Home Front Cabinet

Each time the President has set up a big new agency, most of the citizenry has sighed a whoosh of relief and gone off about their business. But by last week, when OWM was created, the people had no breath left. They were all whooshed out. One agency after another had sprung open at the seams under savage pressure from without, revealing civil wars boiling within.

If there was skepticism about OWM, it seemed something of a pity. This was the President's bravest and best try yet to do three great tasks: 1) to develop really strong overall programs to make maximum use of the nation's industry and manpower, 2) to resolve the bitter conflicts within the Administration, 3) to meet squarely most of the pressures from without.

OWM, hailed as a "war cabinet," is not a war cabinet in a strict sense. It is not built around Mr. Roosevelt, as Britain's war cabinet is built around Winston Churchill. OWM is not designed to pass on great military decisions; its purpose is to free the President from the much-bungled domestic front, to let him spend his time at diplomacy and military management.

It was high time. OPA was disintegrating. Labor was in turmoil. Congress had not yet passed a real tax bill, and even threatened to set up a new agency of its own to deal with civilian supply.

Odds Are Even. The President's move headed off that possibility, and his new pattern soothed Congress in that it followed almost exactly the main Congressional recommendations. There were good reasons for believing the new reorganization might work:

> Jimmy Byrnes, who is now really the czar of all Washington czars, is one of the country's ablest politicians, in the better sense of the word. He is trusted by Congress and the President--and Mr. Roosevelt is expected to back Byrnes's decisions to the limit. This was never true with former top administrators.

> OWM is closely geared to the military through Secretaries Knox and Stimson, and by the presence of Harry Hopkins, who is close to all great strategic decisions, and is immensely powerful through his job as head of the Munitions Assignments Board, which divides military supplies among Army, Navy and Lend-Lease. (Hopkins, long entrenched in his White House foxhole against the savage attacks of his thousands of enemies, will now, by virtue of his job, be in a much more exposed position.)

> In placing Judge Fred Moore Vinson in charge of the Office of Economic Stabilization, the President and Jimmy Byrnes seemed to have chosen wisely & well.

Bulky, sad-eyed, drawling Judge Vinson, 53, is a first-rate authority on the U.S. tax laws, which he can quote, provision by provision, with all the "hereinafters" properly included, in a dazzling display of mnemonics. As a Kentucky Congressman for 14 years, he rose so fast as to threaten the seniority system. His special technique is to arm himself with such a mastery of the facts at issue that he can gently but thoroughly demolish the opposition. A kind, solid and reassuring citizen, he became last week the best and most important new face in the Washington war in many months.

Job Ahead. The overall problem of the overall board is to convince the U.S. public finally that gun production really means not just less butter but less real civilian income. The further task is to make the Government strong enough and well enough organized to exact the necessary sacrifices equitably.

Jimmy Byrnes only too happily handed Fred Vinson his job as OES director. Said Czar Vinson, who still had a sigh left: "I am smiling for the last time today."

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