RECOVERY: RECOVERY Eagle Balked

Eagle Balked

No love has General Johnson for Henry Ford, the only major industrialist who has as yet refused publicly to kiss the rod of NRA. General Johnson’s attempt to get even by having Secretary Wallace refuse the low bid of a Ford dealer on 1,600 trucks for the Civilian Conservation Corps was frustrated by Comptroller General McCarl (TIME, Nov. 6, 13). Last week General Johnson again tried by catch-as-catch-can tactics to throw Mr. Ford. Once again General Johnson was set back on his heels.

First the purchase of 700 of the 1,600 trucks was transferred from the CCC to the War Department. Ford Dealer Ralph Paul Sabine, the low bidder, promptly protested that the War Department was trying to change the specifications so as to throw out the Ford bid. This ruse discovered, the responsibility for purchasing the 700 trucks was handed back to the CCC by the War Department.

Still trying to get around Mr. McCarl, General Johnson advised Secretary Wallace that Ford Motor Co., “save in respect of certain technical particulars which are considered immaterial,” had satisfactorily complied with NRA requirements, but that Dealer Sabine ought not to get the contract. He was, reasoned General Johnson, “probably” violating the automobile retail code by bidding lower than the list price for Ford trucks.

Comptroller McCarl does not like to be told that the Government is paying too little for anything. He retorted that if the dealer was “probably” breaking code law, that was a matter for the courts to decide, that the job of Secretary Wallace was to give the contract to the lowest responsible bidder. The CCC needed some of its trucks in a hurry. A contract for 818 trucks was therefore grudgingly awarded to Ford Dealer Sabine, all to be delivered within six days at various points from Edgewater, N. J. to Kansas City, Mo.

But General Johnson had not yet abandoned all hope of getting even. Contracts for the rest of the CCC trucks and for 1,500 trucks for other government departments—on all of which dealer Sabine had bid—were still held up.