Up the Ladder

Just like Horatio Alger, E. Merl Young began at the bottom of the ladder and worked his way up in no time at all simply because he was personable, persevering alert--and a friend of the man who owned the ladder.

Merl got to know his benefactor in Missouri when he helped a little in Harry Truman's 1934 campaign for the Senate. A smooth-talking young man at 24, Merl came to Washington in 1937 and got a job with a dairy company. But his Missouri friend did not forget him. In 1940, Senator Truman gave Marl's wife, Lauretta, a job in his office; for part of the time, she was Harry Vaughan's secretary. Merl himself went to work for the Government's General Accounting Office as an assistant messenger at $20 a week. While Merl went off to join the Marines in World War II, Lauretta stayed with Harry Truman and when he went to the White House, she went along as secretary to the President's personal secretary.

Super Errand Boy. After the war, Merl Young blossomed. He was hired as an examiner for the Reconstruction Finance Corp. at $4,500 a year, soon was getting more than $7,000. He was a frequent caller at the White House, where he would go to pick up Lauretta at the end of the working day or converse with his good friend Donald Dawson, ex-personnel officer of RFC, who became the President's principal adviser on political patronage. (Mrs. Alva Dawson works at the RFC as supervisor of all the agency's files.) Merl was also available for occasional odd jobs. When 1948 campaign time arrived, Merl was on hand as a sort of fixer and super errand boy for Harry Truman's crosscountry speaking tour.

Suddenly, two private companies got interested in Merl Young's talents. One was the Lustron Corp., the fabulously unsuccessful housing company; the other was the F. L. Jacobs Co. of Detroit, an auto-parts concern which also made washing machines. Both were in debt to the LFC at the time. Lustron hired RFC Examiner Young to be a vice president at ?i 8,000 a year. Without bothering to tell Lustron, Young simultaneously took a $10,000-a-year post as an executive of the Jacobs company.

It made a splendid combination. Jacobs Executive Young proceeded to persuade Lustron Vice President Young that Lustron's houses needed Jacobs' washing machines. As a special convincer, Jacobs offered Young a $15 commission for every machine he sold to Lustron. But that scheme never worked out. Lustron sank last year with $37 million of RFC bullion aboard; Jacobs quit the washing-machine business.

Profitable Sideline. The collapse of those hopes did not bother Merl for long. With financial help from Jacobs officials and some friends in a Washington law office which made a specialty of winning RFC loans for clients, he went into the insurance business for himself. He worked up a sideline as an "expediter" who, through his influence with the right people, could help companies doing business with

RFC. Young's 1950 income, according to his own advance estimate, touched the neighborhood of $60,000. The work left him time for various extracurricular activities. He was advance man for Vice President Alben Barkley's cross-country political tour last fall, maintained daily long-distance contact with the President and National Democratic Chairman Bill Boyle. Through it all, Lauretta Young held on to her $4,700-a-year post as secretary to the President's secretary.

Last week a special Senate subcommittee gave Merl the Milkman the recognition he deserved. The investigators, led by Senator Fulbright (Dem., Ark.), reported that they had found the RFC's multimillion-dollar operations ridden by "favoritism" and dominated by outsiders wielding undue influence over RFC officials. White House Aide Donald Dawson, a shrewd veteran of 18 years in Washington's bureaucratic jungle was exercising "considerable influence" over certain RFC directors and had "tried to dominate" the agency from his White House perch. But, the Senators added, "the individual named most frequently in the reports of alleged influence ... is E. Merl Young."

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