kind and I think it is in process of development through the force of circumstances rather than through any legal or administrative prescription-I think it is on the way, but in proposing it we encounter this constant objection, that we are overriding the will of Congress if we attempt to stop something which it is said Congress, directly or indirectly, requires the agency to do.

The CHAIRMAN. You have just said that there are more than a hundred agencies of government presently engaged in gathering statistics. Will you prepare a list of those agencies and submit it for the information of the committee?

Dr. RICE. Yes, sir; I think perhaps the simplest form of submission would be our directory of statistical agencies, which we are now getting out in the sixth edition, which contains the various major and minor subdivisions.

I might explain-the definition of a statistical agency is a little hard. Do you mean the Department of Commerce or do you mean the Bureau of the Census, or do you mean the Division of Vital Statistics within the Bureau of the Census? We have interpreted a "statistical agency" as meaning a bureau or equivalent subdivision of a department, or an independent agency as a whole. In other words, we would call-well, before it was consolidated into the Federal Security Agency we called the Social Security Board a statistical agency, as I remember. It actually has a proliferation of subunits. On that basis we found in 1938 nearly 100 statistical agencies. Since then they have increased in number.

The CHAIRMAN. If the Social Security Board, for instance, has within it agencies that send out questionnaires and gather statistics, will you list them as gathering agencies, so that we may get the benefit of just how many there are?

Dr. RICE. I believe, sir, we will submit to you, or to the clerk of the committee, a copy of our directory, and I think that will best fit your purpose.

The CHAIRMAN. If you think so, that is what we want to get. I will say, Dr. Rice, that we get many complaints from people who complain that they are harrassed by the questions of Government, that the Government does not let them alone; that just as soon as they have filled out one questionnaire, somebody else comes along wanting something else. I have in mind a firm in my district that is burned up over the fact that they are now engaged in defense industry, which they did not seek, and under two separate certificates of necessity they have increased the production of their plant, and then quite recently they were confronted with the necessity of filling out a questionnaire, which they did not have time to do through their own office force, but called in their accountants, Ford, Bacon & Davis, and after paying their accountants $800 for their services they found it was the same thing under another form that they had previously furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. I agreed with them that they had a pretty good case, a pretty good complaint. After they had furnished it to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agency of Government next wanting it should have been able to obtain it from previously submitted figures on their financial set-up. And in their financial set-up they would not accept any loan from the R. F. C., but financed their plant expansion under the certificate of necessity and urging of the Government, themselves. So they felt that they had been imposed upon at least by that questionnaire.

Those are the kinds of things that harrass business, industry, and cause complaints to come to Congress. So we would like to get some facts on that.

Dr. RICE. Right there, Mr. Chairman, let me say that I agree so thoroughly with what you have said that I want to record my support of your opinion. We are respondent-minded, if I could coin that expression. We are aware of the burdens put on business, and are seeking to reduce them. I want, however, without going too far on that point, to remind the committee, and remind myself, that the data collected by Federal agencies is with extreme rarity obtained merely for the fun of obtaining it. It always is intended to serve some necessary purpose. That purpose might be served better in some other way. It might be served by information already available, if the agency knew about it. But the statistical activities of the Federal agencies are grounded in their own administrative necessities, and the great bulk of statistical data collected by Federal agencies is either intended to aid administration or is a byproduct of administration.

Now, you raised the question, and it is one we constantly ask, why cannot agency A use for its purposes the information secured for its purposes by agency B? Let me put that in a concrete instance. Suppose you say that the Bureau of the Census collects information from industrial establishments, manufacturing businesses. Why not ask the Bureau of Internal Revenue to get its tax information from the Bureau of the Census, or turn it around, if you will, and you immediately can imagine what both agencies would say to that. The Bureau of Internal Revenue is going to say, "We could not possibly either obtain our information for taxing purposes from anybody else, nor could we disclose our own information easily to anybody else." We think they could, incidentally. We think there should be much wider use made of the data obtained for tax purposes by the Bureau of Internal Revenue, but you encounter these agency viewpoints, all of which, on their own basis, are meritorious, are difficult to overturn.

