directorships to join the U.S. Army. By April 1945, newspapers reported that Gillette already disliked the job, and had complained that he was often out-voted by the two other members. 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. Nevertheless, in a July 17, 1945, message to Congress, President Truman acknowledged the Board's "substantial achievements:" It has set in motion the disposal machinery which Congress authorized and it has begun to implement the standards which Congress laid down for the disposal of surplus property. Regulations already promulgated or in the process of adoption cover the most important types of property-consumer goods, plant equipment, industrial plants and farm lands. Years of wartime rationing had created a pent-up demand for many kinds of goods that the government had accumulated. That demand was exacerbated by the return of millions of veterans to civilian life. But the Board’s policymaking responsibilities were complicated by the potential implications of selling too much surplus property at once, at discounted prices. The amount of surplus property was so vast that private manufacturers feared that, once offered for sale, it would harm domestic markets for privately produced goods and exacerbate a postwar recession. The Board responded by pledging not to sell more than the market could absorb, and to rely upon sales to new foreign buyers in order to introduce new markets to American goods. Replacement 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. President Truman proposed in July 1945 to reorganize the Board into an agency with a single head, and Congress soon agreed. The Board was superseded by the Surplus Property Administration (SPA), pursuant to an act of September 18, 1945. Board chairman Symington was the SPA’s first administrator. Then, in 1946, domestic functions of the SPA were assigned to War Assets Administration. Truman named Symington as Assistant Secretary of War for Air, and then as the first Secretary of the Air Force. See also Reconstruction Finance Corporation List of recessions in the United States References Defunct agencies of the United States government Government agencies established in 1944 Agencies of the United States government during World War II