The New OPA

Prentiss Brown, OPA's new Administrator, reasoned: to the U.S. people, OPA has seemed a bully, an irritant, a source of confusion. Nevertheless, in all Washington bureaucracy, few bureaus are so vital. Rationing is necessary; price and rent controls are basic to a wartime economy. The need, therefore is to coax and cajole the citizens into liking OPA, much as tough urchins are taught to like cops.

Sensible Prentiss Brown would rather be a Mister than a Czar, and he believes the wheedle is better than the wallop. By last week he had made marked progress in converting OPA from a public-be-damned bureaucracy into a group of people who are trying to help the U.S. somehow live through the war.

The conversion took shape thus: first, he began to streamline the sprawling agency (48,500 paid employes, 50,000 volunteers, eight regional offices, hundreds of state and district units). Next, he sought to win friends with a new policy of friendliness. Over each of his plan's two phases Prentiss Brown set a deputy.

Streamliner. An ex-Governor and ex-Senator from Iowa, Clyde LaVerne Herring, will prune deadwood from OPA. Clyde Herring's first chore will be a top-to-bottom survey of OPA. Separate price, rent and rationing control offices may be combined, the eight regional offices may be erased. Clyde Herring will look for ways to consolidate service, eliminate waste.

To start the process, Prentiss Brown ordered no further expansion of OPA per sonnel--except in the rationing division, where more clerks are needed for meat rationing.

A reduction seemed to be under way in OPA's oversize legal staff, now about 2,700 strong. First casualty was John E. Hamm, Leon Henderson's cousin, who resigned as Senior Deputy Administrator. Next, C. David Ginsburg, once Leon Henderson's right hand, resigned as General Counsel. Deferred from military service at Leon Henderson's request, Lawyer Ginsburg, 30, sought an Army commission, as Congressmen fumed. Prentiss Brown moved shrewdly: he had already ordered no draft deferments for anyone on OPA's payroll.

Salesman. Prentiss Brown's second major deputy is big, genial Lou Russel Maxon, who built up Maxon, Inc. of Detroit from a nickel-&-dime business into one of the foremost U.S. advertising agencies. He has the job of making the people love the price policy. Brown and Maxon went to work to humanize OPA:

>To put the homemaker's point of view; into OPA policymaking, Maxon chose as his assistant an American housewife, Mrs. Philip L. Crowlie of Huron, S.D., a smalltown clubwoman, mother of three.

>To get the Congressman's point of view, Prentiss Brown tactfully invited the Senate to set up a committee to consult with OPA; like trout jumping for a fly, the legislators snapped at the invitation.

>OPA eased the most irritating rule of all: it put Eastern motorists on their honor not to pleasure-drive.

>For coffee drinkers there was good news: the coffee ration will be 16% larger in the period beginning March 22.

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