Mr. GULICK. Yes; that is true.

Senator BYRNES. I know of some.

Senator O'MAHONEY. Mr. Gulick, the discussion thus far seems to be based on theory rather than fact. May I ask whether in your study you have run across any particular instances in which, in your judgment, money might have been saved to the Government by the system which you suggest?

Mr. GULICK. Estimates on the savings to the Government by placing the responsibility strictly on the administrative officers are extremely difficult to put down in dollars and cents, but I am convinced that the delays and confusion, and the double going over of everything by people because of double responsibilities, result in a very large amount of delay and inability to get on with the job.

You asked yesterday for an illustration. I gave you that one about the leases. I thought at the time of another one that was of a somewhat similar character. It had to do with the purchase of furniture. Bids were advertised and samples were required by the Procurement Division. The lowest bidder did not submit a sample. The Comptroller General wrote that, nonetheless, he had to be given the contract because he was the low bidder. The purchasing officer said, "Well, no, he is not a responsible bidder, he has not submitted a sample, he has not met the requirements." The Comptroller General said, "All right, you have got to take that." They substituted their judgment for the judgment of the department with reference to the purchase of that furniture, and in this case the Comptroller General went out and bought furniture from the second high bidder for their own, office while this case was pending. The thing later was cleared up, after many months of delay, during which time the departments had to be held up in their work because of this difference of judgment.

Now, you have got to put the judgment some place for carrying on the work of departments. The man in whom you put that judgment is an administrative officer. That is what administration is. It is the exercise of judgment with regard to the spending of money, the carrying on of work.

Senator O'MAHONEY. There can be no doubt about that. I think that the system which is now in existence tends to make the Comptroller General participate in administrative decisions. When I was in the Post Office Department, at the very beginning of this administration, and I first came in contact with this system I understood that immediately, when I saw how it was working. Some of our staff were delegated to make constant representations in advance to the Comptroller General so that we would obtain decisions of the kind which we thought ought to be in there.

What I wanted to say was this: The question that will be propounded to us, the question which is in the public mind is this: Are you not suggesting a plan which amounts to reporting stolen horses, whereas we now have plan which amounts to at least an attempt to close the door before the horses are stolen?

Mr. GULICK. And to keep the horses locked in the barn all the time so you cannot get any plowing done.

Senator O'MAHONEY. Of course the analogy does not go quite that far. We will have some plowing done.

Mr. GULICK. Not if you want to keep the horses locked in the barn all the time.

Senator BYRD. Mr. Gulick, could not you furnish to the committee an itemized statement of your charges against the Comptroller General? You made the statement that the present operation of the Comptroller General's office seriously retards the business of the Government. There must be some concrete illustrations that you can give.

Mr. GULICK. That is the universal testimony.

Senator BYRD. Can you give us one single concrete illustration of it?

Representative TABER. You told us about some furniture. Will you tell us what department that was, if you can?

Mr. GULICK. The Division of Procurement. It was all paid through one office.

Representative TABER. It was all paid through Procurement? That is where the Comptroller General ordered them to buy the furniture?

Mr. GULICK. No. The Comptroller General goes over the purchase contract in order to satisfy himself as to the legality; then if he finds that there is something that is not satisfactory he can hold it up. As I understand it, that is the way that question arose on the furniture.

Senator BYRD. If there is such general dissatisfaction with it why cannot you give us some illustrations? You come here as an expert and make a positive statement that the operation of the Comptroller General's office has seriously retarded the administration of the Government. Give us some illustration, if you are able to do it. I will be glad to have you do it.

Senator O'MAHONEY. Of course, he has given two examples today. Senator BYRD. He has not given the details. He mentioned the furniture, but that does not give the department that purchased it. Mr. GULICK. You must know, Senator, that departments do not buy furniture under the system set up by Congress.

Senator BYRD. The Procurement Division, that is the Department. That is the Treasury Department, is it not?

Mr. GULICK. Yes.

Senator BYRD. Well, that is the Department.

Representative COCHRAN. In the final analysis, as far as legal expenditures are concerned, your thought is to pass that to the Congress for final decision rather than to permit the agent of the Congress to decide the question, as it now is set up?

