Mr. Smith's Budget

Like many another Mrs. Smith, tall, brunette Lillian Smith* of Arlington, Va., is the budget director of her family. A few weeks ago, she went to her husband with a sheaf of bills and a realization that had her close to tears: the Smith family could not make ends meet much longer. There was the big insurance premium, and the mortgage payment. Everything was so high, and now that the four children were older, expenses would be higher than ever.

Lawrence would be off to college in September and Mary would be ready for col lege in two years.

Her husband thought hard. Several times in recent months he had been at the point of chucking his Government job. He knew that a man of his ability and experience could do much better in private business; a lot of his friends had certainly found greener pastures -- at three or four times the salaries they had worked for in Washington.

Harold Dewey Smith, for seven years the hardworking, $10,000-a-year Director of the U.S. Budget, who had kept tabs on $400,000,000,000 of Government spending, resolved to do something about his own financial dilemma.

Last week something got done about it in a hurry. A plum dropped in his lap -- the $22,500-a-year tax-freer vice-presidency of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Regretfully, President Truman accepted Harold Smith's resignation, wrote him a glowing farewell : "Besides great ability, you brought to the work fidelity, integrity and loyalty . . .

unselfish devotion." Root of Evil. In his letter of resigna tion, Harold Smith took a parting snick at the root of a Government evil: too little money for able men. Wrote he: "It would have been only a short time until existing limitations on the salaries of public officials would have forced me out. ... I could not have continued without reducing certain fixed charges which I have regarded for many years as important to the security of my family." For about 15 years, Kansas-born Harold Smith had researched and taught the science of government, had served in local and state administrations. Finally he had come to the top, to become the all but indispensable inter-bureau diplomat and master of complex finance and administration. At 48, balancing his personal books, the best that he could say was that he had broken even with his "fixed charges." By dint of such occasional frugalities as cutting his son's hair, he now had a modest house in a middle-class Washington suburb, a 285-acre farm in Virginia (a nerves-saving hobby for which he had mortgaged his house), one ancient and one-not-so-ancient car, a $30,000 life insurance policy--and his handsome family (see cut).

His departure highlighted a-general trend in Washington: many another able man had left since the end of the war, and for the same reason (Oscar Cox, Albert Browning, Abe Fortas, Daniel W. Bell, et aL). Congress was making motions towards raising its own salaries. The same would soon have to be done for administrative offices.

*Not to be confused with the Georgia author of Strange Fruit.

/- The equal of a $37,500 taxable salary.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.