Knee-Deep in Alligators

"We're rolling now," Charles Luckman breathed last week. "We're gaining momentum."

Soapman Luckman was indeed rolling. No one could have crowded more into the nine days since Harry Truman had telephoned him to come to Washington and head the "save food to save Europe" campaign.

The president of Lever Bros. (Pepsodent, Lifebuoy, Rinso, Spry, Lux) had been showing some visitors through his Cambridge, Mass, plant when the call had come from Washington. He could think of many reasons why he could not serve. He had just taken on a new cosmetics business for instance. "But," he said, "it was an opportunity to pay back my country for being good to me." He consented.

Within a matter of hours he had lined up his staff. He got David Noyes, former advertising executive, former adviser to WPB, out of bed in Los Angeles. "Dave," said Chuck, "we've got a job to feed the hungry. When can I expect you?" Said Dave: "On the next plane."

Chuck telephoned his Washington lawyer, ex-Congressman Jim Barnes, of Illinois, to send him all the statistics he could find. Chuck alerted Manhattan's and Chicago's advertising agencies. "Get some ideas." He told the agency men to meet him three days hence in Washington's Carlton Hotel. While copywriters and layout artists worked and slept in their offices and a Chicago photocopy company worked overtime copying posters and exhibits, Luckman retired with reports to bone up on the problem of food. The problem was gigantic but simple. To save Europe, the U.S. had to ship 570,000,000 bushels of grain abroad. At the present rate of domestic consumption only 470,000,000 bushels would be available. The U.S. people had to save 100,000,000 bushels.

Hold That Garbage. Then Luckman boarded his company plane, Lady Lever. Three hours later he was at the Carlton Hotel. The agency men were there. Luckman gave them his orders, wolfed a sandwich, conferred until 1:45 Tuesday morning, slept 3 3/4 hours ("That's why I have bags under my eyes"), made notes, breakfasted with the admen, saw the President, and conferred with his aides that night until far into the morning.

Everybody had ideas. Ideas were so thick that Luckman's secretary, Miss Iona Thornton, said, "It was like being knee-deep in alligators. You never knew when one might reach out and bite you."

On the morning of the third day, Luckman faced the 26-member Citizens Food Committee. This was the meeting at which he would sell his program. The admen's ideas were propped against the walls.

Colorful posters carried colorful slogans: WANTED--140,000,000 FOOD-SAVING VOLUNTEERS, OUR KIDS CAN HELP FEED THESE KIDS, CLEAN PLATE CLUB, DON'T START THE NEXT WAR IN HERE (to be pasted on garbage cans). Said a witness of the scene: "It was--well, sort of overpowering. There must have been $100,000 worth of work in it." Handsome, wavy-haired Mr. Luckman clucked with ideas. He proposed Meatless Tuesdays, Eggless and Fowl-less Thursdays,/- and one less slice of bread each day. But the committee, which included such titans of the food business as Harry Bullis (General Mills), John Holmes (Swift & Co.) and old and hardheaded food-conservation campaigners, thought young (38) Mr. Luckman was clucking over something strictly out of cold storage. The ideas had to be fresher. They had to get a more effective program than that.

But Chuck Luckman rolled along. He almost arrested public attention by getting 60% of the liquor industry to agree to use no wheat at all and to cut in half their use of other grains. He also got the beer brewers to agree to quit using wheat, thus releasing some 228,000 bushels annually. Said A. P. Fenderson, treasurer of the Continental Distilling Corp., reassuringly: "The distillers have enough whiskey to last at least four years . . . upwards of 475,000,000 proof gallons." And the brewers would hardly miss the wheat which is only a minuscule percentage of the grains they use.

"We Must Act." Luckman saved his biggest display for this week. On Sunday night he put Secretaries Marshall, Anderson and Harriman, President Truman and himself on the radio. To his radio audience Luckman said tensely: "Experts on nutrition and meal planning in Government and business are now readying hundreds of money-saving recipes for your use. . . . These recipes will save meat, wheat, poultry and eggs. . . . May God give us one and all the steadfastness, the unselfishness, the vision."

Angrily President Truman lambasted the "gamblers" who speculate in grain and boost prices. Then solemnly he announced the program which the majority of Luckman's committee had rejected as inadequate: "The program is simple and straightforward. Learn it, memorize it. Here it is: 1) use no meat on Tuesdays; 2) use no poultry or eggs on Thursdays; 3) save a slice of bread every day; 4) public eating places will serve bread and butter only on request. . . ."

Luckman and aides were a little dismayed when someone pointed out that Christmas and New Year's land this year on poultry-less Thursdays--to say nothing about Thanksgiving. Luckman and aides retired to think things over, announced that in those weeks Mondays would be poultry-less instead.

The broadcast had one effect: the President scared the Chicago Board of Trade into increasing margin requirements to 33 1/3%, which would at least slow down speculation.

/-Said Symon Gould, vice presidential nominee of the Vegetarian Party: "Vegetarians are holding out for seven meatless days."

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