STATE'S NO. 2 MAN Chester Bowles

Named last week to be Under Secretary of State: Chester Bliss Bowles, 59.

ON THE floor of the Senate, one day in 1951, members broke into a bitter partisan wrangle over the confirmation of Chester Bowles as Ambassador to India. At one point, Ohio's prestigious Republican Robert Taft rose to speak. "He is not a diplomatic man!" said he. "I have had a great deal of experience with him." Bob Taft's succinct characterization of Chester Bowles gets general approval despite the fact that over a period of 20 years, Bowles has plowed through a long series of jobs that generally require the soft, sure touch of tact. What he lacked in the diplomat's pouch of tact, he made up for with a bottomless bag of ideas, a gift of gab and unswerving earnestness for his causes.

Grandson of wealthy, ardent Republican Samuel Bowles, who edited the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, Bowles got proper schooling (Choate, Yale), left the family newspaper (he opposed his father's opposition to the League of Nations) for Madison Avenue, where he and Friend William Benton organized the highly successful advertising agency, Benton & Bowles. (Bowles's contribution to Hellmann's Mayonnaise: "Double-whipped.") By 1941, Bowles had made himself a million dollars, "retired" at 40 and set out to double-whip the world.

Though a Wilsonian and Rooseveltian Democrat, Bowles was an early member of the isolationist America First Committee, as were many other New Dealers. His eagerness for public service got him at length into Washington, where he was F.D.R.'s price administrator and Truman's boss of the Office of Economic Stabilization. At war's end he fought successfully to keep controls on wages and prices in the name of an orderly transition to a peacetime economy; as a result, he amassed one army of bitter conservative enemies and another of happy liberal disciples. After one earnest but tactless term as Governor of Connecticut (1949-51), he was defeated for reelection, got a Truman appointment as Ambassador to India.

In New Delhi, Bowles was as undiplomatic a diplomat as the class-conscious Indians had ever seen. He and his wife rode bicycles through the streets, sent their three children to local Indian schools, studied Hindi in Thirty Days. He got along fine with Nehru, but sometimes, say his critics, at the expense of the U.S. interest.

Once, Bowles publicly and unprofessionally took India's side in the Kashmir dispute, and some critics thought he bent over too far in helping Nehru squeeze as much U.S. aid out of Washington as the traffic would bear. Bowles's dedication and fervent propagandizing helped to form a strong pro-India lobby in the U.S.

Bowles made a stab at the Senate in 1958 (he and ex-Partner Benton ran against each other for the Connecticut Democratic nomination; both lost to a third candidate), then ran a successful race for the House, but gave up his seat this year to devote himself to Kennedy's campaign. Over the years, he has turned out dozens of articles and seven books on foreign affairs and economics, all of them vibrating with the liberal tones of the big-government planner and spender. With Kennedy's blessing he was chief author of the eloquent thousand and one Utopian promises in the Democratic platform in Los Angeles. He also served as a somewhat neglected Kennedy foreign policy adviser in the campaign.

Bowles still wears Madison Avenue's grey flannel suits and button-down-collar shirts, has rarely been seen in formal clothes. For recreation he is a real canvas sailor, reluctantly gave up his 50-ft. yawl for a small sailboat when his children grew up. Twice married (he and his first wife were divorced in 1933), he has five children; Son Samuel passed up a Rhodes scholarship to teach school in Nigeria; Daughter Cynthia did a stint as a nurse for the World Health Organization in India.

Just how deep Chester Bowles will be able to dig in his bag of ideas in his new job will depend on Jack Kennedy and Dean Rusk. It could be very deep, for he will be, after all, No. 2 in the State Department.

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