A Battle Won?

One noon hour last week two slim, trim, pretty girls, with yellow hair and peach-&-cream skin, met in the cafeteria on the roof of Washington's new Social Security Building, lunched together for the first time.

One girl was North Dakota-born Lucille Henricks, 23, secretary to Donald Marr Nelson.

The other was Montana-born Helen Madden, 30, secretary to Leon Henderson. The well-complected girls became friends over the telephone long ago in the constant crisscross of Nelson-Henderson calls. They had reason to decide to get acquainted, as they sat in the green-leather-&-chromium lounge, munched cream cheese and veal sandwiches. They were destined for greater collaboration, like their bosses, who had become, by Presidential order on the night before, the key men in U.S. defense management.

When Lucille and Helen read their papers that morning they felt, as did many another painfully harassed U.S. citizen, that perhaps the U.S. had at last won a great battle at home--a prime requisite to winning the battles abroad that World War II may demand. At long last the President had moved decisively, whipping the vast sprawl of defense management into its first clear sense-making shape, dominated by an authoritative body called SPAB--Supply Priorities & Allocations Board. For the first time the President had delegated real authority, although he still jealously reserved his final say. On the 15-month anniversary of Defense he had at last accepted a way to get everything done that must be done.

Judicious Judge Samuel Irving Rosenman (TIME, Sept. 1) had devised the scheme. His orders from the President were to survey the entire program, to suggest a reorganization which would settle the increasingly louder bickering. "Sammy the Rose," who believes in the efficiency of simpleness, began by calling on all defense chiefs. After a day of calls he would return to his quiet, comfortable White House room, knit his judicial brow, write down the problems to be solved.

Next step was to confer, confer, confer. He saw nearly everyone even remotely connected with defense management; got bales of opinions, advice, ideas, tips, plain and fruity gossip. His regulated mind coldly assayed strengths and frailties, measured promise against performance. Night after night he trotted back to the calm of the White House, puzzled over his notes; through whole days read books, articles, memoranda. He tried to weigh objectives, ponder human values, disregard individual personalities. Finally he drew his conclusions, drafted three plans basically similar.

Judge Rosenman then took his plans back to the defense bosses. So thorough had been his thinking, so deeply prepared were his answers to any objections, there was not a single dissent.

The President returned, brooded over the plans. As always he was reluctant to move, to hurt the feelings of incompetents who must be shuffled out of the way. But the pressure of public opinion was on him crushingly; and the demands for a speedup in U.S. production now circled the world, from Britain through Russia to China. He had a personal reason too: he was heartily sick of the internecine quarrels which necessarily had to be settled over his desk. He decided to sign, and gave to his intimates word that he wanted all the quarrels moved into Henry's room.

The Setup. Henry's room was already full of jobs and responsibilities. The President's old scheme to make the Vice-Presidency into a job of work (TIME, Nov. 11) had been carried out almost too thoroughly. Henry Agard Wallace had a Constitutional job presiding over the Senate, he had a bigger second job, never visioned by the Founding Fathers, which might end in his presiding over the world: chairman of the Economic Defense Board.

Nevertheless the Rosenman-Roosevelt reorganization began by making Henry Wallace chairman of SPAB. This was done for lots of little reasons and one big one: it made Henry a real No. 2 President, sitting at the head of the group which will run the U.S. war effort. He had the title and the responsibility: he was the political Bernard M. Baruch of World War II.

The working Baruch for the duration was the man chosen to be SPAB's executive director: Donald Marr Nelson, ex-vice president of Sears, Roebuck & Co., and until last week OPM's Purchasing Director.

Besides Chairman Wallace, the SPABoard consists of War Secretary Henry L. Stimson; Navy Secretary Frank Knox; William S. Knudsen, OPM's Director-General; Sidney Hillman, labor's man; Harry L. Hopkins, Lend-Lease Administrator, Defense-Aid director; and Leon Henderson in charge of Civilian Supply.

Left entirely independent was Mr. Henderson's Office of Price Administration (OPA). Prices will still be managed by Leon Henderson, who became a split personality. He will be his own liaison man between his two selves, managing civilian supply from his vantage point on the SPABoard, controlling prices from a vantage point at OPA.

