New Boss

The new boss of U.S. transportation is a bemedaled World War I veteran. Colonel John Monroe ("Steamboat") Johnson, 65, quietly moved in last week as director of the Office of Defense Transportation.* For Johnson the move was a promotion from four years' service as one of eleven ICC commissioners.

For 35 years, South Carolina-born Colonel Johnson was a successful civil engineer (bridges and drainage), for five years was Assistant Secretary of Commerce under the late, gentle "Uncle" Dan Roper.

As Assistant Secretary, Johnson notably worked to promote safety in commercial aviation. In 1937 he blocked a projected transatlantic air race to Paris, as a reckless "stunt." He helped push through Congress the Merchant Marine Act of 1936.

As ICCommissioner he gained the gratitude of the railroads by helping them streamline the archaic regulations governing freight routings. Last month, aware of the increasing threat of the manpower shortage to the railroads, he recommended that all railroad employes now in the Army but not overseas be demobilized and returned to their jobs.

Not even his best friends would argue that this background makes Johnson a qualified transportation expert. But he does inherit from the late Joseph B. Eastman a smoothly functioning ODT, and from his ICC experience a practical knowledge of the problems of wartime transportation.

*He is nicknamed after a famed Southern baseball umpire, of the Southern and Sally leagues, so called because of his voice. Johnson's few detractors today sometimes call him "Rowboat."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.