Mr. GRANT. Some of these agencies of our Federal Government are becoming so autocratic in their administration, as typified by what you have just given as an example, that I think the time is fast approaching when we in this country ought to know whether they are supreme or the people that originally created them are. Certainly we cannot permit the exalted determination of an agency that it will not surrender any of its powers or any of its members on the pay roll to work against the welfare of the people that originally set them up. In other words, I think the time is coming when we will have to take the bull by the horns and do these things that need to be done, notwithstanding the pleas and the arguments that may come from these overlapping bureaus.

Dr. RICE. Well, Mr. Grant, if that is a question to me, I do not think I would want to-I do not think that I am able to comment on the question in the large, certainly not in an official capacity. I am constantly impressed by the fact that the Government of the United States is the largest business in the world and that it is extremely complex, and in my minor area I am doing all I can, and my staff are doing all they can, to simplify it within our province.

Now, as to the larger question, as a citizen I have the impression that there are many places where simplification might be effected, but all of them involve a great many considerations.

Mr. GRANT. Of course, this wonderland of bureaucracy of ours is becoming more wonderful rather than more simple, and I think the trend has got to be in the other direction.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you finished your statement, Dr. Rice?

Mr. KINZER. May I ask one question, Mr. Chairman? Doctor, have you read, or are you at all familiar with House Joint Resolution 213, that passed the House 2 or 3 weeks ago?

Dr. RICE. I do not recognize it under that title, House Joint Resolution 213.

Mr. KINZER. That provides for release and identification previously collected by the Bureau of the Census and a census for the O. P. M., and anything else they might need. I was wondering whether you cared to comment on that bill, with respect to S. 1627, whether you had any opinion as to the necessity for the enactment of both of them or what your comment is, if you care to make any.

Dr. RICE. I must apologize for being a little confused. (Mr. Kinzer handed the bill to Dr. Rice.)

I believe now, Mr. Kinzer, that I have read this before. I have not studied it carefully. My impression was that the intent of this was covered by the other bill. In other words, the issue raised here is one, I believe

Mr. KINZER (interposing). The issue raised here, if I may be permitted to interrupt, is whether the emergency now, the national defense-whether that bill serves the purpose, because we all realize that when this emergency is over, business generally in the United States, peacetime industry any data concerning it today would not be worth anything after this emergency, because of the readjustment that will have to follow in what we are doing now in the security of materials for peacetime industries. Every member of this committee is having lots of trouble, I expect, complaints from industries in our district management, where they are being put out of business by not securing the materials that are necessary for the conduct of their business.

Dr. RICE. That raises an issue which is an old standing issue in respect to the treatment of individually supplied information. The Census has always, in my opinion, leaned over backward in providing protection to the individual respondent. I have a rather strong opinion on that matter, which is well-known to my colleagues in Washington in these statistical agencies. I feel that the Bureau has carried that principle of protecting the individual respondent to a great excess, so that it has resulted in an extra burdening of the respondent himself. It works this way: The Census Bureau collects certain information from a certain businessman. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, or the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the Bureau of Mines, or some other agency, requires, it believes, some of that same information from the same man. It needs information from that man and not merely information totaled for the group to which the man belongs. The Census under its existing interpretations and rules cannot supply that other agency with information from the X company; therefore the Bureau of Labor Statistics goes

back to the X company and collects the information all over again for its own purposes. The intent is to protect the interests of the X company from the use of the data it supplies to the Census by its competitors, by the Bureau of Internal Revenue, by some regulatory agency of the Federal Government. Now, I approve of that intent, at least in ordinary times. I am not sure that such protection can be justified at present. In any event the present effect is to give the man a double burden. I object to the present rules against "disclosure," as it is called, Mr. Kinzer, to the extent that any data collected for statistical purposes by one agency should in my opinion on demand be used for statistical purposes by any other Federal

agency.

Mr. KINZER. That raises the question here that the information, the statistics you are referring to here, because of the present dislocation of business, brought about by the emergency-and this war will be over sometime at least, we hope so-all this data under this 5-year period, if we adopt this policy, will that be worth anything? Would it not be better if House Joint Resolution 213 is passed as an emergency measure, then let this legislation wait a little longer, when it would be worth more?

