The CHAIRMAN. Don't forget the March of Time in the movies. Mr. KRAMER. In every possible way-that he had to go to the post office and procure a questionnaire. A little earlier than that a questionnaire was sent out by the post office by carrier on another matter. The mail carrier took this questionnaire with him on his route every day, and left one at each residence or business place. Couldn't we save a lot of money and do it much more expeditiously by having the Post Office Department do it? And, it would not molest the businessman. I am talking_now in the interest of the business individual, especially the small man who, perhaps, has a very small office force, and most of his own time is devoted to the plant, because he is the closest to it and understands that particular part of a patented article he is manufacturing, or an invention he is working out. Wouldn't it give him a lot of relief if this could be sent to him through the mail carrier coming down the street with the mail, or if he could go to the post office and get a questionnaire, the same as they do in the income-tax returns, and the same as was done with the alien? They were quite successful in getting all the aliens in. Of course, there are a few of them that hide out, but you get those by putting a penalty on it.

I think you will find most of industry is not in that classification; they are not hiding out from anyone. When they know they are required to file this questionnaire, they will do it. It could be delivered by the mail carrier, and it would save all the cost of these enumerators coming in at a time a man was busy with something else, and saying, "I am a census taker. We want to know all about this and about that," and you get the man at a time when his stockroom man is not in, and you interrupt him in his business. In the way I suggest he would be doing it more voluntarily, yet compulsory, as you say, by reason of the fact that it is the law. What do you say

about that?

Mr. MAY. Really, sir, it is outside my field of competence.

Mr. KRAMER. Well, you are a statistician?

Mr. MAY. I am for anything that would save time.

Mr. KRAMER. Wouldn't it save money, too?

Mr. MAY. I honestly do not know enough about the practicality

Mr. KRAMER. Wouldn't it save money too? Wouldn't it be a relief to the man in business, big and small, to sit down and let him make these out himself rather than having someone sitting there across the table from him?

Mr. LELAND M. FORD. How do you know he would make it out? Who is going to check up on him? Take, for instance, an apartment house, and there is one man there who does not get any mail? It would not be thorough. Suppose you leave out a thousand of them? How do you know you will get sufficient back. How do you know you won't get 886 and there will be 14 missing out of a thousand?

Mr. KRAMER. You know how many the carriers take out every day. He knows where he left them, and he knows which of them have not come back.

Mr. LELAND FORD. It is as broad as it is long.

Mr. KRAMER. I think it will save a lot of money and relieve the industry at the same time of that compulsory bearing down on them to do something now. If you want something from O. P. M. or priority,

you get it whenever they get ready. At least that has been my experience.

Mr. LELAND FORD. The mail man is doing about all he can do now. If he has to go out with these and go back and get them, you might break down the mail force.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman, I think we ought to get on with the bill before us.

The CHAIRMAN. I might say for Mr. Kramer's benefit, along the line he is discussing, when John D. Biggers, took a special census here, it was entirely through the post office establishment. That was in 1938. All the questionnaires on the census of unemployment, which was taken all over the country, were distributed through letter carriers.

Thank you, Mr. May; we will now call Mr. Capt.

STATEMENT OF J. C. CAPT, DIRECTOR OF THE CENSUS

Mr. CAPT. Most of us can recall distinctly the emergency situation created by the first World War 24 years ago. But in the events of that time, so similar in many respects to the present emergency, we all were not so familiar with what happened behind the scenes, as we would be today. Some of the lessons learned by the leaders of the Nation then were not of popular interest and have been accessible only in official or scientific documents. These documents have recently become timely again. They may enable us to profit by World War experiences and avoid some of the most costly mistakes of that time. Let us read a few brief passages from some of these reports.

In the final report made by Mr. Bernard M. Baruch, chairman of the United States War Industries Board, to the President of the United States, we read:

The greatest deterrent to effective action in administration of the Government's business during the war was a lack of facts (p. 44). The congestion of work in certain districts (and)-the tendency of the consuming departments to erect new facilities in preference to using existing ones * * were directly traceable, in part at least, to the lack of dependable information of existing and available facilities (pp. 19-21).

