"The Buccaneer"

Months ago, preparing to go back to his Detroit bank, Budget Director Joseph Dodge began training his successor: Rowland Roberts Hughes, 58. This week, painlessly and almost privately (no interviews, no press conference), the new budget director takes over.

Among themselves, White House staffers called Hughes "The Buccaneer," because of his bold black eyepatch. He has worn one for twelve years or so to cover an eyelid injury, but the rakish effect is only accidental. Actually, Hughes, like Dodge, is a quiet career banker who neither smokes nor drinks, has no absorbing hobbies, worries himself with no sports.

Just out of Brown University ('16), Hughes went to work for New York's National City Bank, put in ten years at foreign branches (Shanghai, Osaka, Bombay and London) and, later, 17 years as comptroller. In 1951 he became vice president (reportedly at $50,000-plus a year), but left last year to understudy Dodge in the budget bureau.

As a banker, Hughes studied federal spending, helped prepare a 278-page book, A Tax Program for a Solvent America. As budget director (at $17,500 a year), Hughes will sit in with the Cabinet and top-level National Security Council, check spending and prepare future budgets. He promises to cut spending if possible, but knows, as he once said, that "there is no easy, automatic formula.''

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