Mr. Ickes Reverses Himself

No. 1 New Deal pinchfist is Harold Le Clair Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, known to one & all as a very tough man with a dollar. He is the only Cabinet member who tiptoes about his Department turning off electric lights and running water fountains; his WPA was managed on a theory of Federal economy directly opposite to that of Harry Hopkins' WPA. But he has long reserved special wrath for a widespread business practice: submitting identical bids on Government contracts. Long ago Mr. Ickes discovered, with a Donald-Ducklike squawk, that there is almost no such thing as a low bidder; on many contracts all the bids were identical to the penny for hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of work and materials.

"Honest Harold" found a simple and paingiving answer: he awarded all identically bid contracts to the bidder located farthest from the proposed project. This automatically upped the winner's transportation costs. The Government gained nothing; but the winner had greater expenses.

While Ickes vacationed last week his aides revealed that he had reversed his policy: in the future the winner in all cases of identical bidding will be the firm nearest to the site of project. Reasons were two: 1) defense transportation shortage; 2) Mr. Ickes now believes that this procedure will be so pleasant for the winner that other firms will be less likely to agree to identical bids.

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