REASONS FOR PROVIDING ONLY MINIMUM FACILITIES

Mr. SCHWABE. I am glad we agree, and I was sure we would. There is a reference to a lot of these facilities. As far as we can anticipate, most of them will be temporary installations. Not many of them will probably be permanent installations.

These military set-ups, for instance, become out of date, abandoned; others take their places, or the emergency is a thing of the past, some of these days we hope, and then these will not be permanent installations. Is that generally not so?

Mr. MILES. I would say that would vary, Congressman Schwabe. In an area where, such as the Savannah River project, the permanent population is going to increase

Mr. SCHWABE. Your contractors will not remain there that you were talking about a moment ago, and your workmen in the construction trades will not remain there.

Mr. MILES. That is right. There will be a large increase in the construction force, rising to a peak in a little more than a year from

now.

Mr. SCHWABE. And then dropping off?

Mr. MILES. And dropping down then to a new plateau, which is substantially above what the previous population of the area was. Mr. SCHWABE. That is doubtless true. Some of them will stay there.

Mr. MILES. That is right. The permanent employees of the plant will be there.

Mr. SCHWABE. But, so far as they become permanent citizens there, then they owe an obligation to that community, the same as do you and I in our respective communities?

Mr. MILES. They do; yes, sir. But in some instances it may not be possible to provide the necessary community facilities for them now to take care of their needs several years hence, simply because no money exists anywhere to do the job.

Mr. SCHWABE. There is no basis for levying collection. I understand what you mean.

Mr. MILES. Precisely.

Mr. SCHWABE. So far as they become permanent citizens and organize a community there and become an integral part, they owe an obligation from there on to carry on?

Mr. MILES. Yes, sir.

Mr. SCHWABE. Ánd under this program, if we set up a permanent facility, permanent installation, at great cost, during this peak of high prices, and so on, whether the establishment is permanent or not, the Government just foots the bill, and they either fall heirs to it or it is to be salvaged for whatever we can get out of it. That is about what it amounts to.

Mr. MILES. I guess you could put it that way; yes.

Mr. SCHWABE. Then we should be extremely careful, it seems to me does it not to you?-that these facilities should take into consideration all of these possibilities and not be too elaborate and extravagant in the expenditure.

Mr. MILES. That is right; yes, sir. I thoroughly agree.

Mr. SCHWABE. I hope that your group will be especially cautious along those lines, because I think that is proper, and you have agreed with me?

Mr. MILES. Yes, sir.

GROUPS TO BE SERVED BY RECREATION FACILITIES

Mr. SCHWABE. I believe someone mentioned something about these recreational facilities. I think I either misunderstood you this morning or I do not see exactly like you. These recreational facilities, so far as they are concerned on the post, are provided by the funds for some branch of the Defense Department?

Mr. MILES. That is right.

Mr. SCHWABE. That goes not only to the military men on the post but also generally for their families?

Mr. MILES. Yes, although to a great degree the families of servicemen live off post, except for the housing which has been provided for the permanent personnel.

Mr. SCHWABE. Their swimming pools, golf courses, gymnasiums, all of that was afforded the families as well as the servicemen themselves; is that not right?

Mr. MILES. I believe there are a great many instances in which the wives of servicemen, particularly enlisted men, do not have general access to recreational facilities on the post.

Mr. SCHWABE. I think you are in error generally about that. I have observed a lot of these, which is the reason I make that statement. But your statement this morning then was correctly understood by me, or your position that these recreational facilities were for the benefit of those off the post and their families, as well as the wives and children of families of many men on the post, especially enlisted men; that is your position now?

Mr. MILES. I was not suggesting that the recreational facilities would be provided for other than military personnel and their families in communities immediately adjacent to these remote military camps; no, sir.

Mr. SCHWABE. I do not know if I understand you. You mean that you were limiting it then to the families of military personnel, these recreational facilities; is that what you mean?

Mr. MILES. It certainly would be primarily for that purpose.

Mr. SCHWABE. And not so much for the nonmilitary group off the post; is that what you mean?

Mr. MILES. That is what I mean.

Mr. SCHWABE. As I had interpreted this law and the purposes of it, I thought they wanted to provide these facilities we are talking about recreational facilities, but other facilities as well-for the people who were not on the post and not identified as the military group that were quartered there.

Mr. MILES. I think the purpose is to provide community facilities that are needed in these communities which have been hit by the defense impact, including military personnel who are living off post, and also in the industrial areas, such as the Savannah River area, where you have a large installation with industrial workers.

There would be, in my opinion, very few cases where recreational facilities would be built for strictly industrial areas. It would seem

to me that to the extent that we have included any estimate of funds in here for recreational purposes, our primary interest in doing so was to fulfill the expressed needs of the Defense Department in respect to members of the Military Establishment, the Armed Forces, who actually did their work, so to speak, on post but lived off post or spent a good deal of time off post.

LIBRARIES

Mr. SCHWABE. I think I understand your position. The same would be true with reference to libraries, would it?

Mr. MILES. Well, sir, there is no money in here for libraries.
Mr. SCHWABE. It was spoken of this morning by someone.

Mr. MILES. There is authority in the law for libraries, and the proposed Executive order would give responsibility for whatever construction of libraries may be undertaken to the Housing and Home Finance Agency, in consultation with us.

Mr. SCHWABE. Of course, so far as these recreational facilities or libraries are concerned, they would be constructed on the post or off the post, according to your interpretation of the law and your ideas as to what should be done?

Mr. MILES. We would not expect to construct anything on a post. Mr. SCHWABE. They would be off?

Mr. MILES. Yes.

Mr. SCHWABE. Of course, the military does have such installations on the post?

Mr. MILES. Yes.

