History of John Smith Griffin
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Wartime Washington   1943

The house was a beautiful home in one of the nicer residential districts of Arlington, Virginia. Its address was 1400 Inglewood, right on the corner of Washington Blvd. and Inglewood. It was owned by an F.B.I. agent assigned at Kansas City. The rental agent said that he knew nothing of the vacancy but since I was the first there,.that if there was a vacancy and I was acceptable to the FBI agent, I could have first choice on the home. After much correspondence and waiting, everything was cleared and we rented the home for the modest rent of $75 per month, under the rent ceilings imposed during the war. We enjoyed this home immensely and the kids after moving back to California when the War was over, used to say how they would like to again be able to live in the style that we lived while we were in Arlington, on Inglewood. When the furniture arrived I decided to go back to Detroit and get Dot and the family. This was in early December, 1942.

LETTERS
--------------------------------------------------
(L421230) John Griffin to Parents / Arlington, VA
(L430212) John Griffin to Parents / Washington D.C.
(L430323) Dorothy Griffin to Maude / Arlington, VA
(L430325) John Griffin to Elsie Mae Griffin / Arlington, VA
(L430505) John Griffin to Mother / Washington D.C.
(L430712) John Griffin to Mother / Washington D.C.

My first impression of my positon at the Office of Defense Transportation was an accurate one. I found that there was not too much to do, and that much of the work was "make-work". We enjoyed renewing our old friendships and it seemed like old times to be back in Washington with those who had been our friends through the trials and hardships of working, going to school, and raising a family.

Jay Knudson who worked for the Office of the Solicitor in the U.S. Department of Agriculture was one of my good friends. His assignment was to appear before the Interstate Commerce Commission in cases involving rate increases on farm products. It was a new assignment and one which had recently been set up in the Department of Agriculture. He needed an assistant and was interested in someone who had some Interstate Commerce Commission experience. He approached me and asked if I would be interested in transfering from the Office of Defense Transportation to Agriculture. I told him that I was very much interested but that I would not ask Mr. Scott for the transfer, that if he or the Solicitor of the Department of Agriculture could arrange the transfer it would be OK with me. Negotiations were commenced and finally Mr. Scott agreed go let me go. Before leaving, he called me into his office and indicated that he was quite unhappy with me as I had been with O.D.T. only a short while and had not been of too much value to them up to that time. I reminded him that I had paid my own expenses to come to Washington, that I had not requested the transfer, and that I had not been very busy since going to work for O.D.T.

My transfer to the U.S. Department of Agriculture was completed and I went to work there on February 8, 1943. My first assignment was to prepare a brief in a cotton case involving freight rates on gin bales of cotton and bales which had been compressed. The Compress companies were trying to get the rate on gin bales from the south to the southeastern cotton mills increased so that they could increase the rate charged to ccmpress the bales of cotton. So long as they could ship the cotton cheaper in gin bales than by paying the compression charge plus a lower freight rate, the compress companies could not raise their rates. I did not participate in the hearing and the attorney who did had since left the Department.

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