Exit Eric

In his usual briskly benign manner, President Eric Johnston breezed into Atlantic City for the annual convention of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. One of the first things he did was to tell reporters: "It would be suicidal if price control was abolished immediately. . . . The worst thing that could happen to us would be for prices to spiral and for us to have a period of boom and bust." That afternoon, the Chamber gave its retiring president the back of its hand as it called for the end of all price control, except rent, by Oct. 31.

Three days later, as Eric Johnston, 49, handed his gavel over to the Chamber's incoming new president, William Kenneth Jackson, 59, there was speculation on whether the Chamber wasn't also turning back to its old hidebound ways. In his four years as its head, Johnston had given the Chamber a patina of liberalism it had never had before. As its spokesman, he had probably made the most eloquent and effective exposition of the new social consciousness of many businessmen.

New President Jackson, Tennessee-born, grew up in Florida, studied law in Virginia, spent most of his early business days in the tropics. There he collected rare orchid plants, also found a wife (the sister of famed airman "Billy" Mitchell) and a job as an attorney for United Fruit. Now he is United Fruit's vice president and general counsel as well as president of the Boston Chamber of Commerce. A lifelong Democrat, Jackson classified himself as a "social-minded conservative." He promised to wage a vigorous campaign to revise the Wagner Act, to outlaw "unfair practices" by labor such as mass picketing and price controls by fall, eliminate all federal restrictions on building.

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