Imperial Valley press. (El Centro, Calif.) 1907-current, 1942-05-18
CAPITAL TALKS
by
Peter
Edison

! Washington legends are legion
and a corollary to that clche is
that apochryphal stories, fairy tales
wartime rumorS and asserted plain
and fancy lies die harder in your
nations capital than anywhere
else outside the gossip marts of
HOLLYWOOD and cafe society Give
a good gal a bad name and any
other mud slung in her direction
will stick to enhance her i'll repute,
and all the press agentry and cos
metic Whitewash in the world are
| required to restore even SEM
blance of the pre-smear purity.
| The same thing goes for men in
public life. correction never quite
catches up with the original ver-
sion, and two recent incidents in
Washington have Strikingly en-
phasized this maxim.
The first concerns Jesse
Jones secretary of commerce.
Six months ago he unquestiOn-
ably was one of the two or
three most important men in
Washington. Then some of the
| for aluminium and rubber and
other war supplies were critic
lied and the people within the
administration who didn't like
Jones built a lot of bOnfires
under the Jones seat of power.
When the President transferred
some of the federal mortgage ac-
| tivitieS into the new National
Housing Agency in an effort to
centralize the woefully scattered
and frightfully inefficient housing
! program, the anti-JoneS clique set
up a yell that Jones was repudiated.
When the Jones title of Federal
| Loan Administrator was abolished
and the agencies in that set-up
were transferred to the Department
of Commerce, the cry was raised
/ that Jones was through.
When a presidential order gave
the Board of Economic Warfare
the power to issue directiveS to
these loan agencies, the shout arose
that Jones was busted and the in
ference was that he should resign.
HE FOULS EN-
Well, Jesse is still doing business
at the same old stands, only more
of it He still controls his check
books and this matter of issuing
directives turns out to be nothing
more than the power to work with
the Jones agencies and tell them to
finance operations in places and
situations they haven't been work.
ing before.
As matter of fact, the
Board of Economic Warfare
had to take a little setback
when Secretary of State Cor
dell Hull returned from vaca-
ton and forced a showdown on
the principle that if deals were
to be made with foreign gov
ernments, the State Depart
ment would have to approve
them and make them. Even
then the full story didn't come
out. BEW had to take the rap
for this chiseling in on State
Department functions, but 9TH
ers were equally guilty.
Among them, the Office of the
Petroleum Co-ordinator-the Hon
Harold L. Ickes-which had vast
ambitions of running the worlds
oil supply and dreamed of sending
out diplomatic missions of its own
to do it, The slap BEW took in pub
lie really was delivered behind the
scenes to Ickes.
The second case of a Washington
legend never quite catching up
with itself concerns Lowell Mel
lett, director of the Office of Gov
eminent Reports. Early in the de-
Tense effort, a slick paper maya
zine printed a piece to the effect
! that Mellet was to be chief censor,
minister of propaganda, the George
Creel of the present war. All the
denials that Mellett has made new
er have removed from him this
{ brand and stigma of an American
Goebbels.
Currently, Office of Government
Reports has moved into a new IN
formation Center in downtown
Washington, and everyone is dis
covering it is a great thing. At the
center big oval bar, actual, posi-
tive answers are dished out to all
sort of impossible questions about
the thousands of facets of the war
time capital. Yet in the inception
and building of this center, Mellett
was subjected to a merci!ess bar
rage of brickbats, including the old
one that this was to be headquar-
ters for the ministry of propaganda.
From the beginning, MelIett
has insisted he doesn't want
that job, he doesn't believe in
censorship or propaganda, he
does believe in a free press and
free constructive criticism of
government, even though il ad-
mits personal panning of the
President, to whom he is in
tensely, devOtedly loyal. In
spite of all this, Mellett's name
is still mentioned as likely
prospect for the job of overall
boss of the governments infor-
nation and censorship setups.
He'll never live il down, for
legends and rumOrs simply
can't be killed i'm Washington.
WASHINGTON CHATS
Reduction of rents to March
levels in the defense areas is en-