Charm and Reconversion

President Roosevelt gave one of the toughest of all Washington jobs to a Utahan last week. Pink-cheeked, balding, urbane Robert Henry Hinckley, 53, a onetime Mormon missionary and small-town schoolteacher, was appointed Director of Contract Settlement.

Hinckley, a favorite of Harry Hopkins, will be the man who says how, when and in what order the great mass of war contracts will be settled, as the war ends.

Contract settlement will be one long cat-&-dog fight, and Bob Hinckley knows it. To avoid trouble, he will aim for speed, fairness and uniformity. Soothing irate industrialists who feel that their competitors may take off too far ahead of them will require a maximum of astute diplomacy. "It's staggering to look at," Hinckley said, "but I believe it can be done."

A man of much personal charm, Bob Hinckley has the diplomacy for his new job. Born in Fillmore, Utah, the grandson of a friend and aide of Brigham Young, he organized a successful pioneer airline, the Utah-Pacific Airways, rose swiftly from a post as an assistant administrator of the WPA to the chairmanship of the Civil Aeronautics Authority. He became Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Air in 1940.

In 1942 Bob Hinckley resigned from his Commerce job and--he hoped--from government, took a plush, fancy-salaried job as vice president of the Sperry Corp. Asked to come back to Washington, he refused repeatedly, finally saw Franklin Roosevelt. By the time he left the White House, Hinckley was making contract termination plans.

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