Davis to Reserve

Technically there is only one vacancy on the Federal Reserve Board because Ralph Waldo Morrison's resignation still lies unaccepted on President Roosevelt's desk (TIME, June 1). The unoccupied seat, earmarked for a farmers' spokesman, has not been warmed since the new Board was appointed last January. Last week to fill this eight-year office the President sent to the Senate for confirmation the name of a man whose signature could be identified by at least 3,000,000 U. S. farmers--Chester Charles Davis, longtime AAAdministrator.

Mr. Davis is no banker. "I probably will be of little use on the Board until another such period [as the post-War depression] comes along," said the slight, nervous, greying farm expert last week, referring to what he considered the sorry lack of coordination in Federal banking and agricultural policy at that time. Born 48 years ago on an Iowa farm, Chester Davis has spent his entire adult life thinking about farmers, first as an editor of a farm paper, then as organizer of Montana's State Department of Agriculture, later as grain-marketing director of the Illinois Agricultural Association, finally winding up in the George Peek-Henry Wallace group of professional farm-aiders. An able administrator, a persuasive negotiator, he has kept his old friendships through all the convulsions that have rocked the Department of Agriculture in the past three years.

His sympathies gravitated toward his deposed predecessor, Mr. Peek, however, and a few months ago President Roosevelt bundled him off to Europe to inspect foreign farm conditions. It was after that trip that Mr. Davis made the curious suggestion that one good way to promote foreign farm markets was to withhold exports of U. S. automobiles from countries which did not buy U. S. wheat, cotton, pork, etc. Lately Mr. Davis has often been reported on the verge of resignation from the Department of Agriculture. That might have had political repercussion among farmers, who like Mr. Davis and would naturally conclude that he had been squeezed out of the Administration. In his new job he will draw $15,000 per year instead of the $10,000 he has been getting.

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