Pro & Con

Still floating among the grapefruit rinds and noxious smells of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation's past was the question of its future.

Last week outspoken Marriner S. Eccles, member of the Federal Reserve Board, joined those who thought RFC ought to go. "There is no real place in a private-enterprise economy for direct governmental lending to the private economy," Eccles told a Senate committee, "any more than there is a place for direct Government ownership of the means of production." Eccles had once supported Government loans to fill "gaps" in the private credit structure, but in these days, with so much available credit around, he felt they were "socialistic," a threat to the free-enterprise system, and unnecessary.

But RFC had an emphatic defender on the committee. He was Arkansas' J. William Fulbright, the very Senator who had done the most to bring to light the sorry record of favoritism and influence in RFC operations. Fulbright was convinced that a modified, well-run RFC is still vitally needed in some parts of the country, including his own home state. In such places, he argued, local banks often haven't the capital for business loans, and far-off Wall Street isn't interested in expanding small-sized industries and businesses.

Though the argument as to whether to abolish RFC entirely was still not over, the committee unanimously approved President Truman's nomination of W. Stuart Symington to be the single boss of a reorganized RFC and the full Senate confirmed him later without dissent. Able Man-About-Government Stu Symington solemnly assured the Senators that he was "beholden" to no five-percenters or influence-peddlers, an assertion that few Congressmen needed reassurance about.

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