Salaries and expenses, U. S. Employment Service, Department of Labor

Printing and binding, Department of Labor.

1946 appropriation

Appropriation transfers Not requested for 1947

1947 base

1947 request

Total personal services.

2, 871 2, 506. 5 9,317, 725

160

118.6

304, 672 1,359 1, 144. 3 4, 602, 209 1,352 1, 243. 6 4, 410, 844 1,399 1, 359. 4 4, 858, 857

47

115.8

448, 013

ESTIMATES, 1947 AND APPROPRIATIONS, 1946

Mr. HARE. This statement is a little difficult for me to understand. I gather from it that in 1946 you provided 2,871 positions? Mr. KEENAN. That is correct.

Mr. HARE. The total amount appropriated for administrative expenses in 1946 was $11,732,000?

Mr. GOODWIN. That is right.

Mr. HARE. In 1947 you are asking for 1,399 positions?

Mr. GOODWIN. That is right.

Mr. HARE. And you are requesting $5,132,600?

Mr. GOODWIN. That is correct.

Mr. HARE. What I am unable to understand is that the total appropriation for 1946, as I said, was $11,732,000, the total appropriation for 1947 requested is $5,132,600, and yet under the next item you show a decrease in the appropriation of only $463,213.

Mr. BARNETT. That is an increase over the 1947 base, which is in the fourth column.

Mr. GOODWIN. They first took out, Mr. Chairman, what was not requested for 1947.

Mr. KEENAN. This column is what we have eliminated.

Mr. GOODWIN. In other words, we eliminated from our request this year $5,281,154, which gave us a base of $4,669,587, and then on that base we are requesting 47 positions, which account for the $463,213.

Mr. HARE. Let me recapitulate that. The number of positions for 1946 were 2,871, and then you reduced that to a base for 1947 to 1,359 positions?

Mr. GOODWIN. 1,352 positions. The 1,359 are the ones we are not requesting.

Mr. HARE. In addition to that 1,352, the remaining number of employees to be carried over into 1947, you ask for 47 positions? Mr. GOODWIN. Yes. We ask that 47 positions be added to the 1,352, which would give us 1,399.

PERSONNEL FOR VETERANS' EMPLOYMENT SERVICE

Mr. HARE. I note that 23 of these positions are for Veterans' Employment Service?

Mr. GOODWIN. There are 47 of them, sir. All 47 of those are for Veterans' Employment Service.

Mr. HARE. Twenty-three of them are for service in Washington and 24 are for service in the field?

Mr. GOODWIN. That is correct, sir.

Mr. HARE. Making a total of 47?

Mr. GOODWIN. Yes.

Mr. HARE. Can you tell us why these 23 additional persons are needed for the Washington office and why 24 are needed for the field service?

Mr. KEEFE. I do not want to interrupt your line of questioning, Mr. Chairman, but would you be kind enough at this point, before going into that, to make some inquiry that will throw some light on the items not requested for 1947, so that we can get some way of appraising this? There is not anything which indicates to me how this base was arrived at to start with.

Mr. HARE. I assumed that he would go into that in justifying the 23 and the 24, after they had reduced the number of employees to as much as 1,359.

Mr. KEEFE. That is just the point. It makes it confusing to me. You are establishing a base and then asking us to increase over that base, when you have already cut off hundreds of employees, apparently.

Mr. HARE. Yes; but in order to justify the 23 and the 24, a total of 47, I think it would be necessary for him to show first why they reduced to 1,359 employees.

Mr. GOODWIN. I shall be glad to show you why we reduced them. These 47 are all with the Veterans' Employment Service. That is the thing I mentioned this morning. We have always previously handled that as a separate unit, and the committee has handled it as a separate unit.

Mr. FAULKNER. I would like to tell you gentlemen the full story on that and why these amounts were left out of the Budget that I submitted. I want to tell you something about how it got there, but I can't tell you what happened to it after it got over there.

Mr. KEEFE. Tell us what happened right here.

Mr. FAULKNER. It is a long story, and it has nothing to do with what Mr. Goodwin is talking about now.

ESTIMATED OVER-ALL REDUCTION IN PERSONNEL, 1947

Mr. HARE. Suppose you tell us, then, first, how you were able to reduce your number of personnel from 2,871 to 1,359.

Mr. GOODWIN. I indicated in a general way in my opening statement that these reductions are the result of action on our part to eliminate everything that had to do with the war program and to cut the administrative structure down to what was needed for a peacetime operation. We have eliminated everything that had anything to do with the war program except the scientific roster for which we think there is ample justification. The scientific roster was set up, you recall, during the war. One of the purposes was to get a complete list of all the scientific personnel resources of this country. They were available for secret projects. They were available to war manufacturers, and they have continued to function in the placement of professional and scientific personnel.

Mr. HARE. May I interrupt you just a moment. This whole program this past year was a war program. In other words, you had nothing in your regular appropriations to distinguish it from national defense?

Mr. GOODWIN. No.

Mr. HARE. It was entirely a war program this past year and the year previous?

Mr. GOODWIN. No; I do not think it was technically, and I know it was not actually. You see, what happened was that when the War Manpower Commission was established it took over the Employment Service as its principal operating arm. It took over a going organization, and it became the operating arm of the War Manpower Com

mission.

Mr. BARNETT. We did not have any money in this labeled "national defense." Is that what you were referring to?

Mr. HARE. That is right. The War Manpower Commission was acting in the place of the United States Employment Service as such?

Mr. BARNETT. That is right. It was running the United States. Employment Service.

Mr. HARE. In other words, USES was absorbed in toto in the War Manpower Commission, and the War Manpower Commission was a war agency?

Mr. BARNETT. That is right.

Mr. HARE. After the cessation of hostilities it was no longer a war agency, and you became then the United States Employment Service, and you endeavored to eliminate a number of employees to a point where you could conveniently carry on the work of the United States Employment Service, and thereby were able to eliminate 1,359 employees from the War Manpower Commission. Is that correct? Mr. GOODWIN. That is right, sir.

Mr. BARNETT. There were in addition 70 positions that were transferred by this Executive order, that were transferred to the Federal Security Agency. That is the procurement and assignment service that during the war worked on the recruitment of scientific and professional men with the exception of dentists, doctors, and veterinarians. they were transferred from the War Manpower Commission to the Federal Security Agency at the time we came in.

Mr. GOODWIN. If I may finish up what I started on the scientific roster: It was considered at the time of the rescission bill but there was indication that another committee of Congress was considering the desirability of continuing the national roster in connection with a scientific foundation. My understanding at that time was that the committee did not require that the roster be eliminated because there was a feeling that that function should be transferred to the scientific foundation if and when it was passed by Congress.

Mr. HARE. State specifically for the record what that roster was, what were its functions.

Mr. GOODWIN. The roster contained a list of all the scientific and professional personnel of the country with the exception of doctors, dentists, and veterinarians.

Mr. KEEFE. Do you remember Dr. Carmichael who came before us in reference to this, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. HARE. Yes.

Mr. KEENAN. They did a grand job during the war; and our feeling is that this country is going to stay ahead on the scientific research and development that is necessary in an atomic age, and that something along the line of this scientific foundation would be necessary; and there are bills pending in Congress now which would set up such a scientific foundation, and those bills provide that the national roster be transferred to the foundation at such time as it is established.

Mr. HARE. It is the national roster that was in the War Manpower Commission?

Mr. KEENAN. Yes, sir; and it is in USES. They have, I think, 80 positions. During the war they had 190, and reduced it down to 80, which we have requested here.

If this legislation goes through it would set up a scientific foundation which would require the transfer of that group to the scientific foundation.