Step Up, Step Down

Into Washington last week strode a big, pink, chub-cheeked Michigan Swede --Wendell Lund, of Escanaba --6 ft. 1 in., 200 lb., 36, and unknown. His new boss, WPB Chief Donald Nelson, had to be introduced to him. Washington turned a blank face. But none of this fazed Mr. Lund. He had arrived to take over the Labor Production Division of the War Production Board, to become one of the nine people who will mobilize U.S. manpower for total war.

Lund was a compromise. C.I.O. leaders had hoped the President would appoint their little redheaded big shot, Walter Reuther. A.F. of L. bosses wanted almost anyone else. When Lund was suggested, they settled in jigtime.

The job was not his first in Washington. With degrees from Augustana College, Princeton, Columbia, Georgetown (law), he had once toiled in the Interior Department; later in the Farm Security Administration, where he did resettlement work. With his wife, a onetime physical-education instructor, he entertained carefully and well. In 1940 Lund went back to Michigan, ran for Congress, lost a close race. He remained to serve Governor Van Wagoner, kept one eye peeled on Washington.

Now immaculately groomed, Lund stepped alertly into the old Sidney Hillman offices in the Social Security Building. Heartsore Sidney Hillman was gone.

The sun that rose on the curly head of Wendell Lund, son of a Lutheran minister, had set on the stooped, little Russian-born son of a Jewish merchant. After almost three years of anxious, conscientious, misunderstood service to Franklin Roosevelt, Hillman was through. He had wanted the job that went to Paul McNutt. The job that went to Wendell Lund might have galled him. But what would have been a long step down for Sidney Hillman was a long step up for Wendell Lund.

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