D-T-U and Defense

Seldom does a Governmentman give business a pat on its collective back. But one did last week: bushy-browed Clifton Eugene Mack, director of the Treasury Department's Procurement Division, who last November was given the job of buying $55,000,000 of household equipment for 28,500 homes for civilian defense workers (near airfields, barracks, etc.). Asked how his purchases were going, Director Mack said: "In their dealings with us, plumbing, heating and household equipment manufacturers have shown that they place patriotism above their desire for profits."

Director Mack had got cooperation that was worthwhile. Nash-Kelvinator shaved the price on 25,000 electric refrigerators to $52 each (retail price $105). A medicine cabinetmaker knocked down his wholesale price from $5 to $2. Another Midwestern manufacturer, after quoting rock bottom on about 30,000 bath tubs, confided: "But you can save $2 a tub if you buy the fittings from the same people we buy them from." So Mack bought "stripped" tubs, got fittings for them from the cheaper source. Savings: almost $60,000 on tubs alone. Said Director Mack, pleased as Punch: "I don't know how they do it."

Henry Reed of American Radiator and Charles Nolte of Crane (neither of whom got a drip of Mack's shower) knew exactly how it was done. By buying directly from manufacturers, Purchaser Mack had eliminated the wholesaler's commission. To the tradition-soaked leaders of an industry which believes in the sanctity of the wholesaler's discount and in the wholesaler's friend, the master plumber, as the only true outlet to the public, this was heresy. Adherents to The System, like Crane and American Radiator, call the renegades d-t-u's because they will sell directly to you.

Radiator's Reed defends his orthodoxy by saying: "Only the Master Plumbers have the knowledge, experience and skill necessary to protect the health of the nation by correct installation." The industry's No. 1 d-t-uer, Sears, Roebuck's General Robert Wood, countered: "Henry Reed has been so damn wrong for the last ten years that it's pitiful." In his attacks on the construction industry, Trustbuster Thurman Arnold has befriended the d-t-u's, broadened their market.

Not interested in trade rows, but only in the lowest prices is Director Mack. Last week, Clifton Mack took a deep, relaxing breath, purred: "It's wonderful."

Quick to congratulate Charles E. (for Erwin) Wilson on his election as president (hitherto acting president) of General Motors Corp. last week were Charles E. (for Edward) Wilson, president of General Electric Co., and Charles E. (for Eben) Wilson, vice president of Worthington Pump & Machinery Corp.

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