Imperial Valley Press

FR Believed Ready
To Offer Willkie
U.S. War Labor Job

(Continued from Page One)

with Mr. Roosevelt this morning, but White House Secretary Stephen Early said he thought the possibility of Willkie's appointment to the supplemental body was not the primary purpose of the conference.

Mr. Roosevelt created the war labor board by executive order yesterday. The order abolished the national defense mediation board and made William H. Davis chairman of the new board, as he had been of the old one.

Early disclosed that Willkie was one among several persons on a list yet to be completed by the President for assisting the new labor board as "umpires or arbitrators." In most important cases that come before the war labor board, Early said, the board members will sit as a panel with selected umpires from the supplemental list.

There have been reports for some time that Mr. Roosevelt is planning to utilize Willkie's services in a war post. Early's emphasis that the Roosevelt-Willkie meeting today was not necessarily to discuss Willkie's role as an umpire or arbitrator renewed speculation that the President may still have a more important post in mind for his 1940 rival.

One of the first tasks of the new war labor board may be a determination of the explosive closed shop issue. The test may come in the case involving labor demands for a union or closed shop at the Kearny, N. J., plant of the Federal Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.