon's legions of deerslayers). In Washington McKay's horizons have enlarged considerably, without affecting the size of his hat. As Interior Secretary, he is the nation's biggest landlord, greatest giver of light and water, master of forest and range, controller of minerals and oil, boss of 56,000 people...
...fantastic, me having this job," McKay told the crowds on a trip home to Oregon last year. "I'm just a country boy, just a punk governor from a little state." His appointment as Secretary of the Interior, he said, reminded him of the small boy who entered his pet pooch in a pedigreed dog show; when told he was sure to lose, the boy replied, "That's all right-I didn't expect him to win. I just wanted to enter him so he could meet a lot of nice dogs...
Work for Worth. All this, to Secretary McKay, is too much. "Once we make a crutch of the Government," he believes, "we are on our way to becoming political cripples." He wants-at the right time and on the right terms-independence for the Indians, statehood for Alaska and Hawaii, private initiative on electric power and more private ownership of public lands...
...last named point of this program, McKay has good historical precedent. In the 19th century, Interior's General Land Office did a land-office business virtually giving away land-for railroads, land-grant colleges and, mostly, homesteading.* Lincoln, who made homesteading the law, believed in "settling of the wild lands into small parcels so that every poor man may have a home." The theory was that the people would work the land, build up the nation and make it great. In the 20th century came a new idea: the Federal Government should build up the nation and make...