President's President

The presidency of the $66,800,000 American President Lines, Ltd., which is Government-owned but privately operated, has always been a political plum. When onetime Assistant Secretary of State Henry F. Grady resigned as president last April (to become the first U.S. Ambassador to India), he hoped for a break with tradition. He announced that he expected to be succeeded by Executive Vice President E. Russell Lutz, no politician. He was wrong. Last week, to fill the $25,000-a-year vacancy, the company chose lean-faced, natty George L. Killion, 46, treasurer of the Democratic National Committee.

Like Grady and preceding political heads, Killion took over the job with no previous shipping experience. The only nautical note that reporters could find in his record was the name of his birthplace--Steamboat Springs, Colo. An ex-newspaperman and chain-store lobbyist, he got his first political job through a long-standing friendship with California's New Dealing Governor Culbert Levy Olson.

As California's Director of Finance, Killion helped the state out of a $60 million hole by getting bankers to lower their interest rates on the debt from 5% to 1%. He soon won a name for raising and handling funds. By the time he left the job, California was well in the black.

As an assistant in the Democratic campaign of 1944, he raised enough money to win quick approval for the job of party money-watcher. The U.S. Maritime Commission, which controls 94% of the President Lines' voting stock, thinks that such experience will prove valuable in the management of the $9,200,000 working capital which the company has piled up during its busy postwar operations.

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