A Bowles Presentation

Chester Bowles, the Senate Banking and Currency Committee found out last week, did not spend 14 years as a high-powered Manhattan advertising man (Benton and Bowles) for nothing. Neat, decorous and urbane (in vivid contrast to his pudgy, rumpled, truculent predecessor, Leon Henderson), the OPAdministrator appeared before the Committeee to begin the fight for renewal of the Emergency Price Control and Stabilization Act under which the OPA operates. (The Act will expire June 30.) His "presentation" was Benton and Bowles at its most persuasive.*

First off, Salesman Bowles disarmed his listeners by freely confessing unpopular OPA's many past faults and mistakes: the maddening complexity of its forms and regulations, its failure to consult industry, its overcentralization in Washington, its internal flaws of personnel and organization, its lack of experienced businessmen. Most of these faults the OPAdministrator excused on grounds of haste, inexperience, and the monstrous size of the OPA job (8 million prices now regulated in 3 million business establishments, direct contact with 30 million housewives and 39 million automobile drivers, etc., etc.). All such faults, he assured the Senators, have been or are being remedied.

With his prospects now in mellow and receptive mood, Administrator Bowles launched into his real sales talk. In cooler postwar years, he asserted, OPA's performance will be recognized as "one of the best jobs done during the war." He proceeded to prove it by not droning statistics, or by making belligerent assertions, but with a series of 106 big (2 by 3 ft.), easy-to-read charts, mounted on a 7-ft. easel and shifted by a clerk as Chester Bowles made the accompanying narration. Main theme: thanks to OPA, the U.S. has come off quite well in World War II as compared with World War I. Example: after 53 months of War I, the cost of living had risen 65%; after 53 months of War II it had risen only 26%--without hurting production.

The Senators listened intently from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. At the end each one stepped forward to shake Administrator Bowie's hand, congratulate him on a superb performance, ask him to put his charts in booklet form. This once, at least, bureaucracy had looked good to a group of U.S. Congressmen.

* Ex-Partner William Benton is now making persuasive presentations for the University of Chicago, its Encyclopedia Britannica, its radio Round Table, and for the Committee for Economic Development

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