Mormon

Marriner Stoddard Eccles grew up in Logan, Utah, a rich & pious Mormon-- grandson of a covered-wagon pioneer, son of a lumber-banking-utilities tycoon. At 19, graduated from Brigham Young College, he went as a missionary to Scotland. He came home, put his capital with the capital of Browning-firearms heirs to start the First Security system which operated 28 banks (now consolidated into twelve) in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming. He became vice president and treasurer of Amalgamated Sugar Co. and headed a construction company which got a big job out of Hoover Dam.* Last week, aged 43, Marriner Eccles came to the Treasury as special assistant to Secretary Morgenthau--to advise him how to finance the greatest peacetime deficit. But Earle Bailie, forced to resign that ticklish job because of Senatorial objections to his Wall Street connections (TIME, Jan. 15), stayed on long enough to advise on last week's momentous gold-doings. Mormon Marriner Eccles, in good standing with the Twelve Apostles of his church, also gets credit for liberalism because he favors large emergency expenditures and redistribution of wealth by high income taxes.

*Biggest Mormon-controlled sugar company is Utah-Idaho, headed by Heber Jedediah Grant, chief of the Twelve Apostles. Amalgamated, Mormon-managed, is part of American Beet Sugar Co., second largest beet sugar producer in the U. S.

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