Business: New Faces for FTC

Picked by President Eisenhower to head the cluttered, musty Federal Trade Commission in 1953, Washington Lawyer Edward F. Howrey immediately set about using a stiff new broom. He brought back FTC as the umpire of U.S. business practices, cleared up a mammoth backlog of antitrust and unfair-practice cases. Last week, when he resigned, Chairman Howrey was able to tell the President: “The Commission has been reorganized from top to bottom. Its docket is up-to-date for the first time in almost 40 years. Its policies have been reoriented to the original intent of Congress.”

To succeed Republican Howrey as chairman, the White House picked FTCommissioner J. W. Gwynne, 65, who, like Howrey, grew up in Waterloo, Iowa and was appointed to the agency in 1953. A conservative, hard-plugging lawyer and onetime judge who represented Iowa’s Third District in Congress for 14 years (until 1948), Republican Gwynne worked closely with Howrey, is expected to keep FTC on its present course.

Howrey’s place as a Commission member will be taken by Norwegian-born Sigurd Anderson, 51, who stepped out after two terms as South Dakota governor last January. Next month there will be another new face on the FTC: Democrat William C. Kern, 52-year-old Indianapolis lawyer and son of the late Senator John W. Kern, Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1908). Kern, now assistant director of FTC’s Bureau of Litigation, will succeed 69-year-old Commissioner James Mead, former New York Senator, whose six-year term is expiring.

When the new appointees take office, the Commission will take on a brand new characteristic: for the first time in its 40 years, it will be composed entirely of Midwesterners.