Reorganization II Like a man with a new rifle who waits only for ammunition to shoot it, Franklin Roosevelt last week again raised the Government reorganizing power granted him by Congress last March and let fly. His second volley affected only 12,000 U. S. employes, promised to save only $1,250,000, but in the pants of inefficiency it looked like a telling fusillade.
To the State Department he transferred the foreign offices of Commerce and Agriculture. (Assistant Secretary of Commerce Richard C. Patterson Jr., already miffed by the elevation over him of Edward J. Noble to Harry Hopkins' elbow, promptly resigned.) Also, the Foreign Service Buildings Commission, hitherto independent.
To the Treasury, the Bureau of Lighthouses (from Commerce) for consolidation with the Coast Guard.
To Justice, the National Training School for Boys (abolishing its board of trustees) and Federal Prison Industries Inc.
To Interior the Bureau of Insular Affairs (War) for consolidation with the Division of Territories and Island Possessions; Bureau of Fisheries (Commerce) and Bureau of Biological Survey (Agriculture), to lump conservation agencies.
To Agriculture, the Rural Electrification Administration (now independent).
To Commerce (from War) the Inland Waterways Corp. (barge lines).
To the Federal Security Agency (proposed in Reorganization I) the film and radio functions of the National Emergency Council, which would itself be abolished, its other functions (chiefly fact gathering) shifted to the Chief Executive.
To Limbo the Director General of Railroads (William Gibbs McAdoo's Wartime office, its onetime payroll of 2.000,000, now down to one clerk), the War Finance Corp., National Bituminous Coal Commission (its function to Interior).
The President's first proposal of Reorganization (TIME, May 8) was passed promptly by the House. Less controversial, Reorganization II was promptly put to the test in the Senate. Jimmy Byrnes of South Carolina, prime friend of Reorganization, asked the committee in charge to report an adverse resolution on Reorganization II. It did so and Jimmy Byrnes got the resolution beaten in full Senate, thus assuring Reorganization II against Congressional veto.