WASHINGTON--President Roosevelt, driving to coordinate the nation's preparedness program, today appointed a seven-member defense commission which will meet with him Thursday to begin work on its monumental task.

President William S. Knudsen of General Motors and Chairman Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., of the U. S. Steel Corp., were named to supervise industrial production and material.

The other five members were Sidney Hillman, vice-president of the C. I. O. and president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, Chester C. Davis, a governor of the Federal Reserve Board, Chairman Ralph Budd of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad, Leon Henderson, member of the Securities and Exchange Commission and formerly Director of Research and Planning for the N. R. A., and Harriet Elliott, Dean of the Women's College at the University of North Carolina and expert on price trends in consumer markets