New Reconstructors

BOARDS & BUREAUS

Last week President Hoover completed reorganization of Reconstruction Finance Corp. under the terms of the new Relief Act. Governor Meyer of the Federal Reserve was dropped from the R. F. C. chairmanship. To succeed him the President was determined to appoint a Democrat, thus making a majority of the R. F. C. board members of that party.* By turning R. F. C. control, at least nominally, over to his political opponents, the President hoped to silence campaign talk that the corporation was being used for partisan purposes for the G. 0. P.

First, President Hoover considered in order Owen D. Young, Alfred Emanuel Smith and Newton Diehl Baker, for the Meyer job. For one reason or another none of them was "available." Then dropping a good way down the Democratic list, the President settled on 68-year-old Atlee Pomerene, Ohio lawyer, onetime (1911-23) Senator and co-prosecutor of the Government's oil scandal cases. Mr. Pomerene was sworn in as R. F. C. chairman.

This appointment made Washington gasp. Mr. Pomerene, a solemn, bookish man with a Websterian manner, whose hobby is growing early table corn, is not a banker. He is not a famed executive. While he made a good Senator, his name, it was claimed, was not familiar enough to inspire nation-wide confidence.

"No man today can refuse to accept responsibility and I feel as if I had been drafted," declared Mr. Pomerene as he hurried from Cleveland to Washington to see the President. When he arrived at the White House, the man who will help administer $3,800,000,000 worth of Federal credit, told correspondents he had only 98-c- in his pocket. "And I've been asked for that at least a dozen times," he added.

To succeed Farm Loan Commissioner Paul Bestor who was also dropped from the R. F. C. by the new law, the President named Charles Addison Miller, upState New York Republican. Mr. Miller, also a lawyer, is president of Savings Bank of Utica. He writes detective stories to amuse himself. He took Charles Gates Dawes's place as R. F. C. president.

Last week the R. F. C. made its first direct relief loan--$3,000,000 to Illinois. At the same time it warned States it would lend only as "a last resort" after every other source of credit had been exhausted. Presumably the Illinois loan was for use in creditless Chicago.

*R. F. C. Democrats: Texas' Jesse Holman Tones, Arkansas' Harvey Crowley Couch, Utah's Wilson McCarthy.

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