New Boss for OPS

Wisecracking Price Stabilizer Mike Di Salle, who resigned to run for Senator from Ohio, last week got a serious-talking successor: ex-Governor Ellis Gibbs Arnall, 44, of Georgia.

For Arnall, the appointment ends five years of political exile, and Arnall is a politician from sole to crown. Son of a well-to-do Newnan, Ga. businessman, young Ellis captured five top campus offices at the University of Georgia, graduated first in his law class ('31). Elected to the state legislature at 26, Arnall rocketed upward as floor leader, assistant attorney general, attorney general. In 1942, the "boy wonder" flashed into national prominence when he beat the late Gene Talmadge for the governorship.

Governor Arnall cleaned up the state educational system, ended the pardon racket, virtually wiped out the state debt. He launched a vigorous and successful "pro-Georgia" campaign to lift the state's economic level.

To his friends, Arnall was a shining liberal, to his Georgia foes an out & out "nigger lover." He eliminated chains and shackles from Georgia's notorious prisons, had the poll tax repealed, fought for revocation of the Ku Klux Klan's state charter. Barred by law from succeeding himself in office, Arnall in 1946 saw Gene Talmadge sweep back to power, but die before he could take office. (Gene's son Herman was elected governor in 1948.)

Arnall capitalized on his record with a lucrative lecture tour ($1,000 a lecture). From law practice in Atlanta, his post as president of the Society of Independent Motion Picture Producers and the presidency of the Dixie Insurance Co., he has been earning close to $100,000 a year.

Like a veteran, Arnall played cat & mouse with the OPS job offer. When he finally accepted it, he issued a statement that "in America someone must ever be willing to perform the difficult but tough, unpopular and thankless tasks." Some Washington hands think that he believes Truman will run and is simply getting on the bandwagon.

Mike Di Salle offered Arnall some genial advice on how to "grin & bear" the trials of OPS. Arnall will be facing three trials in short order: 1) the price-wage dispute in the steel industry; 2) the program of partial decontrols, already launched by Di Salle; 3) congressional hearings on the new price and wage stabilization bill.

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