Four Orphans

All that was left of Reconstruction Finance Corp. filed into its board room one day last week and sat down in four of the seven chairs around the directors' table. Secretary Woodin, ex-officio a board member, had hurried over from the Treasury to make up a quorum with Texas' Jesse Holman Jones, Arkansas' Harvey Crowley Couch, Utah's Wilson McCarthy,

Democrats all. The three empty chairs were silent reminders of the fact that President Roosevelt had not yet gotten around to filling three Republican directorships. The business before the board was the election of a chairman, a post vacant since March 4 when bald, bumbling Atlee Pomerene, Hoover appointee, was forced out by the Senate's refusal to confirm his nomination. Together went the Woodin, Couch and McCarthy heads. When they came apart Jesse Jones, Houston publisher, realtor, banker, lumberman and promoter, found himself unanimously elected R. F. C. chairman. Chairman Jones has been on the R. F. C. board since its inception (February 1932), has acted as chairman in rotation with the other three active members for two months. He has seen R. F. C. loan resources rise to $3,500,000,000, plus $300,000,000 for state jobless relief. In 15 months he has helped to pass out $2.260,021,958 to banks, railroads, insurance companies, building & loan associations, farmers and the like. Of this sum $464,753.681 had been repaid up to April 22. As Chairman Jones took command, the four-man R. F. C.'s lending power was still about $1,704,000,000. Of late the R. F. C. has suffered due to lack of aggressive leadership and clear-cut purpose within the Board. Its importance as a relief agency has dwindled. Its public works program is still meshed in red tape. Neglected by the White House, it has become an administrative orphan in Washington. Congress continues to sniff suspiciously at its past. Last week the Senate sent the House a bill prohibiting the R. F. C. from lending money to corporations which paid any of their executives more than $17,500 per year, thus barring as borrowers practically all railroads, big banks and large industrial concerns.

Widespread is the expectation that sooner or later President Roosevelt plans to overhaul the R. F. C., both as to principle and personnel, restore its lost prestige, integrate it in his broad industrial program. Presumably, tall, pokerfaced Jesse Jones, the Democracy's host when Al Smith was nominated at Houston in 1928, is the President's choice for chief financial reconstructor when the blueprints are ready.

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