Mr. SCHWABE. I want to talk to the doctor here for a few minutes with reference to a hospital.

PROBLEMS IN CONNECTION WITH HOSPITAL CONSTRUCTION

Dr. Dearing, I was very much intrigued with what Dr. Hedrick said here this morning about the possible shortage, or he interrogated you at least as to the possible shortage of manpower, nurses, and doctors, to staff these hospitals if you built them.

It was brought out, or suggested, that there are a lot of hospitals in the country with vacant beds, some of them only partially opened, built under perhaps the Hill-Burton Act, and others that are only operated at part capacity and labor under great handicaps, and you thought they could pay more salaries or otherwise offer such inducements to people and siphon them away from the places right now where they are already in short supply. Do you think that makes good sense?

Dr. DEARING. I do not think it is an ideal situation.

Mr. SCHWABE. Not by any means, is it? You think that is quite the way to solve the problem?

Dr. DEARING. It seems to us, sir, the only way to solve this problem, given the decisions made on the bases that Mr. Miles discussed this morning, that an installation, military or industrial, must be located here, taking into consideration all the regions, all the considerations that the Munitions Board or the Atomic Energy Commission, or whoever else is making the decision, does take into account.

If the people that are needed to operate the industry or to service the Military Establishment are to come there, and that part of the mobilization effort is to go forward and not to lag, or maybe fall completely flat, they are going to have to have a certain minimum of health service and hospitals available or they will not come, or they will not bring their families, and if they cannot bring their families they will pretty soon leave.

HOSPITAL PROBLEM COMPARED WITH THAT OF WORLD WAR II

Mr. SCHWABE. In the great World War II effort we did without. this effort?

Dr. DEARING. No. sir.

Mr. SCHWABE. Where did you build hospitals under such a program during World War II?

Dr. DEARING. As Mr. Miles reported this morning, there was $120 million worth of hospitals built under the old Lanham Act. Seventy seven percent of that was from Federal funds.

Mr. SCHWABE. That was only a drop in the bucket as to what the extent would have been in proportion to the request in this bill; is that not so?

Dr. DEARING. No, sir. That was a more extensive program, as Mr. Miles points out.

Mr. SCHWABE. And we had a much more extensive program to carry out, did we not, in World War II than we have now in the foreseeable immediate future?

Dr. DEARING. Yes, sir.

Mr. SCHWABE. The needs are, so far as we have been able to assess them, as they have become apparent by the requests for assistance, not of the same magnitude. They could not possibly be because we do not have in excess of one-fourth, perhaps, of the number of men in the service today that we had during World War II at the peak; that is approximately correct?

Dr. DEARING. The number of men under training and under arms at the moment is much less.

Mr. SCHWABE. It is only a little over a fourth, or are you not familiar with that? I do not want to put you on the spot.

Dr. DEARING. I would not want to answer offhand. This much is true: There is a certain dispersion of the military installations in connection with the radar network, air bases, and what not, into remote areas far from population centers which is new and which is different.

Mr. SCHWABE. Which does not comprehend in many instances a great aggregation of personnel?

Dr. DEARING. That is correct.

Mr. SCHWABE. And, therefore, they could have medical attention without a hospital?

Dr. DEARING. Many of them are small.

Mr. SCHWABE. Is it your idea that these hospitals you are talking about should be built on the post or just off the post?

Dr. DEARING. It is a community hospital and is not related to the post.

FINANCING NEW HOSPITALS

Mr. SCHWABE. In most instances it is contemplated, I am sure, that they would have to be built entirely at the expense of the Government, or practically so; is that not right?

Dr. DEARING. Well, sir, the Lanham Act experience is that the Government footed about three-quarters of the bill. About one-quarter came from other than Federal sources.

Mr. SCHWABE. And so far as the situation now is concerned, many of them would have to be built as suggested a while ago, at practically the exclusive expense of the Federal Government?

Dr. DEARING. Some would, sir. Let me also say that this would not necessarily involve a new hospital construction in every case, particularly in the industrial areas which, as Mr. Miles stated, presents a problem of greater size, measured in terms of population growth, that there would be in most military installations.

There will be hospital facilities there which can be and would be expanded. This would authorize additions to present facilities. The same would go for the sanitation facilities, expansion of a water-treatment plant, and so forth.

Mr. SCHWABE. So far as you have those industrial installations now; that is what you mean?

Dr. DEARING. Yes, sir.

Mr. SCHWABE. In operation they would be able to carry a heavier load than they did before these installations were made there, too, would they not? Industry and the local people, if appealed to in the right way, could, do you not believe, take care of the situation?

Dr. DEARING. I certainly think they should and would to the maximum extent possible.

Mr. SCHWABE. Let us let them do it and not encourage them to come to the Federal Treasury for hand-outs.

Dr. DEARING. I think that is our most important job, to see that they do the maximum.

PERSONS WHO WILL BENEFIT BY HOSPITALS

Mr. SCHWABE. Stay with that. These facilities you are talking about would be for whose benefit, primarily? I am speaking of these hospital installations.

Dr. DEARING. Ultimately for the benefit of the mobilization enterprise where they are put to serve.

Mr. SCHWABE. That is a generalization. I want you to be specific. Who will get the benefit? What classes of individuals?

Dr. DEARING. Workers, and their families, and the service personnel. By "service" I mean the people who have to do the laundry and do the other things that it takes to make a community run, and without which you do not have a community where people will come and live; in other words, the general population.

Mr. SCHWABE. Civilian, you mean, rather than the military personnel?

Dr. DEARING. There is nothing in this for military personnel, as we see it, except on a rare case where there might be an emergency at a small military post and they would take care of their personnel on a contract, or something like that.