Mr. GULICK. That the agent of Congress would decide whether it is legal or not, and would report.

Representative COCHRAN. That is what we have now.

Mr. GULICK. But that he would not hold up the administration pending that, he would not hold that up.

Representative COCHRAN. Suppose that Congress is not in session, that we would not be back here for 6 months, and millions of dollars are involved, would you say, "Go ahead and spend it and then we will see afterwards whether it was legal or whether it was illegal"? Mr. GULICK. Before they would go ahead and spend any considerable sums of money it would, of course, have to be cleared with the

Auditor, and if there were any serious doubts on it they would not go ahead and spend.

Representative COCHRAN. How do you reconcile your statement that you made at the outset, that Government officials are interested in spending money and that you must put brakes on doubtful expenditures, and then later you say the man who is given the responsibility of performing the job must decide when he needs more help, must decide when he needs more stationery, and so forth, that he must have authority and power or he cannot do a good job? Now, how do you reconcile those statements?

Mr. GULICK. By having both of those men report to the same chief, namely, the President. He will have one group of men here that will be out doing the job, and they will be enthusiastic spenders, and then he will have another agency which will be the brakes, just the way that the driver of an automobile has one foot on the gas and another foot on the brakes.

Representative COCHRAN. You spoke of the proposed efficiency or research division. Are you going to bring back the old Bureau of Efficiency? Is that the point you have in mind? That was their job, just exactly as you plan this.

Mr. GULICK. It is not much unlike, yes.

Representative COCHRAN. And the efficiency or research division. would come before the Congress with a report every year and every dollar that was saved from the appropriation they would claim the credit, they would claim they were responsible for the reduction of the appropriation, but when you brought them before the committee and pinned them down they could not prove they were responsible. The Bureau of Efficiency were so-called experts going around causing trouble in Government agencies. Congress saw fit to abolish the Bureau of Efficiency. Now, you come back and suggest that Congress should set up another Bureau of Efficiency.

Mr. GULICK. No, we say that it cannot be done on the outside with a Bureau of Efficiency that is on the loose, because that does result in the kind of confusion to which you refer. What we say is, it should be done as part of the Budget Office, at the center, and if they get good ideas for saving money it should be woven into the Budget itself.

Representative COCHRAN. You spoke a minute ago about the trouble over these travel vouchers. Let me give you an example. In 1906 or 1909 we passed a travel pay act. We did not have the automobile then, we did not have the good roads at that time. They traveled by train. That travel pay act provides that when you move from one place to another, if you move in your own automobile or by train you get 8 cents a mile, if you move in a Government automobile, sitting back, smoking a cigarette, a Government chauffeur driving you, you get 5 cents a mile. I will just cite one case. I can cite you lots of them. Down in Arizona we have two camps 15 miles apart. An officer is ordered to go from one camp to another, 15 miles over a concrete road, and he sits back in a Government machine driven by a Government chauffeur, and he is allowed 5 cents a mile, not on the basis of 15 miles, but on the basis of the distance by railroad. What is the distance you would travel by railroad? Two hundred miles to a connecting road and 200 miles back to the camp,

or 400 miles, while he is only riding 15 miles across by road. Now, I stopped that but it did happen not only in this instance but in many others and I have just started my fight on the travel pay question. That should not be allowed.

Mr. GULICK. I do not see why it should be kept up.

Representative COCHRAN. The Comptroller General is absolutely powerless to stop it, in many cases, because the law provides that they get the money. I have stopped some of them by getting regulations changed.

Mr, GULICK. I think the law should be changed. I think that is an excellent suggestion.

Representative COCHRAN. I have a great deal of information just like that in my office and I propose to try and change the law. Mr. GULICK. That is absurd.

Representative COCHRAN. Of course it is absurd.

Senator BARKLEY. With reference to exacting bonds-getting back to the question Senator Byrd asked-exacting bonds of public officers which might result in the Government's recovery, is it possible to exact any bond of any Government officer which would entitle the Government, or enable the Government to recover against the error in human judgment which all of us experience, unless it was connected with fraud or deceit?

