aganda that went out that Congress felt forced to do something about it, so passed the Penalty Mail Act.

Mr. NORTHROP. The Penalty Mail Act establishes a real control. You cannot spend more than the amount approriated for this purpose. Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. I have before me the figures that were given to the Treasury and Post Office Subcommittee on Appropriations, in which the report of the Post Office Department shows expenditures of the Interior Department in the amount of $188,271.90. It seems that your figures in the Budget show $200,464. There is a discrepancy there of nearly $12,000 between your report and that of the Post Office Department.

Mr. BEASLEY. The $200,464 shown by the Department represents the cost of actual mailings as reported by the bureaus, whereas $188,000 reported by the Post Office Department represents the amount billed on the basis of their computation of penalty mailings. Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. What does that mean?

Mr. BEASLEY. The Department's figures represent actual mailings by count, whereas the Post Office Department arrived at their figures through spot checking. They would count the actual number of pieces of penalty mail during 1 week and apply that count to each week in the quarter.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Then your figures would be more accurate than those of the Post Office Department?

Mr. BEASLEY. I would judge our figures represent more accurately the pieces of penalty mail actually sent through post-office facilities.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1946.

OFFICE OF THE SOLICITOR

STATEMENT OF WARNER W. GARDNER, SOLICITOR, INTERIOR DEPARTMENT

PERSONAL SERVICES

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Mr. Gardner, you are the Solicitor for the Interior Department?

Mr. GARDNER. Yes, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. The committee has not seen you for some time. Where have you been? In the Army?

Mr. GARDNER. I have been in the Army, sir.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Well, we are glad to see you back. The estimate for 1947 for the Office of the Solicitor is $267,000, an increase of $29,053 over the appropriations for the fiscal year 1946.

SUMMARY OF THE ESTIMATE

The statement appearing on page 17 of the justifications showing the increases and decreases will be included in the record at this point.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Do you have a brief statement to make to the committee?

Mr. GARDNER. A very brief statement, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. You must have heard the statement I made to the preceding witness.

Mr. GARDNER. I have heard that statement before, sir. I have sometimes seen short statements which did not produce bounty from this committee. I think in any event a short statement is all that is needed for my needs.

The committee is thoroughly familiar with the work of my office and I shall not dwell upon its general functions.

We have a staff of 30 attorneys in my office who in the last fiscal year turned out some 20,000 jobs.

BACKLOG OF WORK

When I got back in October I found what seemed to me a simply appalling backlog of work. We estimated it for the Budget Bureau and it came to the fearful total of 18,400 man-hours behind.

I have reduced that backlog by 1,000 man-hours at this point, which is 4 months later, but there is still a fearful total of 17,150 man-hours of backlog work piled up in my office.

That is in spite of much overtime and long hours of my attorneys and in spite of daily complaints from me which may not do much to lessen the backlog but which still are of daily occurrence.

I realize my problem. It is a very serious one. If I continue at. the rate I have in the last 4 months I will have the backlog cleared up in 6 years' time.

That seems to be infinitely too long.

I think there is nothing a citizen has more right to complain of in Government business than slowness in getting business done. We can forgive mistakes but an awfully hard thing to forgive is to make a mistake after you have had the file for 2 months or 6 months or some fearful length of time.

I am going to do all in my power to get that backlog down. I am asking, however, for a little help from the committee.

NEED FOR ADDITIONAL PERSONNEL

That help which I want takes the form of one P-6 and three P-1 positions.

The one P-6 position is in the Legislative Division, where I think the most difficult work in my office is done, because those men have to bring together the interests of the several bureaus. I need not explain to this committee the often conflicting views in the Department, and large amount of our work cuts across bureau lines.

As I explained to the Secretary at one time, they really have to do the work that is the job of an assistant secretary, the work of arbitrating between bureaus, and they have to do it without any authority. It takes an able man to do the job of drafting legislation and preparing reports that are sufficiently clear so that our legislative needs can be set before the Congress as well as they should be.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. You refer to one P-6 position. What salary would that carry?

Mr. GARDNER. They have worked in some new salary grades since I was here. I will have to look that up-that would be $6,230. The Legislative Division has the worst of the backlogs, some 7,100 man-hours, which if I had a good man, if that estimate is right, and I believe it was conscientiously made, it would take him 3 years to clean up; that is, I am behind in the Legislative Division to the extent of one man working 3 years. If I could get one good man in there I do not think that I would be clear a year from now. I would hope to be clear 2 years from now.

And the work of the Legislative Division is much the worse embarrassing of ours to fall behind because we have had instances of people coming up-to many instances, in fact, perhaps 15 times since I have been back-of people coming up to congressional committees in which they have proposed to the Department their report on a congressional bill and I regret to say that they have not had the Department's blessing on their position and they have been forced, necessarily, because of the backlogs in my Legislative Division, simply to tell the Congress they are presenting their informal views and have not yet had Department clearance on it.

I think that is an unhealthy condition and I want another man to help cure it.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Now, go ahead for the record.

