The General Manager

Last week, as usual, there was no news about the man who, in a sense, runs the U.S. Government. Harold Dewey Smith’s 45th birthday did not make even the society column of his home-town paper, the Arlington, Va. Daily. Because it was Sunday, Mr. Smith celebrated his arrival at this milestone of middle age by sleeping late (9:30 a.m.) and playing eleven holes of dufferish golf at the nearby Washing ton Golf and Country Club, a course which would test a mountain goat. (If his tall, athletic wife Lillian had gone along, she would have trounced him. She shoots in the low 80s.) At dinner there was a cake, which they ate on the porch (see cut) surrounded by Sunday newspapers.

The four Smith children — Lawrence Byron, Sally Jane, Mary Ann and Vir ginia Lee, aged 4 to 14 — sang Happy Birthday.

In a crowd, Mr. Smith is the fellow in the brown suit. Middle-sized and homely, he has pale blue-grey eyes behind rimless glasses, and a mustache which (though he boasts “I haven’t had a clean-shaven upper lip in 15 years”) is invisible in a poor light. He is cautious with his talk, and likes to take several puffs at his straight-stemmed briar pipe before answering a question. His friends joke that “Harold has only one speed: low gear.” He works hard at his job, including most evenings, and has very little time for fun. When he does, he golfs or bowls a bit, but he prefers to gather his family at the piano for a sing, or to fix things around the house. His hobby is making furniture in his basement workshop. Mr. Smith bought his colonial brick house cheap because nobody had ever been able to make the plumbing and heating and wiring work right. He fixed them up fine.

Mr. Smith is Director of the U.S. Bureau of the Budget, a job which this year means supervising the spending of more than 100 billion dollars. A Congressman once said: “We grant the powers and Harold Smith writes the laws.” Says Vice President Wallace: “Harold Smith is the most important man in this Administration.”

Mr. Smith & the Washington Mess. Even allowing for a normal degree of exaggeration, these are astonishing statements about a man who is almost completely unknown to the U.S. public. Much of Harold Smith’s obscurity is deliberate. The rest derives from the fact that most citizens know little more about his job than they do about him.

The Bureau of the Budget is generally thought to be a branch of the Treasury which collects and adds up what the various departments of the Government would like to spend during the coming year, and presents the figures each January in a bulky tome called the U.S. Budget. Except that the Bureau was transferred in 1939 from the Treasury to the Executive Office of the President, this is true. But it is only the starting point, the excuse, for Harold Smith’s real assignment. If he had the title that fits his job, he would be called Gen eral Manager of the U.S. Government.

The news that the Government hasa general manager, and that he is generally rated exceptionally good at his job, is apt to provoke most citizens to some pretty indignant questions. What about the rise and fall of Washington czars and co ordinating agencies, the famed Washington confusion, the wearisome headaches, bottlenecks, bickerings, fumbles and bumbles? What has General Manager Smith been doing all this time? If he is any good, why hasn’t he straightened out the mess? Pending investigation, John Citizen may be pardoned for concluding that Harold Smith is a hell of an efficiency expert.

They All Spend Money. The Bureau of the Budget has been in existence only 22 years. Before that, every Government agency applied individually to Congress for its yearly appropriation. In its first 1 8 years, under the first Director, Charles Gates Dawes, and his successors, the understaffed Bureau did little but harp on economy and round up the various figures for Congress. But as early as 1918 Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelt had urged on the House Appropriations Committee a plan to create a budget bureau which would be the central control agency of the Government.

His reasoning was simple and logical. Gov ernment agencies do 10.001 jobs, from building battleships to advising farmers about the pink bollworm. But they all do one thing in common: spend money. A Budget Bureau should be in an ideal position to survey and coordinate the whole activity of the Government, inquiring into purposes and projects, checking performances, uncovering and eliminating extravagance, duplication, confusion.

As President, Mr. Roosevelt did not put his theory into practice until 1939. The year before, the Bureau had 45 employes, spent $196,000. In 1939 Harold Smith (he had been Michigan’s budget director since 1937) took over, and began to expand.

Life Insurance, Lubricating Oil. Every Government request for money must have the Budget Bureau’s approval before it is passed along to Congress. Few get by intact. But the Bureau itself must also appear before the House Appropriations Committee to explain and defend its own request. This year Director Smith asked for $2,172,000 — nearly twelve times the 1938 appropriation — to run his Bureau of 571 employes during fiscal 1944. In justification, Smith listed a few of the things that he and his staff of experts have been up to since the nation went to war. Among other jobs, they had:

¶Worked out a reorganization of the Army Air Forces’ administrative opera tions (resulting at some fields in man-hour savings of as much as 25%), proposed similar internal improvements for a dozen other war agencies, ironed out many a conflict.

¶Developed an accounting and auditing system to handle military life insurance premiums which will eliminate 2,000 clerical employes, save $3,000,000 a year.

¶Made plans to move enough Government agencies and workers out of Washington to empty 3,000,000 sq. ft. of office space, 5,000 homes and apartments, rooms for 8,000 single persons.

¶Studied the practices of big private motor-fleet operators, applied them to Federal auto fleets for an estimated annual saving of 750,000 gal. of lubricating oil.

