To make the task easier, he cut the waste in the department with utter ruthlessness, reducing from sixty to six the number of deputies who reported to him. Marshall hated excess; his reports to Roosevelt made him famous for his ability to summarize a complex situation in a few pages. The six men who reported to him found that any report that lasted a page too long simply went unread. He would listen to their oral presentations with rapt attention, but the minute they wandered from the topic or said something not thought through, he would look away, bored, uninterested.
