Jesse Gets Ruffled

The week was enough to try a saint's patience, let alone the patience of Jesse Jones.

First he was called by the Senate's bustling Truman Committee, all set to pin the rubber shortage on somebody. Jones dodged the pin point. Backed up by five of his experts and lawyers, the Secretary of Commerce belligerently cocked his good right ear at the committee, stubbornly parried its jabs.

The committee wanted to know about a recommendation the old National Defense Advisory Commission sent to Jones in October 1940: that the U.S. should start immediately on 100,000 tons of synthetic-rubber capacity. Jones did not sign any contracts until seven months later; then aimed at only 40,000 tons. How come?

How come! said Jesse Jones. Well, there were the problems of negotiating contracts, bypassing patent disputes, figuring which synthetics were best. Senator Tom Connally, always eager to help a Texas chum, chimed' in: "Along with the baby they [NDAC] left all these other side issues and problems to be determined. . . ."

"Yes," said grateful Jesse Jones. "The baby that was left on our doorstep had not been cleaned or washed. . . ."

The Committee also wanted to know about the U.S. stockpile of natural rubber, which Jones had almost two years to build up. How come the stockpile was not bigger?

How come! said Jesse. The U.S.-owned stockpile was now some 340,000 tons, and Jones thought that was pretty good. It would have been even better, but the British-Dutch rubber cartel had turned the spigot on only a little way at first. The cartel did not want a "large stockpile that might . . . destroy the market."

Fighting Words. Congress has always been loath to tangle too closely with The Old Man of RFC, and the Truman Committee was no exception. Not so the Post, Washington's most potent newspaper, which burst out with a red-hot editorial, pointing out that Mr. Jones was hiding behind a screen of blame on the NDAC, the British, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the President:

". . . The chief aim of Mr. Jones's testimony was to create an impression 'that he had done his utmost-that any failure of accomplishment ought to be chalked up against somebody else. . . .

"The plain truth is that Mr. Jones fell down rather badly on the job, . . . The proof of an official's worth to his country lies in his ability to meet and conquer the kind of obstacles of which Mr. Jones complains."

Jesse Jones, who had gotten by for more years with less criticism than any other Administration official, read these words with narrowing blue-grey eyes.

Fighting Speech. Worse was to come. That afternoon up rose Nevada's handsome, young (35) Senator Berkeley L. Bunker, to deliver the most blazing speech made yet in Congress against Emperor Jones's bureaucratic empire.

Bunker was angry about a plant put up in his native State (Nevada) by Basic Magnesium, Inc., under contract with Jones's Defense Plants Corp. From a Truman subcommittee report, Bunker figured that the company had furnished only $50,000, but stood to make a profit of $2,140,000 (4,280%) in a single year. Cried he: "If the agreement . . . represents a cross section of conduct on the part of the Defense Plant Corporation . . . we are tolerating the existence of an agency of the Government that is so corrupt as to make profiteering in the last war look like petty larceny by comparison."

Senator Bunker is a serious Young Democrat, a Mormon Bishop who was ap pointed to the Senate in 1940, who had heretofore held his peace while learning the ropes. But to Emperor Jones, he was just an annoying young squirt. Jones dashed off a hot reply :

"Statements . . . unworthy of a U.S. Senator. . . . The Senator must know these statements are untrue. . . . False and misleading statements which it takes no courage to make under his cloak of immunity."

Fight. That evening Jesse Jones went to a gala party of Washington's hail-fellow Alfalfa Club, but his heart was not in the fun. His Texas temper, tender from years of being left alone, still twitched and writhed. He bumped smack into the Washington Post's publisher, trim, high-domed Eugene Meyer.

Hulking Jesse Jones, 68, 6 ft. 3, 220 lb., grabbed Meyer's coat lapels, shook him like an angry bear. Meyer's pince-nez shattered on the floor. Then Meyer, 66, 5 ft. 10, 186 1/2lb., who took boxing lessons for two years from Heavyweight Champion James J. Corbett, came up with a haymaker aimed straight at the Jones jaw. It missed-and other guests pulled the two heavyweights apart.

For the Secretary of Commerce, it was the end of an unlamented day.

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