The CHAIRMAN. Well, Mr. Kinzer, if you will just indulge me for a moment I will explain to Dr. Rice, this resolution was personally prepared and laid before the committee, passed out and sent to the House as a consequence of Mr. Stettinius' contacts with my office through the personal appearance of Mr. O'Neill, from the Defense Office of Production Management, on the complaint that they were unable to obtain certain information they sought from the Bureau of the Census, that they claimed could not be released by the Bureau of the Census legally. It was collected in the 1940 decennial census, and this was simply making available the census statistics already gathered, without giving authority to collect anything additional. It would continue to impose the penalty on anybody misusing it or improperly releasing it, but if we were to go to a quinquennial census basis and postpone the taking of a census of manufactures, and gather no more information except by sampling until 1943, the information collected in the decennial period of 1940, which would be made available to the Defense Office of Production Management, would immediately make available all the current statistics that we have in the Census Bureau, and it should be enacted by the Senate without delay, because of the fact that it would automatically release the information that Mr. Stettinius and Mr. O'Neill set out in quest of securing.

Dr. RICE. I would infer that there is no conflict between this and the other bill?

The CHAIRMAN. No; except the other bill would do the same thing, only that it is broader and goes into different fields.

Mr. TALLE. Do you recall, Dr. Rice, any census schedule prior to the last one that contained questions with reference to individual income?

Dr. RICE. If there were such questions, they went back a number of decades. There has been no recent census, no recent general census conducted by the Bureau of the Census asking that information.

Mr. TALLE. As far as I recall, no schedule included such questions until the last one? No. 39 in the last schedule asked about income.

If your income was higher than $5,000, then you were not required to tell the whole amount. You just indicated $5,000 plus. That. is now income information in the Bureau of the Census.

The Internal Revenue Code, section 55, I think, states that the information on your individual income in the Bureau is inviolate. Under this resolution, House Joint Resolution 213, you can go to the Bureau of the Census and get what you cannot get from the Bureau of Internal Revenue. You cannot get the same information in all cases. It is less complete in the Bureau of the Census. You do, however, get information about income, because you do discover that a man got less than $5,000 or more than that, or exactly $5,000. In other words, in the complexity of our Government you can go to one Bureau and find out at least something that is not permitted under the law in another.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, I am sure, Mr. Talle, that, covering the scope of my knowledge, that question was not asked before, and authority to ask the question was either arrogated or implied as a consequence of the enactment of the special act that was passed to take a census on housing, inquire into bathtubs and electric appliances and so forth, which of course, I opposed both in the committee and on the floor of the House. I still believe in the old prerogative that a man's home is his castle, and it is no business of the Bureau of the Census or any of the neighbors whether he likes to take a bath in the bathtub or take a bath by the old-fashioned method.

Dr. RICE. Mr. Chairman, I debated that subject with Senator Tobey on one occasion over the air, so I am a prejudiced witness. The CHAIRMAN. Well, when it was enacted, Senator Tobey did not say as much about it as he did later on. Nor did Congressman Dan Reed. But the facts remain.

Mr. TALLE. Mr. Chairman, there is an underlying point that I have in mind. I find through my correspondence with my constituents and in conversation with them that there is a growing distrust on the part of the people toward their Government. I think that is extremely unfortunate. It is more than extremely unfortunate; it borders on tragedy, in my opinion. I think whatever this committee can do, or we ourselves can do as individuals or agencies to restore the confidence the people should have in their Government would be a very worthy thing. That is why I bring this up. We should do nothing which might arouse distrust.

Dr. RICE. In reference to this item of discussion I would comment on your question, Mr. Congressman, or raise this question in return: Which is going to tend more to destroy the confidence of the citizen in his government, the fact that two agencies simultaneously come to him for the same information, another one after he has given it to the first because the first will not give it to the second here in Washington, with all of the disorganization that that implies, or the fact that another agency does get the information and puts it into a table as well as the first one? You see what I mean?

Mr. TALLE. Yes. I agree definitely that duplication of effort should be avoided, and I deplore the duplication in questionnaires which are sent out to harass businessmen.

Dr. RICE. It is my impression that the evidence reaching the public, the evidence of disorganization in matters of this kind is more damaging from the standpoint of confidence than the formal applica

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