New Pulse-Feeler

As the first chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, Dr. Edwin G. Nourse had a simple definition of the group's duties: hold an economic thermometer under the nation's tongue and report the facts dispassionately. But in 1949 Nourse quit, saying that the council was fast becoming just another political weapon of the Democratic Administration. Since then, under Chairman Leon Keyserling, the board has often seemed to check up on the nation's economic health by taking Harry Truman's pulse.

Last week CEA got a new member who agreed with its present methods. To succeed Roy Blough, who quit last month to take a job with the United Nations, President Truman appointed Robert Turner, 44, an Indiana University professor who has shuttled in and out of New and Fair Deal jobs since 1941.

Turner himself left little doubt that he would go along with most of Keyserling's pulse-feelings and the political use of the board. Said Turner: "Our only differences would be differences of emphasis."

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