Mr. GULICK. No.

Senator BARKLEY. I missed your testimony yesterday and maybe you have already stated this, but I would like to know something of your background. What experience have you had in matters of this sort, in an advisory capacity, relative to reorganization?

Mr. GULICK. I spent the last 20 years exclusively in working with State governments and local governments on problems of finance and reorganization.

Senator BARKLEY. What State governments have you assisted? Mr. GULICK. The States whose problems I have assisted in_are New York State, Massachusetts, Maine, New Jersey, Virginia, Tennessee, South Dakota. Let me see-well, I have done various tasks in Ohio, Delaware, and Florida.

Senator BARKLEY. That is a pretty good list.

Mr. GULICK. And I might say that is not all my work. I am the director of the Institute of Public Administration, which is the present name of the former Bureau of Municipal Research, at which probably, the whole Government research and efficiency program in the United States I might say, was really started by the men that went ahead of me. Take, for instance, the Taft Efficiency and Economy Commission in Washington in 1910, 1911, and 1912. The director of that was Fred Cleveland. He was also the director of our organization. I was a young man working under him. Shortly after that the Brookings Institution for Government Research was started and the staff was largely drawn from our organization.

Senator BARKLEY. One of the best examples of efficient government reorganization which was brought to our attention in recent years was that which was accomplished in Virginia under the leadership of Governor Byrd, now our colleague here. Did you act in your capacity during the process of that reorganization?

Mr. GULICK. I did, sir. It was one of the most enjoyable experiences I have had. It was one of the best jobs done in America, from

the standpoint of leadership and a thorough carrying out of the program.

Senator BARKLEY. Let me ask you a question which I intended to ask my friend, Mr. Brownlow, yesterday, with respect to this Presidential secretariat which he talked about yesterday. I do not know whether you mentioned it or not in your testimony, but I want to get clearly in my mind what it was that the committee had in mind. Until a few years ago the President had one secretary and he was a sort of a routine man to make appointments and put letters before him to sign, and all the sort of work that a secretary ordinarily does. Then they increased that to three, one of them to sit out in a room next to the President and make appointments and act as a sort of liaison officer between him and the public; another one as a sort of public relations man, all of which of course consumes his time in making and keeping contacts between the President and the outside world, and a third who was presumed to be more or less secluded and more or less a personal assistant to the President.

I want to see if I got correctly what the committee had in mind. There is nobody in the President's set-up as secretary, or as any subordinate to a secretary, whose sole duty is to act for the Presirent, to be solely responsible to him not only in checking up on recommendations and requests made by different departments, all of whom are special pleaders in their own behalf, and properly so, but he has nobody who is wholly independent, who can make a research into things which he might himself want to know, not only as to the actions and workings of a department but as to the broad things which he must consider as President of the United States.

Now, is it the view of the Commission that such an increase, whether it is six, five, or four, should be a body of men or both men and women, at the constant call, independent call, and service of the President in all the relationship, both public and private, and departmental, about which it is so essential for him to know the exact information, and to know the last-minute details, in order that he may keep constantly abreast of these matters which are beyond the power of three men acting as secretaries, with their work divided among three different phases to be able to perform? Now, is that the general idea?

Mr. BROWNLOW. That is a very excellent statement of the general idea, Senator Barkley, with the exception that we have conceived of these as not dealing with the public, but only with matters inside the Government with administrative problems.

Senator BARKLEY. They deal with him concerning public matters but they have no public contacts except as they themselves will initiate them in order to obtain information for the President.

Mr. BROWNLOW. They will be kept very busy with the things the President will initiate.

With respect to the working of the President's office, Mr. Forster, who has been the Chief Clerk there since the time of Grover Cleveland, told me that in the Taft administration their mail ran around 150 or 200 letters a day-and that that gradually increased up until the time of the Hoover Administration it got to be about 2.000 and that it now averages 4,000 pieces of mail a day and has reached in this administration a peak of 65,000 letters in one day. Of course there has been an increase in the clerical staff, but that over