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September 13, 1950
COMMUNI CATIONS PEOPLE SIT PRETTY WITH HARRISON APPOINTMENT
If you have been In the communications industry for long, you may fund you have a friend at court in the person of Gen. William Henry Harrison, President of the International Telephone and Tele¬ graph Company, just named Arms Production Director in one of the first big appointments in President Truman's new wartime setup.
In addition to being head of the National Arms Production Authority, General Harrison has the further prestige of being in on the ground floor with those whl will build the President's vast defense structure.
The approval which has greeted the appointment of General Harrison from the communications industry where the General is best known, should reassure Mr. Truman that he has made a wise selection.
The official news cs.me when Sunday (Sept. 10), Commerce Secretary Sai^yer confirmed rumors which had been afloat in Washington for a week or so that the 58 year old I. T. & T. chief would head the new National Production Authority which was established a few hours after President Truman announced he had ordered its creation. The act authorizes NPA to set up compulsory regulations for estab¬ lishing priorities and allocating scarce and critical materials. Secretary Sawyer said the agency would go slowly in the exercise of its powers which would cut into production of automobiles, home ap¬ pliances, television sets and the like.
"We shall use these powers", he declared, "only as it be¬ comes necessary."
But at the same time he expressed the determination of his department and the NPA to take whatever steps appeared necessary in in our approach to the problems which this order imposes upon us. Whatever inconveniences result will, I know, be cheerfully borne by businessmen and citizens because of our common faith in and our will to defend our free society."
Simultaneously with its announcement of the creation of NPA, the Commerce Department Issued orders reimposlng export controls on 39 classes of iron and steel mill products which had been de¬ controlled for export last March. The products covered can be ex¬ ported, except to Canada, after September 30 only under license from the department.
Establishment of the NPA and appointment of Harrison to head it completed one phase of the "austerity" program outlined by Mr. Truman in his Saturday night address from the White House and provided an equivalent of the powerful War Production Board of World War II. Another phase of the control picture was filled in by Mr. Truman himself when he named W. Stuart Symington, Chairman of the National Security Resources Board, as "coordinator".
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