Mr. GARDNER. In addition to the P-6 attorney in the Legislative Division I am asking for three P-1 attorneys.

I want to scatter one each in the three of my divisions which have the most of the routine work and which next to the Legislative Division have the worst backlog.

I have two reasons: One is that any form of distant planning leaves me a little uneasy because in my office I have only one person-which is a girl-under 30 years of age. All others are in their thirties, forties, fifties, and two of them in their sixties.

I think it is a good thing to have a mature legal staff but it make me uneasy about the period 4 or 5 years from now, and I want to ge in a few youngsters who will be able to assume the responsibilitie that will be left behind by the people who are leaving.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. At what salaries will you start thos youngsters?

Mr. GARDNER. I will start them at the salary that used to b $2,000, P-1, and is now $2,320.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Do you think that you can get lawyer that is worth his salt to come to Washington and live on tha money when you can get more money running a streetcar or shinin shoes or most anything than that?

Mr. GARDNER. I am very doubtful about it. I will tell you m hopes on it. It is obviously not our fault that the civil-service class fication should mean a graduate out of law school is put in P-1.

I have one hope and that is that the legal work in the Interio Department will be sufficiently attractive to a man that he wi come in at that grade and be satisfied.

My second hope is that the times are pretty tight for lawyers, a least around Washington it is.

Mr. JENSEN. That is not true out my way.

Mr. GARDNER. I am glad to hear that.

Mr. JENSEN. No, indeed; it is not.

Mr. GARDNER. It is just the reverse here of what it was when left here.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. GARDNER. A third hope that I will be able to get somebody a that salary is my hope that in the course of the next year the Civ Service Commission-first the Congress and then the Civil Servic Commission-will do something about our classification rating s that we do have a fair chance to compete with the private law firms

We used to pay salaries which were just the same as the New York law firms, that is, $2,000. And we can hold our own in tha sort of situation. There are a lot of attractions to Government work We cannot hold our own if the inflationary moves put us too fa behind, if a Wall Street firm will pay $3,000 and we will pay $2,30 to a man out of law school who has postponed marriage for 3 year while he is in law school.

I hope that will be cleared up.

At any event it is nothing I can do anything about.

So these three P-1 jobs represent the hope that I have that I wil be able to get a nucleus for the office 5 years from now; and second even apart from the 5-year period, they will be extremely valuable i that they can do the detail law work that I have to put expensiv attorneys on now.

The other place where I am asking for increased positions is not i the attorney positions but for stenographers.

I think at times they are more important than lawyers, in the sens that today we have a great deal of work in longhand instead of dictat ing, and work is piled up as high on the stenographer's desk as on th lawyer's desk. There is, however, this important difference; I ca make my lawyers get work out by saying O. K., get the work out do sloppy work in the hope of getting things moving.

I cannot do that with a stenographer. If I push things from my lawyer's desk to the stenographer's I do not get much further ahead. Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. What do the stenographers start at? Mr. GARDNER. We are asking for $1,902.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Base? Mr. GARDNER. That is everything now. time now but do not pay for it.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. $1,902?

We work everybody over

Mr. GARDNER. Yes. And Miss Mahon knows how hard it is to get somebody at that rate.

I asked the Budget for eight, but I got only three.

Mr. JENSEN. Off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. JENSEN. The pay-raise bill I think will be about 15 percent. Mr. GARDNER. I think so.

Mr. JENSEN. It will also help your attorneys and make it about $2,700.

Mr. GARDNER. If I can offer an attorney $2,700 and a Wall Street firm will offer $3,000 I can get the men. Because the people are not coring to the Government to get rich, they are coming here because they like the work.

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. You do not have to say Wall Street. Mr. GARDNER. I say Wall Street because that is my competition. Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. That is the thing we hear so much about. If you gentlemen would use your head a little more with reference to employing lawyers and not bring all of them from Wall Street but go out to Iowa and the Middle West and pick up some good lawyers froin real good law schools rather than just picking up anybody because he sometimes walked on that little crooked street known as Wall Street, I think that you would have a better all around set-up. The feeling has gotten out on the Hill that you cannot see a young lawyer unless he has been up on Wall Street.

Mr. JENSEN. Or out of Harvard.

Mr. ROONEY. What is wrong with that?

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. I realize that Wall Street is an important street and it is a great city to go visit and see a good show. New York City is a good city to be from.

Mr. ROONEY. Well, my office is just around the corner from Wall Street, and I'm sure it is conceded generally that the best lawyers in the country come from there.

ORIGIN OF LAWYERS IN SOLICITOR'S OFFICE

Mr. JOHNSON of Oklahoma. Well, we admit there are some great lawyers from Wall Street, one of whom is a member of this committee and who is not only a great lawyer but he has a great record as an effective prosecutor. Nevertheless, the fact remains that there is that feeling among the country Congressmen, let us say, that you cannot see a lawyer unless he has actually rubbed shoulders with the boys on Wall Street.

Mr. GARDNER. May I say that I am delighted to hear you attack me on that score. Because I am glad to say that of all the law offices in the United States Government ours is better from that standpoint than any others.