Enter Grimly

To succeed volcanic Leon Henderson as Price Boss (see above), Franklin Roosevelt last week chose a man who seldom erupts: able, steady, slow-burning Senator Prentiss Marsh Brown of Michigan, 53, a Democrat and--through no fault of his own--a lame duck. Senator Brown did not want the job: after his defeat by Michigan's popular Judge Homer Ferguson last month (TIME, Nov. 16), he was ready to go back home to resume his law practice. But when the White House put the job up to him as a patriotic duty, conscientious Prentiss Brown had no choice.

As a member of the Senate's Banking and Currency Committee, Prentiss Brown did more than any other one man to write Franklin Roosevelt's new inflation controls (over wages and farm prices) into law last fall. In a single powerful speech--one of the greatest of the 77th Congress--he shattered farm-bloc opposition, saved the day for the Administration, earned Franklin Roosevelt's gratitude. Like many a good man before him, he now takes his reward in a harder, meaner assignment: a job that nobody but a Leon Henderson would want and that few men would accept.

Stocky, mild Prentiss Brown grew up in St. Ignace, Mich. (pop. 2,700), took an A.B. at Albion College, studied law in his father's office. He moved up the political ladder by slow, patient steps: county prosecutor, chairman of State conventions, Congressman. Elected to the Senate in 1936, he soon proved a greater statesman than many a man who had looked to be more of a ball-of-fire.

Though he is no friend of the farm bloc, Prentiss Brown will get along with Congress far better than Leon Henderson. He is quiet, unobtrusive, unspectacular. He has a politico's respect for sore toes. And on Capitol Hill he is known warmly as an engaging, modest first-termer who arrived in Washington as a wearer of old-fashioned nightshirts, a man whose idea of a good time was to visit Washington's old cemeteries.

Yet when Brown gets his official appointment next month, he will find the role hard and the galleries suspicious. Editorialized the New York Times: "It may be possible to be more tactful in dealing with Congress; it may be possible to improve the functioning of ceilings and rationing; but it is not going to be possible for anybody to achieve a painless solution of the problem of wartime inflation."

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