Uncle Sam, Merchant

A smart, energetic industrialist from St. Louis, W. Stuart Symington III. moved in as the new boss of the Surplus Property Board this week. Thereby he took on one of the toughest administrative jobs in Washington--the disposal of roughly $90 billion of surplus war property held by the Government (TIME, June 11).

Forthwith, Symington must determine what is worth the attempt to sell. He can be reasonably sure that the $65 billion of tanks, planes, ammunition and other combat items will have little resale value. But there will still be $25 billion of salable items (merchant ships, plants, tractors, trucks, clothing, etc.).

How well he does the job depends on how-well he can make the confused Surplus Property Act of 1944 work. When it was passed, it was loudly damned as unworkable. Retiring Board Chairman Guy M. Gillette did little to take the curse off, laid down no clear-cut policy to sell the billions to come. To get rid of it, Symington will need to flavor caution (to keep property out of the hands of fly-by-night promoters), with shrewd sales promotion. He will have to find new uses for old products.

A Boston store has given SPB one moneymaking example. It bought surplus gas masks from SPB. From rubber tubes on the mask, it made bicycle handlebar covers; from the glass lenses it made workshop goggles; by painting the canisters it sold them as powder-puff holders. From what was left it made toy gas masks.

To find similar uses for many another article, SPB is now setting up a research staff. It has already found that surplus buoys owned by the U.S. Maritime Commission make fine farm water-storage tanks.

Shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser this week offered a solution to one top politico-economic problem of the Surplus Property Board--postwar operation of Utah's $200,000,000 Geneva steel plant. Kaiser announced that he is forming a "syndicate of western financial and industrial interests to be known as the Kaiser syndicate," to lease Geneva from the Defense Plant Corp. and operate it. The syndicate may include the Colorado Fuel & Iron Corp., now concluding a merger with Wickwire-Spencer Steel Co. Kaiser informed DPC President Sam H. Husbands that the syndicate also has "under consideration" plans to build $62,000,000 worth of steel fabricating mills on the west coast, including a railroad car-making plant.

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