Alcoa, Ickes & Dear Jesse

When Harold Ickes returned to Washington from his Olympic National Park vacation this fall, he was even grumpier than when he left. Into the records of the Senate Defense Committee last week went a letter which told why.

Before taking off, Ickes criticized a contract Jesse Jones had negotiated with Aluminum Co. of America for operating three Government-owned aluminum plants, urged that the contract never be signed. It was signed anyway (TIME, Sept. 1). Ickes, in a log cabin 3,000 miles from Washington, sat down and wrote his letter:

Dear Jesse:

. . . I am now faced with the dilemma of being a party to this transaction which I regard as prejudicial to the interests of the United States. . . . Your refusal even to let me know what terms were under, consideration . . . was for the precise purpose of forcing my hand into the signing of a contract that would not be in the public interest. ... Damnable contract.

Meanwhile the Defense Committee, which also had had its doubts about the Alcoa contract, questioned Alcoa's Vice President Irving W. Wilson, Counsel Oscar R. Ewing, Chief Engineer Thomas D. Jolly in an effort to find something to damn. The Alcoans testified that they construed the contract to give the Government every right the committee thought the Government should have: final word on plant sites and specifications, permission to inspect Alcoa's own plants and cost figures for comparison with the Government-owned operations, etc. To criticisms that the contract set no starting dates, they replied that the first plant (in Massena, N.Y.) should start production next May.

With these assurances in the record, the Defense Committee, apparently satisfied, withdrew and left the field of battle to Ickes and Jones. Disclosure of Ickes' letter had made their feud official, squared off the Administration's noisiest, most irresistible force against its most silent, most immovable object.

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