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 him executive vice president of the Defense Plant Corp.,

and an assistant to the directors of RFC.

There, John Wesley Snyder endeared him self to all & sundry by his swift cutting of Government red tape, his shrewd spending of some $3 billion of U.S. war money.

The only feelings of hostility he raised on his bland way through Washington came from his balance-sheet-minded ex-boss, Jesse Jones, who sent him packing to St. Louis in January 1943. But by last week even this quarrel was patched up.

Said Jones: "President Truman could not have made a better appointment." The man who will now have many billions to spend was an artillery captain in the 32nd Division A.E.F. He is an eager reader, religiously reads four books a week. (Standard regimen: two biographies , one book of history, one novel.) Like many another of Harry Truman's Missouri friends, he plays a close game of poker. Unlike others he collects dimes (one of every U.S. issue) and pictures of airplanes (he considers them graceful).

As Loan Administrator, Snyder said.

he would "extend credit only to those people who have demonstrated that they deserve it." Then he went to work.