The new setup has one advantage over the shadowy previous organizations: hopefully, it can run itself. Any problem that cannot be settled down the line will automatically run directly up to Executive Director Donald Nelson. If the problem is too big for the Executive Director he will present it to his Board. The seven directors will then take a vote. Their decision is final unless the losing side appeals it to the President. (Mr. Roosevelt has served notice that he does not want to be bothered with appeals from every nickel-nickel decision downstairs.)

Last week Virginia's clearheaded Senator Harry Byrd allowed the SPAB was an improvement on the previous mess. "Yet, after all," said he, "one man, the ablest in America, can do a better job than a seven-man board . . . . Let us have a procurement director . . . with power to act." Thus it remained to be seen whether the new setup could genuinely act.

To make this setup a little blood had to be shed. Two weak spots in OPM were Production, headed by John David Biggers, and Priorities headed by Edward R. Stettinius. Both were given jobs in which they may have more success.

Edward R. ("Big Ed") Stettinius was promoted to the post of Lend-Lease Administrator--which will still be supervised by Harry Hopkins. (Stettinius last week telephoned a chum happily, chortled: "I got the plum.")

John Biggers, whose handling of political hedgehogs in OPM had caused enmities, became Mr. Stettinius' opposite on the London end of the telephone: Lend-Lease Administrator in England--although W. Averell Harriman and Mr. Hopkins will continue to have the basic responsibility for that end, too.

Most important and immediate was Priorities, where nearly every crime against common sense had been committed. The long months of priority mismanagement had resulted in the U.S. turning up a magnificent pile of shortages. Here the Rosenman-Roosevelt plan displayed great cunning and foresight. Donald Nelson was also given the Priorities job, which is central to everything in defense.

When Donald Nelson's picture appeared on TIME'S cover last February, in the foggy, groping first winter of defense, the big easy-mannered buyer already loomed as one of the most far-sighted defense managers, at a crisis-time when ability to foresee the future was even more precious than aluminum. Very early he formed an axis with Leon Henderson, quietly backed him when Henderson's stock was selling at zero in March and April. For Nelson agreed with Henderson on a vital point, the quotation appearing under Henderson's TIME cover picture May 12: "By God, we should have learned a few things from the last war!" The two, more than any other two defense managers, had both hindsight & foresight, more nearly comprehended the problem's gigantic whole.

The Washington Times-Herald noted that Nelson had "almost magically" escaped criticism. There was no magic in it: Nelson had done an enormous job well, held his tongue, kept his head--and above all had truly seen the size of the job ahead. He had been, with Leon Henderson, the first to insist that the defense program could not be superimposed on top of the normal U.S. economy; that there was only one choice between guns and butter.

The Men. But Leon Henderson got even more out of the reorganization, in some ways, than did his colleague Nelson. The bulgy, cigar-eating Price Boss became one of the Big Seven SPABoard-members to manage Civilian Supply. "The Great Jawbone" will have a voice with all other members in every problem of allocation and priorities; he remains Price boss, responsible only to the President, free to exercise his now-famed method of "jawbone control" of inflation.

Unchanged was Sidney Hillman's labor responsibility. Submerged a little, but directed toward the job he is best at--production--was William S. Knudsen. The big red-faced Dane-born motormaker got a new assistant, who will take Biggers' job as actual production chief: William Henry Harrison, 48, vice president of American Telephone & Telegraph Co., a veteran construction supervisor, a big, hearty man.

To replace Nelson as OPM Purchasing Director the President and Sam Rosenman chose Douglas C. MacKeachie, 41, formerly New England manager for Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., a scraggly-looking genial man who has already saved the Army millions of dollars while giving the soldiers better food.

Another well-deserved promotion came to William L. Batt, 46, who was Biggers' deputy production director, is now OPM's Materials Director. Batt, a hefty, blunt man with a red face and short pug nose, a powerful off-the-cuff orator, has been booming his head off trying to arouse industry, will now team with Harrison to supply the materials, cut them up into guns, tanks, planes.

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