¶ Inspected some 3,000 Government war construction projects, made financial and engineering recommendations.

¶Overhauled the statistical systems of a half-dozen war agencies, eliminating much duplication.

¶Reviewed all Government agency proposals for new legislation and Executive orders, drafted most of the finished products.

¶ Made an overall study of wartime personnel hirings, aimed to eliminate some jobs, or at least check increases.

“A Swell Job, Mr. Smith.” Even this brief sampling makes apparent one reason Mr. Smith and his Bureau rarely get into the papers. Most of their jobs are the unspectacular, long-range, beneficial sort which do not make news. For the Government as a whole is run a great deal better than the citizenry knows. Mistakes, hard names, quarrels make more headlines than peaceful progress. Any Congressman could make the front pages any day by standing up and calling Harold Smith a waster and a no-good. But when, at the end of his Appropriations Committee testimony, Alabama’s Joe Starnes said, “I think you are doing a swell job, Mr. Smith,” nobody bothered to report it.

Another reason for Budget Bureau obscurity is that many of its activities cannot be revealed, even to Congress. Some of its current operations, undertaken at the request of the Army, Navy and State Department, may never be disclosed. This secrecy applies even more to the jobs which Smith undertakes in person as the President’s adviser, trouble shooter, investigator and intra-bureau diplomat.

Smith talks with the President oftener than any other civilian except Harry Hopkins and the White House secretariat—about twice a week in person, almost daily by telephone. Chits signed F.D.R. stream from the White House to his big, highceilinged, parlorish office in the State Department building across the street. For him, 9 a.m. to midnight is a normal working day.

His relations with the President are cordial, but strictly in the line of duty. The President doesn’t actually wince when Budgeteer Smith enters, but he well might. For the President loves good news and Harold Smith almost never brings any. Every other Administration visitor can occasionally pop in with cheerful tidings. But not Harold Smith: he brings a brief case of woe, problems, figures, trouble, which he and the President must face up to forthwith.

Politician v. Administrator. If Harold Smith, in his unique position, were a politician, he would inevitably become one of Washington’s most hated men. The secret of Smith’s freedom from enemies is that he is not a politician. Other officials resent him when he disrupts their pet schemes, lops their funds and authority. But their anger quickly cools. They know and respect him for what he is: a professional administrator, with no political ambitions, no special interests to serve, no social reforms to promote.

Of his politics he once said: “I am what you might call an independent Republican with Socialist leanings who frequently votes Democratic.” Though com pletely loyal to Franklin Roosevelt, he could serve any other President with equal zeal. His only passion is for efficient government. This accounts for his office-holding longevity. The political prima donnas — Czars, Assistant Presidents, No. 1 Brain-Trusters, No. 2 New Dealers — may come & go, but the Smiths go on forever.

Rules for Success. Harold Smith is a living compendium of the rules for success in professional administration. The rules:

He must be trained for his job. Government in the U.S. is too complex to be administered by amateurs. Reared on a Kansas wheat farm, Smith took a degree in electrical engineering at the state university, but his interest shifted to government. He became successively a graduate student and teacher of government at the University of Michigan, staff member of the Detroit Bureau of Government Research and the League of Kansas Municipalities, director of the Michigan Municipal League, the University of Michigan’s Bureau of Government, and the Michigan Budget Bureau.

He must have a “passion for anonym ity.” Smith’s undistinguished appearance and self-effacing personality are assets.

He must be a good and a merciless judge of men, willing to sacrifice personal prestige, loyalties and friendships to the success of the job. Striking proof of Smith’s disregard for his own pride and prestige is the fact that his chief assistant, tough, able Wayne Coy, gets the same salary ($10,000) that he does.

He must stick to his administrative duties, leave policy to the politicians. When a new policy is under debate, Smith willingly gives the President and Congress the benefit of his information and experience, will argue stoutly for his own point of view. But, once a policy has been adopted, once the people through their representatives have taken a decision, Smith lays his personal opinions away. From then on, his job, as he conceives it, is to help make the policy work.

Smith 60%, Roosevelt 40%. Harold Smith is too loyal and discreet a staff officer to sound off about his commander’s mistakes. But it is no secret that his carefully drawn organization plans — for war production, food, manpower, economic stabilization, rationing, price control —have been repeatedly ignored. Time & again the President has yielded to his political instincts to compromise, to repay loyalty with loyalty, to keep everybody happy. Smith swallows such disappointments cheerfully. He is glad and proud that, sooner or later, the President has accepted about 60% of his recommendations.

In a sense, he is any and every Mr. Smith of the U.S.A. In his high Government post he is a solid, reassuring symbol of the average American’s patience, common sense and optimism. He does not let his knowledge of Mr. Roosevelt’s administrative failings blind him to the President’s great qualities of leadership. He knows that America has survived plenty of mistakes in the past, and is sure it can survive plenty more.

He told a Congressional committee early this year: “While, as Director of the Budget, I see many soft spots that worry me, at the same time one has to look at the overall product. When I look at that, I say, ‘Well, it is rather amazing that we have done as well as we have. . . .’ “