Walking Papers

One by one, Franklin Roosevelt's brain-trusters of the early New Deal had vanished from Harry Truman's Administration. Only David Lilienthal and James McCauley Landis remained in important jobs. Last week hawk-eyed Jim Landis, chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board and one of the keenest legal eagles of them all, got his walking papers.

It was quite a surprise; two weeks ago, Landis said, the President had assured him that he would be reappointed when his term ran out on Dec. 31. Landis credited his enemies among the big airlines with having whetted the Truman ax.

Storm & Strife. Actually, the President decided more than a month ago that Landis would have to go. Harry Truman was concerned over the increasing friction in CAB, and over the dissatisfaction throughout the Administration with the way CAB was doing its job (TIME, March 17). The President talked it over with most of his top advisers. All admired Jim Landis' legal abilities and his fair-mindedness, but all had pet peeves. From almost every side came stories about Landis' irascibility and inability to get along with people.

Harry Truman put off the disagreeable job of ousting Landis until almost the last minute. When he got around to it, 72 hours before the deadline, he did it with unusual bluntness. White House Secretary Charles G. Ross gave a bare announcement that the President did not intend to reappoint Chairman Landis.*

Little v. Big. Landis held his temper, bowed out with a statement that he was "against monopolistic practices and a number of other things that [the airlines] are doing."

In his 18 months as CABoss, Jim Landis had been as hard-handed on the big airlines as he was hardheaded to some of his associates. The big airlines had fought him because of his encouragement of small airline operators (many of them ex-Air Force pilots) in their development of air cargo service on unscheduled lines (about 80% of all U.S. air freight is handled by nonscheduled lines). His pressure on the big operators to adopt new safety measures had cost them money. This week, after he was out, came a safety report which might cost them more. Over Chairman Landis' signature, the President's Air Safety Board put the onus of safety on the airlines, recommended that each employ a full-time safety director, proposed methods to "promote efficiency and safety'' among flight and ground crews.

Lonely Jim Landis (he was divorced three months ago) packed his bag and went off to Florida. At 48 he was entering private business for the first time. His new boss: Capitalist Joseph P. Kennedy, another early favorite of Franklin Roosevelt's.

* When Landis left Washington in 1937, after authoring the Securities Act and serving two years as SEC chairman, Franklin Roosevelt wrote that he was leaving behind him "a great respect and appreciation for the scholar in government." Landis went back to Harvard as dean of its law school, returned to Washington in 1942 to run the Office of Civilian Defense, stayed on to do wartime and postwar economic chores in the Middle East.

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