The Great Launching

ERP, the ark, built to rescue Europe from catastrophe, was launched at last. A tired, shouting Congress pushed it down the ways.

The whole job had taken a little under three months. There had been a great deal of pushing, pulling and hauling on wrong ends. At the last minute the House, at the prodding of Wisconsin's Republican Representative Alvin Edward O'Konski, had added Franco's fascist Spain to the list of beneficiaries. Administration and Senate leaders, appalled by this blunder which gave Communists something to shout about, had got Spain yanked out. Bravely, at week's end, ERP floated.

The bill as passed included some cockleshells: $463 million for China; $275 million for Greek-Turkish military aid. But the ark itself was a $5.3 billion appropriation for the next twelve months. More would probably be voted later. The U.S. was committed to aiding 16 nations and Western Germany for the next four years--altogether the greatest undertaking of its sort in history.

ERP Into EGA. With the launching, ERP became ECA, the Economic Cooperation Administration. This week the President picked the man to run it: Paul G. Hoffman, president of the Studebaker Corp. and a top-drawer U.S. businessman (see col. 3). The job was no bed of roses; Mr. Hoffman wanted a little time to think it over.

Assisting and advising the administrator will be: 1) a $17,500-a-year deputy; 2) five members of the National Advisory Council on Fiscal Problems*; 3) a new Public Advisory Board of twelve U.S. citizens appointed by the President; and 4) a special representative abroad who would interpret ECA to the beneficiaries.

But it will be some months before ECA is fully under way. Meanwhile the State Department would keep delivering relief to France, Italy, Austria and Greece and help such dollar-short nations as The Netherlands and Britain.

On the Horizon. ECA's sailing orders were not explicit. The administrator was ordered to bring back strategic materials in partial recompense for U.S. deliveries. He was to see that none of the $5.3 billion, in the shape of potential war materials, filtered through the Iron Curtain, and that the 16 nations tidied up their economies in a way that suited the U.S. But he was given the widest latitude, chiefly because no one knew exactly how to plot ECA's course beyond the visible horizon.

The overriding problem--how to bring about permanent economic recovery--was an uncharted sea.

Cursed Man. ECA's administrator would not have a star to steer by. He would not be able to navigate by orthodox economic rules. ECA's money would finance roughly one-half of all Western Europe's imports next year. European governments, many of them socialistic, would expect him to continue artificially propping up their present living standards as a wall against Communism. Said a Washington official: "He will be a cursed man."

He would also be a powerful man. He would need infinite patience. But he would have the U.S. behind him.

*The Secretaries of Treasury, State, Commerce, the heads of the Federal Reserve System and the Export-Import Bank.

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