Man of the Hour

by Jennet Conant

  A worrying consideration was what to do about his wife. Conant assumed his wartime burdens as a matter of course. The notion of duty was dear to him, as was the Jeffersonian idea that the country should look to the “natural aristocracy” of the talented for leadership. But it was asking a lot of Patty, who did not like that her welfare always came second to that of the nation. While he had never been busier, she was bored and lonely, too much on her own now that her sons were away at school. Apprehensive that he was neglecting her needs, he recruited close friends to look after her, invite her to dinner, and generally keep her distracted and happy. His two sisters, along with her cousins Eleanor and Lucy, were loyal coconspirators in his campaign to keep her on an even keel. Surrounded by hand-holders, and occupied with the ladies of the Harvard Wives Club, she would not, he hoped, grow too resentful of his absence and preoccupation with world affairs, as she was sometimes wont to do. But in her journal, a dispirited Patty copied out a quote from Thoreau: “At what expense any valuable work is performed! At the expense of a life!”

  In order to simplify their lives as much as possible, Conant informed Harvard that as part of the wartime austerity measures, he would vacate the presidential mansion—leaving it to the navy for use as an administrative headquarters—and make do with the unpretentious little yellow frame house next door at 11 Quincy Street. He also took a voluntary pay cut. The move almost came as a relief to Patty. In the past year, she had found running the large official residence increasingly taxing. The war had made it impossible to find good help. The cook and parlor maids had quit, and with the defense factories taking every halfway decent pair of hands, she told her mother, “only a few elderly and difficult personalities and a collection of slack Irish biddies remain.” In Washington, where he was spending the bulk of his time, Conant kept a comfortable four-room apartment in a dormitory building at Dumbarton Oaks, the magnificent eighteen-acre Georgetown estate gifted to Harvard by the diplomat and philanthropist Robert Woods Bliss two years earlier.

  Then there was the still fraught question of what to do with Ted, who had run afoul of the headmaster of the Dublin School. He had spent much of the spring term in the “doghouse” and was refusing to return in the fall. There was no question of the troubled teenager remaining at home with his mother. After much deliberation, and more visits to doctors and psychiatrists, Conant settled on another small rural New England boarding school known for taking the wayward offspring of Boston families. A former teacher at Shady Hill, Carmelita Hinton, had left in 1935 to start the Putney School in Vermont, based on the progressive educational ideas of John Dewey. It was an experimental farm school where students were permitted to learn at their own pace while milking cows and mucking out stalls. At this point Conant, who had all but given up on his youngest, was in favor of anything that would keep the boy out of sight and mind.

  The summer of 1942 soon presented other challenges. July in Washington was no one’s idea of fun, and Conant had been counting the days until he could get away, when he found himself roped into the rubber controversy—one of the most contentious issues in the capital during the first anxious year of war. For months, the newspapers had been filled with furious screeds about the “inefficiency, mismanagement, carelessness, politics, waste, and extravagance” of Roosevelt’s bungled mobilization plans. There had been no fewer than seventeen separate congressional hearings, and the printed copies, filled with conflicting reports and suspect testimony, measured well over a foot and a half when stacked one upon the other. The raging battle pitted powerful industrial and commercial interests against one another, generated a struggle between the executive and congressional branches over which would have the authority to allocate vital materials for war production, and sparked more than one public brawl. The most infamous altercation was between Washington Post publisher Eugene Meyer, whose paper ran an editorial accusing Secretary of Commerce Jesse H. Jones of mistakes that brought on the crisis, leading the two distinguished millionaires to come to blows at the exclusive Alfalfa Club.

  While there was plenty of greed and incompetence to go around, the ominous truth was that the Japanese had struck at the most vulnerable spot in the American economy. In the first half of 1942, the Japanese, in their aggressive conquest of the South Pacific, had captured 90 percent of the crude rubber in the world and 97 percent of the American supply. Despite this calamity, the United States had to find a way to meet the requirements not only of its military forces but also those of its allies, to say nothing of its own essential civilian needs. If new supplies could not be found, the military would exhaust the remaining crude stocks before the end of the next summer. Rumors swirled about impending shortages and nationwide rationing of rubber and gasoline. All the stories about the dire straits the country was in were beginning to cause a public panic.

  The only solution was to develop a synthetic rubber and do it quickly. On July 27, 1942, the New York Herald Tribune published a strong editorial about the rubber scandal, criticizing Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone’s reluctance to head a commission to clear up the crisis, and stating that Conant was the obvious man for the job. The Harvard chemist was “fearless, independent, and technically wise,” and could be counted on “to bring order out of the present chaos.”

