Short Service

When Harry Truman nominated his friend and adviser, George Allen, to a directorship of the giant Reconstruction Finance Corp. last January, a suspicious Senate Committee prepared to give roly-poly George the piercing eye. But Washington-wise Jester Allen gagged away their suspicions that he was too light for the job. Later, when he was confirmed, he dropped 13 of his 22 business directorships, to lay the Senators' worst fears. When he set to work, it was with the understanding between him and Harry Truman that he would stay on the job twelve months.

Last week, just 21 days before his first year was up, Director Allen announced he was quitting RFC to resume some directorships and his role as unofficial ambassador for the President. Despite his airy ways, George Allen had proved a conservative lender, an apparently able dealer, and the real administrator of R.F.C.* Under his administration RFC had:

P: Wangled Congressional permission for RFC to take over G.I. home loans from overloaded small banks.

P: Made 1,275 loans, totaling $81,758,000, mostly to U.S. manufacturers and processors of building materials, prefabricated houses, etc.

P: Expedited settlement of the $29,900,000 RFC loan to the depression-stricken Maryland Casualty Co., and turned the company back to private control.

P: Come out flatly against overspending for veterans' emergency housing. (Allen's refusal to lend $32 million to the fledgling Lustron Corp. to build metal prefabricated houses precipitated the Administration battle that ended with the ousting of Housing Director Wilson Wyatt.)

With a no-defeat record behind him, Allen was understandably anxious to duck out before something might come along to spoil it. But for all his hurry, he left behind at least one work for the new Republican Congress to remember him by--a bill to simplify and reorganize the multi-unit RFC, strip it of its wartime and emergency powers, and provide for its eventual liquidation.

To round out the job, George Allen also recommended that the President appoint lanky, hard-working John Duncan Goodloe III, RFC's general counsel, and one of RFC's top hands, as his successor. A Harvard law graduate and a veteran of 15 years in Government, Goodloe had topped his RFC career by drafting the Corporation's reorganization bill. That job was enough to convince George Allen that Goodloe should be his successor. And an Allen recommendation was still gilt-edge with Harry Truman; Goodloe got the job.

* Aged, ex-Nevada Senator Charles B. Henderson is the formal RFC chairman.

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