[3] President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s economic advisor, Bernard Baruch, originally recommended that the U.S. dispose of surplus war goods through an agency run by a single administrator (and assisted by a policy board), and with general statutory authority.
[4] Through an Executive Order,[5] Roosevelt established the Surplus War Property Administration and named public servant and former Texas cotton broker William L. Clayton to administer it.
[6] Roosevelt's initial preference as chair, former South Carolina banker and Defense Plant Corp. President Sam H. Husbands, was never nominated because of anticipated resistance in the lame-duck 1944 Senate.
[15] In May 1945 Gillette resigned effective July 15, 1945, and President Harry S. Truman appointed St. Louis manufacturing executive W. Stuart Symington to succeed him as chair.
[16] Nevertheless, in a July 17, 1945, message to Congress, President Truman acknowledged the Board's "substantial achievements:" Years of wartime rationing had created a pent-up demand for many kinds of goods that the government had accumulated.
[18] Gillette, Symington, President Truman, and the more liberal 1945 U.S. Congress concurred that the Act’s three-member Board was inferior to the single-administrator-plan originally proposed.