  Faced with mounting criticism, Roosevelt vetoed a farm bill to produce rubber from grain-based alcohol and instead announced the formation of an independent committee to “investigate the whole rubber situation” and restore public confidence. The president turned to three wise men to sort out the mess: Bernard Baruch, who had run the War Industries Board in World War I and would serve as chairman, Conant, and Karl Compton. Conant, who already had too much on his plate, accepted the appointment with some trepidation but felt flattered at being asked to come to the nation’s—and the administration’s—rescue. He could not help being “a little bit disappointed,” however, that it was Baruch, and not he, who would be “calling the shots.” Not at all sure how he would like working with the legendary Wall Street speculator, he had lobbied hard for the selection of Compton, just in case he would need “powerful reinforcement.”

  The president’s Rubber Survey Committee (RSC) met for the first time on August 3, three days before he sent his veto message to Capitol Hill, at Baruch’s home in Port Washington, Long Island. The wily seventy-one-year-old financier, whose business acumen was equaled only by his ego and love of the spotlight, announced immediately that he would deal with the politics and press. “Let me handle the senators and fellows on the Hill,” Baruch asserted in his patronizing avuncular manner. “Very important. I’ll do that sort of thing. You young fellows will do the work.”

  Conant could not help worrying about what it meant for a man in his position to be taking on what the Tribune called a “thankless task.” Whoever conducted the inquiry could expect to be attacked by all sides, and he was putting not only his good name on the line but also Harvard’s. The issue had become so controversial, Conant feared that if his verdict was not well received, as was Lowell’s experience with the Sacco-Vanzetti case, he would never live it down. Before leaving his colleagues that afternoon, he remarked that he had no illusions about the ticklish nature of their assignment. “No, sir,” drawled Baruch, who liked to play up his “country boy” roots in South Carolina, “this job is a porcupine and a skunk all rolled into one.”

  Roosevelt’s appointment of the expert board quieted the clamor for a month. The public seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief on hearing that a survey of the situation was in competent hands. “Unquestionably, the very best formula for synthetic rubber is the one President Roosevelt has hit upon,” the New York Times noted in an editorial. “It comprises Baruch, Conant, and Compton. The finest ingredient for producing any mixture is brains.”

  Bearing in mind the president’s request that they report back as soon as possible, the RSC began at once to compile data. Conant arranged for them to move into temporary quarters at Dumbarton Oaks, and dispatched a battalion
of chemists to investigate commercial alcohol plants, whiskey distilleries, petroleum refineries, and Department of Agriculture experimental stations. If the fundamental purpose of the RSC was, as Baruch was fond of saying, “getting the mostest rubber fastest,” the first thing they needed to find was a suitable manufacturing facility. Over four sweltering weeks in August, they listened to testimony from dozens of government officials, industrialists, and technical advisors. Baruch, who liked to sit in the sun for his health, insisted on holding so many meetings in Lafayette Park, close by his rooms at the Carlton Hotel, that the hardworking trio became known as the “park bench committee.”

  The three men delivered their findings to the president on September 10, after several arduous days spent writing the seventy-five-page report in an unair-conditioned office suite. Presuming the RSC’s first duty to be the creation of a steady rubber supply that would “keep our armed forces fighting and our essential civilian wheels turning,” they recommended that this could be best done by “bulling through” the present synthetic program as rapidly as possible, and by “safeguarding jealously every ounce of rubber in the country.” The committee supported all efforts to expand rubber supplies, but in the interest of speed recommended moving ahead with the butadiene-from-petroleum program instead of the alcohol process favored by Henry Wallace and the farm lobby. The headline-making part of the report found the “existing situation to be so dangerous” that sweeping corrective measures had to be implemented, including speed limits, rationing, recapping tires, and reclaiming scrap rubber. “Discomfort or defeat, there is no middle course,” the report warned in blunt language that sounded very much like Conant’s stern advocacy of conservation.III

  The committee’s acceptance of the government program Jones had contracted did not prevent the RSC from taking a swing at the architects of the rubber scandal. It denounced the “overlapping and confusing authority” that had resulted in delays and unwise decisions, and urged the appointment of a “rubber administrator” to have sole responsibility for the government program.

  The press applauded the RSC’s constructive program of action. “The incantations of a prestigious authority,” observed a political scientist, had elicited public acceptance of rationing, a policy on which Americans had been sharply divided. As an unexpected bonus, Conant and Compton came away with a burnished image, their performance enhancing the status of scientists as cool, trained minds who, with their objective methodology, were capable of solving almost any problem.

  The president was greatly pleased. He declared the Baruch-Conant-Compton report “excellent” and said that the government was indebted to the trio. It put to rest many embarrassing questions and paved the way for a new industry that would eliminate the country’s dependence on imported rubber. More important, it gave FDR the moral authority to ask for new and necessary wartime sacrifices, including nationwide gas rationing, a painful task on the eve of congressional elections. Still unresolved, however, was who would fill the position of rubber czar. “What about you, Dr. Conant?” Roosevelt suggested during a convivial meeting in his office. Oh no, Conant demurred; he had no experience running an operation of that magnitude. “Well,” the president replied, “you run a pretty big show up in Cambridge, don’t you?”