*

In reviewing the experiences of the Division (of Planning and Statistics of the War Industries Board) there stands out prominently the difficulty in securing adequate statistical information in respect to (1) the supplies actually needed to carry on the military program, (2) contracts actually placed, (3) the production and consumption of commodities, especially of manufactured articles. The gathering of comprehensive figures was a slow process. In wartime there was the unescapable difficulty of needing immediately figures which could be gathered only after a protracted delay. The conclusion is necessarily drawn that a regular census of manufactures, repeated at frequent intervals, is a necessity for an adequate understanding of economic conditions (pp. 109–110).

Three years after the War was over, Mr. Baruch, in an official report entitled "American Industry in the War," stated that—

There could perhaps be no more valuable measure of "preparedness" than the establishment in peacetime of a bureau of statistics (a fact-finding body), whose function it would be to maintain current data on the productive capacity of the country. This organization could probably be established successfully as a bureau of the Department of Commerce (p. 46). In some cases (in the World War) it was next to impossible to get vital facts accurately compiled and to get them in time for greatest usefulness in understanding and solving the problem. It is in this feature of the work that a peacetime bureau, functioning continuously, watching with studious care the development and condition of each industry having a war value, could be of extraordinary significance if it should ever be necessary again

to direct the industrial forces of the country to the support of a great war (pp. 104-105).

In October 1919 the Council of National Defense prepared memoranda for an industrial conference, in one of which the following

statements occur:

The value of economic information, of course, tends to be inversely proportional to the age of the information. Information that might have been of great worth if promptly obtainable while a project is in process or of even greater worth (if) obtainable before the project was begun, may lose some of its practical value if not available until the project has been completed. There is a long list of industrial subjects in respect to which almost no comprehensive, current information seems to be anywhere collected, and kept up to date. Among these subjects may be mentioned many of the major industries of the country. (Industrial Readjustment, pp. 14, 16.)

In the midst of the war preparation early in 1918, Allyn A. Young, who became famous a few years later as the American who was chosen as the first general economic adviser to the powerful and conservative Bank of England, stated:

Our national participation in the war has brought with it an enormous demand for prompt and exact statistical information. Many of the mistakes that have been made and some of them have undoubtedly been very costly-have been due to the lack of full and exact statistical information. (Publications of the American Statistical Association, vol. XVI, No. 121, March 1918, pp. 873-878).

Dr. Wesley C. Mitchell who was responsible for determining methods of obtaining many of the statistics needed in the first World War, and who is known internationally for his work in analyzing business fluctuations and prices, made some pertinent comments in 1919 at the close of the War about the lack of appropriate statistics from governmental sources.

What the administrator needs to guide public policy, what he will quickly learn to use if he gets them, is well-organized planning statistics. Planning statistics to be of service must be strictly up to date. They must show the vital factors in the situation. As men interested in affairs, our emphasis must be put upon the development and the use of planning statistics (Statistics and Government in Publications of the American Statistical Association, vol. XVI, No. 125, March 1919, pp. 225, 234-235).

The question is sometimes asked, Why should the Government compile current statistics when trade associations or commercial organizations have figures available on such subjects? As a partial reply to this question, I offer two quotations directly to the point. The first, from a recent pamphlet of the Brookings Institution that is distinctly not a governmental organization, is as follows:

Figures (of industrial capacity) that pass current in the trade are often incomplete, inflated, ambiguous, or subject to various types of distortion. (America's Capacity to Produce and America's Capacity to Consume, p. 6.)

The second is from the Council of National Defense memorandum, dated 1919, which was quoted above.

It should not be overlooked that information privately gathered, its collection motivated by private interest, and the circulation of its most dynamic content perhaps confined to the knowledge of some special industrial group, too often constitutes rather a temptation to exploit the general ignorance, than to serve the public welfare. (Industrial Readjustment, p. 19.)

In substance, the experience from the World War may be stated something like this: Statistics on industrial activities and products are even more essential for carrying out a defense program than they are in peacetime. Industrial data for defense purposes are no good

unless they are current. They must reflect rapid changes. Monthly or even more frequent data quickly collected from the sources of most significant activity, are prerequisite to intelligent direction of national efforts. Planning statistics are essential. Historical data are not a substitute. We need to know what to do now, not what we might have done if we only could have been informed.

