Busy Signal

Into the top operational job of expediting U.S. war production this week moved big, genial William Henry Harrison, 58, president of International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. As boss of the newly created National Production Authority, Harrison* has the massive job of determining, through priorities and allocations, who shall get what and how much of strategic and scarce materials, and what cuts shall be made in civilian production.

Harrison, who was unofficially named for his job four weeks ago, had no sooner been sworn in this week as administrator than he began preparing his first two orders: 1) a basic priority which will give military contracts precedence over non-military orders in any U.S. plant; 2) an inventory control order to prevent hoarding, by forbidding companies from buying more than normal supplies of materials.

As Secretary of Commerce Charles Sawyer ordered export controls restored on scarce steel products, Harrison conferred with 21 steel company presidents called in to discuss formation of an industry advisory committee which would help him set up voluntary allocations for steel.

White-haired, Brooklyn-born Bill Harrison, who worked his way up from a $6-a-week A.T. & T. repairman to engineering vice president of the company in 1936, has unraveled crossed wires in Washington before. In 1940 Defense Production Boss Bill Knudsen, looking for a man to boss construction, called up A.T. & T.'s President Walter Gifford. He was not in, so the operator switched the call to Harrison, who offered to go to Washington to discuss the problem. He wound up taking the job himself. Soon he was production chief of the War Production Board, later served as Signal Corps procurement chief in the Army Service Forces. Harrison had major general's stars and a Distinguished Service Medal when he returned to A.T. & T., moved from there to the I.T. & T.** presidency in 1948.

*No kin to William Henry ("Tippecanoe and Tyler too") Harrison, ninth President of the U.S.

**I.T. & T., which controls telephone & telegraph companies operating outside the U.S., is no kin to A.T. & T., whose operations are confined to the U.S.

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