  Given the opening, Conant could not resist plugging his idea for a military training corps, a rational deferment and training system he had been in the midst of negotiating with the army and educators when he was commandeered for the rubber survey. He had “a plan,” he began quickly. But Roosevelt turned away and changed the subject, brushing aside any more of Conant’s bright ideas for the moment.

  As he left the White House, a reporter asked the weary war scientist if there was anything he would like to add to the report. “It’s all in there, and it’s a lot,” he replied. “Now for some sleep.” He did not mention that when he finally put his head down, it would be in a Pullman car. Conant was on his way to catch a train for California to inspect Lawrence’s electromagnetic separation operation at his Berkeley lab.

  * * *

  I. The code name MAUD was reportedly inspired by a cryptic reference—“MAUD RAY KENT”—in a cable the Austrian physicist Lise Meitner sent to a British physicist. Convinced it was an anagram, the British used the mysterious code as the name of their secret nuclear weapons committee. Only after the war did they learn that it was simply an attempt to send greetings to Niels Bohr’s governess, Maud Ray, who was then living in Kent, England.

  II. Their estimate was overoptimistic by one year.

  III. The RSC’s decision gave birth to a massive new synthetic rubber industry, and by the war’s end, the United States was the world’s largest exporter of rubber, all of it man-made—an outcome Conant told Baruch in 1944 “almost seems too good to be true.”

  CHAPTER 14

  * * *

  A Colossal Gamble

  To my mind, it is this fear that the Germans may be near the goal which is the prime reason for an all-out effort now on this gamble.

  —JBC to General Leslie R. Groves, December 9, 1942

  The transition from planning phase to design and construction on any large project can be trying, but embarking on five different ones simultaneously proved an exercise in frustration. The summer of 1942 was one of missed deadlines, delays, and disagreements, as the bomb project became mired in confusion. Conant had warned Bush that proceeding with pilot-plant development for each of the competing methods of producing fissionable material would be a gigantic task, surpassing the greatest military campaigns of all time. The “grand scale” of the program he envisioned would require multiple sites, a mass of machinery, and tens of thousands of workers, in addition to the procurement of tons of vital raw materials—high-purity graphite, uranium ore, copper, and steel—already in short supply. But he had ended by insisting that this “Napoleonic approach,” as he summed up his Yankee horror at the wretched excess, was dictated by the “desperate need for speed” in the race to find the shortest route to an atomic weapon.

  Conant did not believe the OSRD could create the enormous construction organization that would be needed, and assumed it would be handed over to the army. With national survival at stake, those in the scientific establishment would have to work with the military whether they liked it or not. He knew Bush had raised the possibility with Roosevelt back in 1941, and all three of them were agreed that for reasons of security it made sense to limit the assignment to just one of the services. Having seen the army erect huge poison gasworks during World War I, Conant believed it capable of building the pilot plants and taking over production. From his experience with lewisite, he could also attest to the army’s ability to maintain absolute secrecy. He even suggested that some top scientists should be commissioned as officers in the new US Army Corps of Engineers to smooth the way for a cooperative effort. Reluctant to give up control over the research, however, he proposed creating an advisory committee on the “scientific aspects” so that the OSRD could remain involved in the project at every stage. Bush disagreed, deciding it would be better to have “the whole thing in one package,” and dropped it in the lap of the army.

  If Bush and Conant felt any relief at yielding responsibility for the vast program, they soon regretted it. Established as the Manhattan Engineering District in June 1942 by the temporary commanding officer whose main office was in New York City, the hastily cobbled together setup ran into problems from the start. The army officers had no time to prepare for the massive assignment and lacked the necessary technical experience. None had a working knowledge of atomic energy.

  At the same time, Bush and Conant were unsure how to exert their authority in a military organization far removed from their official sphere of influence. While they’d had extensive dealings with the War Department in the past, once the bomb project was formally ushered into the army, they suddenly found themselves on the outside looking in. Because they had failed to adequately define their roles beforehand, routine matters became un
expectedly difficult to handle. Worse still, they had made no provision for a higher power to resolve conflicts. As a result, months were wasted haggling over construction plans, with some issues, such as the selection of a site in Tennessee, passed back and forth like a hot potato until it almost slipped through their fingers. With the two camps battling over which projects should have top priority, Conant became the bearer of bad news, repeatedly going to a harried Bush with reports of postponements that “threatened to negate” all the radiant estimates of the spring.

  The transfer to military jurisdiction also took a toll on morale. Many of the scientists were extremely disheartened to learn that their work was being snatched from their hands just as they were on the verge of real breakthroughs. There was an underlying feeling among many that they had earned the right to see the historic undertaking through to the end. The younger men, in particular, chafed at the idea of being under military control. Their antagonism was exacerbated by the fears of some of the senior refugee scientists who had fled totalitarian regimes and had frightening memories of the military. Compton faced a “near rebellion” from members of his staff, and in a tense confrontation on a hot June evening in Chicago barely managed to persuade them that they could not accomplish their goal of beating the Germans if they were divided among themselves.