No Idler

When Roger Dearborn Lapham stepped down as mayor of San Francisco last January (his campaign pledge had been "One Term Only"), he let it be known that he intended to play plenty of golf (he used to shoot in the low 703) and take a three-month trip to Europe. But last week 64-year-old Roger Lapham decided to leave his clubs in the locker room and forswear the Grand Tour. The reason: Economic Cooperation Administrator Paul Hoffman had tapped him for chief of ECA's $338 million China aid mission. It was one of the toughest jobs going.

Hoffman buttonholed Lapham late last month at a meeting of the Commerce Department's Business Advisory Council in White Sulphur Springs, invited him to come to work for EGA. Later Lapham talked with George Marshall and Averell Harriman. Said his son, Roger Jr.: "I don't think it took much convincing on their part. He doesn't enjoy being idle."

Lapham professed little knowledge of China (he has been there twice), but Hoffman was chiefly impressed with his administrative talents. He had been with Herbert Hoover's American Relief Administration after World War I, was called to Washington on the eve of World War II to serve on the National Defense Mediation Board, later on the War Labor Board. As mayor, he had put San Francisco's needs ahead of politics, had rammed through city purchase (for $7,500,000) of the Market Street Railway. He had been president, later board chairman, of the American-Hawaiian Steamship Co. for 18 years.

He would be off for Shanghai by June 1.

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