Missouri: 1; Texas: 0

To fill a troublesome spot on the Surplus Property Board, Harry Truman once again reached out to Missouri. He got set to call in 43-year-old W. Stuart Symington Ill, president of St. Louis' Emerson Electric Manufacturing Co., and a topflight U.S. industrialist.

Handsome, Massachusetts-born "Stu" Symington, Yaleman and husband of once-famed society chanteuse Eve Symington, would replace Iowa's silver-haired ex-Senator Guy M. Gillette, who had never wanted the job anyway.

The new appointee, who will supervise the sale of billions of dollars' worth of war property to U.S. business, is no stranger to U.S. businessmen. In 1938, when he took charge of Emerson Electric, the company was operating at a loss; in two years it was in the black. More sensationally, Stu Symington sat down with Bill Sentner, boss of the C.I.O.'s United Electrical Workers in St. Louis and one of the country's few Communist labor leaders who frankly calls himself a Communist. Together they worked out a successful labor-management plan, adopted a profit-sharing program.

To an Old Friend. Mulling over other possible appointments, Harry Truman caused a flurry of speculation by writing a friendly letter to his old Senate crony John Nance Garner, at his Uvalde, Tex. farm. He invited "Cactus Jack" to drop in any time. Washington promptly hummed that Jack Garner might get a Cabinet job. But no such offer was made. Old Cactus Jack, 76, is so busy watering his pecan trees, feeding chickens, "striking a blow for liberty" (with bourbon and a little "branch water" from the tap), and resting, that not even an offer of the Secretary of Stateship could lure him back to Washington.

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