New Boss Mobilizer

Into the White House last week popped small, wiry NPA and DPAdministrator Henry H. ("Joe") Fowler. 44. Ever since Defense Mobilizer Charles E. Wilson quit last March over Harry Truman's steel policy, Fowler had been carrying many of Wilson's worries but not his title. After an hour with the President, Fowler emerged wearing the title as well. It was passed on by Acting Mobilizer John R. Steelman, who, said Truman, was needed for his "fulltime role as assistant to the President."

Since Fowler, a lawyer who has spent most of his time in Government bureaus since 1934, is no production man, the obvious implication was that the arms program is now self-propelled. Steelman issued some sugar-coated figures that seemed to say so. Reported Steelman: "Total military hard-goods deliveries in June reached $2 billion--doubling that of nine months earlier."

Steelman's figures were not only stale, but misleading. As Fowler himself reported last week, out of $128 billion appropriated by Congress for military goods in Korea, only $34 billion had been delivered by June 30, two years later. A better cause for cautious optimism was that Mobilizer Fowler himself wants to speed up the stretched-out defense program. His first act as mobilization boss was to send word to the rearmament program's severest critic, Texas' Democratic Senator Lyndon Johnson, that he would do what he could to restore the original goals.

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