Bowles for Maxon | TIME
When Detroit’s pink-cheeked Lou Maxon, successful head of a successful advertising agency, took over as deputy OPAdministrator last February, he announced he would try to make rationing popular. This was a laudable ambition, roughly comparable in size to the job of draining the oceans. Lou Maxon did not succeed.
In Washington, Maxon tried to make OPA popular even with businessmen. He reasoned: if OPA could only be rid of all its “slide-rule boys” and economic theorists, the agency would function smoothly. He did help force the resignation of
Princeton Economist J. Kenneth Galbraith as deputy price boss.
Last week, in a statement studded with commuter-train anti-New Deal invective, Lou Maxon announced his resignation. The professors had been too tough for him. But Congress had already brought about one of his suggested reforms by ruling that no OPAster may help fix prices unless he has had five years’ business experience.
Next day level-headed Prentiss Brown, untearful at Lou Maxon’s departure, announced that from now on every new rationing program would first be submitted to Congress for its approval and funds.
For the new job of OPA general manager, Boss Brown drafted tall, jut-jawed Chester Bowles, 42, head of Manhattan’s potent advertising firm of Benton & Bowles, Connecticut manager of OPA. Yaleman Bowles was sailing off Cape Cod when his appointment was announced, had to be hunted down and called ashore by the Coast Guard. His experience with the OPA in Connecticut had taught him just how much the public will stand, he said: he would try to do his best.
ncG1vNJzZmismaKyb6%2FOpmaaqpOdtrexjm9taW1hboRwrs6wo56rXZu8s3nMmq%2Bopl8%3D