Block Buster

Harry Truman used some dynamite last week to blast loose at least a part of his civil rights program. At his orders, Solicitor General Philip Perlman, in a speech in New York City, touched off the explosion. Henceforth, said Perlman, the Federal Housing Administration will not insure any loans made on private dwellings which are going to be restricted on the basis of race, creed or color. The policy may affect one-third of all new housing in the U.S.

In effect, the President was using a housing act to press a reform which Congress did not specify in passing the act. The loudest outcries came from builders and bankers in the South, and in New York and New Jersey. Even housing officials sympathetic to its sociological aims wondered: Would the new rule endanger the nation's healthy building boom?

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