Let Him Eat Cake

James P. Mitchell has weaseled again. Of course, he probably had every intention of keeping his promise to "literally eat my hat," but, at the last moment, somebody persuaded him that felt fedoras were essential to the nation's safety and welfare, and could not be sacrificed to a promise. So Secretary Mitchell ate his cake.

He might have used his jaws to better effect in chewing out his mediator in the steel strike, who accomplished nothing; or his President, whose threats of intervention worried only the unions; or his President again, for invoking the Taft-Hartley act, which will do precious little good.

Instead, he expressed his wrath by sending slices of his cake to the steel industry's chief negotiator and the president of the steelworkers' union. They are likely to find his disapproval unimpressive and stale.

Mitchell can draw comfort from the likelihood that he would have won his bet had there been no steel strike. Of course, Stevenson would probably have won the last election had there been no Eisenhower.