Truman's Man

The potent post of Federal Loan Administrator, which a suspicious Congress denied Commerce Secretary Henry Wallace, had remained uncomfortably open.

(Fred Vinson had quit it April 2, after a 29-day occupancy, to become Franklin Roosevelt's War Mobilizer. ) Last week, in his first major appointment, President Truman filled the job. His choice seemed to please everybody.

Seasoned, solid, 48-year-old John Wesley Snyder, the new Administrator, is a hard-driving St. Louis banker, a former manager of the St. Louis branch of the Reconstruction Finance Corp., and an old and close friend of Harry Truman.

In 1940, Jesse Jones brought him to Washington, made...