Baubles

American womanhood had never struck so rich a bonanza as during the wartime expansion of the U.S. merchant marine. Superstition of the sea had busied thousands of nervous feminine hands with the christening of ships. And after smashing her bottle, each ship sponsor took home a souvenir gift. Some of the trinkets would have lit fire in the eyes of a Follies girl.

Last week the masculine stare of the Senate's Mead Committee fastened on a list of the haul. The committee had nothing against women, as such. It just wanted to know how much taxpayers' money shipbuilders had lavished on honorarious baubles. The million-dollar tally sheet, 130 pages long, did not tell who paid the bill. But the faces that launched 5,500 ships were a gold mine for gossipers.

Female relatives of the late Vice Admiral Howard L. Vickery, former vice chairman of the Maritime Commission, had been in special demand as bottle-smashers. Five had received $6,457.65 in shipyard gifts; Daughter Barbara's share included two diamond bracelets. Ernie Pyle's widow, for christening a ship named in her husband's honor, was handed a $25 gimmick.

Shipbuilders' generosity rose and fell with the tide. One yard gave Cinemactress Greer Garson a $74 silver cigaret box. Another thought the wife of F.D.R.'s Chief of Staff William D. Leahy rated a $2,516.75 jeweled bracelet. Eleanor Roosevelt, for launching a light carrier, was given a tray, a photo album and warstamp corsage, altogether worth $553.50. The Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. at Chester, Pa., honored 252 women most handsomely; $750 was the least it ever spent on any one of them.

In picking their sponsors, Government contractors had a crush on the wives of Washington bigwigs. Mrs. James F. Byrnes broke two bottles and received a $349.90 gold brooch and a $1,820.12 tray. Mrs. Claude Pepper's record of six christenings was second only to the eight splashed up by California's first lady, Mrs. Earl Warren. Mrs. Henry Wallace, Mrs. Arthur Vandenberg and the wife of economy-minded Comptroller General Lindsay Warren all took remunerative whacks. A $1,000 watch was presented to Mrs. Brehon B. Somervell, wife of the wartime Chief of the Army Service Forces, $31 in silverware was the best Millionheiress Doris Duke could do.

The shipbuilders overlooked no one: Sophie Tucker, Mrs. Henry J. Kaiser, Elsa Maxwell, Madame Ivy Litvinov, the Dionne Quintuplets, Barbara Douglas Arnold, daughter of Planemaker Donald Douglas. For helping to launch the S.S. Mormacisle a $225 gold pin was given to Mrs. James M. Mead Jr., daughter-in-law of the Senate investigator himself.

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