The measure originally sent to the Congress by the Secretary of Commerce, to provide for a quinquennial census for industry and business and for the collection of current statistics by the Bureau of the Census, was designed to authorize the collection of the statistics on industrial activities and current developments that are urgently needed in the present emergency and that were shown, by the experiences of the first World War, to be of prime importance in the formulation of national policies. When the bill was introduced into the Senate, I presented to a subcommittee a statement of the need for the bill and the nature of the changes proposed by it. I should like to state some of the more important points made at that time, with some modification or amplification to meet the circumstances of the bill's history since that time.

PRESENT NEED FOR MORE ADEQUATE STATUTORY AUTHORITY

As in many other fields the present national emergency has disclosed strikingly the deficiencies in our rather antiquated arrangements for keeping track of industrial developments in this country. While the present accumulation of different kinds of authorizations for the statistical work of the Bureau of the Census has served fairly well in the past, these authorizations are not simple or flexible enough for the present period of national emergency. Any failure of the officials and agencies charged with responsibility for our national safety to know what is happening in important industries may have serious consequences. What is now required is a simple, flexible, and speedy system of obtaining needed information about critical industrial and business developments. We need to know about these industrial developments, not at widely separated intervals, but currently.

We are not now obtaining these facts currently. The present authorized statistical machinery, which was devised in a more peaceful era, is not adequate now. Its deficiencies are serious enough in the present state of world affairs to command your attention for a moment. For information on manufacturing activities and products, we now depend on a biennial comprehensive census of manufactures supplemented by a comparatively few monthly series that have been started from time to time, mostly at the request of manufacturers themselves. These series are voluntary and are authorized through the general powers for supplemental statistical work given to the Secretary_of Commerce in the organic act of the Department of Commerce. For comprehensive information on mineral industries and business, we must still depend upon decennial canvasses, unless work projects of one kind or another help us out, as they have from time to time in the last 10 years.

You will note that the intervals between these comprehensive statistical surveys are not the same for all fields covered. The census of manufactures is taken every 2 years, while the censuses

of mineral industries and business occur at 10-year intervals. The detailed census of manufactures would not be necessary as often as every second year if important current developments were reflected in monthly or quarterly reports. On the other hand, comprehensive reports on business and mining are needed more often than every 10 years and should be taken at the same time as those on manufacturing. The present bill proposes that all of these censuses of industry and business be quinquennial.

A still further defect in the present arrangement of these canvasses is their timing to coincide with the national censuses of population, housing, and agriculture with which they are not directly connected. While the Bureau is building a large, temporary organization to collect, compile, and publish the immense amount of decennial data on population, agriculture, and housing, the industrial and business data are also being collected and tabulated. Such an arrangement adds to the already enormous peak load of the Bureau and delays the availability of the data. An obvious improvement is to move the censuses pertaining to industry and business to some year other than the one used for the censuses of population, housing, and agriculture. Relieving the peak periods in this manner will speed up the publication of results and make for greater economy in use of equipment, personnel, and space. One specific example of the present enormous differences in scope of census operations during the peaks and troughs of the decennial census program, may be sufficient to indicate the unnecessary cost and difficulties arising from such fluctuations. Under the present system, the number of Census employees in Washington was increased from 868 when the decennial census began, to 9,987 at the peak of operations. Since then, decreases have been rapid. Such large fluctuations in the number of employees would be unnecessary if the decennial census canvasses did not all occur at the same time. If the different census inquiries occurred successively, with the peak of one occurring after the previous inquiry was near completion, there would obviously be large savings, both in the direct cost of training, housing, and equipping all new employees for only a few months work and in the indirect savings of using an experienced force of persons successively on the different subject inquiries.

So far, we have spoken of the arrangements for comprehensive, detailed canvasses of industry and business. But such surveys are necessarily at infrequent periods and do not permit a current picture of what is going on in these times of rapid change. A statutory authorization broad enough to cover urgently needed current inquiries is required to replace the permissive provision for voluntary reporting. It would be dangerous to the national security to wait before beginning every new, small-scale industrial canvass that is required for nationaldefense purposes, until a specific authorization for that one particular inquiry has been given by the Congress. Such inquiries in these times are urgent enough to require finished results within a few weeks after the necessity for the information becomes apparent. Bottlenecks in industry are not always predictable far in advance. Accumulation of certain commodities, stoppages in the distribution of goods, and other dangerous conditions in industry may arise quickly and need remedial action before the Congress can consider the problem in detail. It is clear, therefore, that special acts of Congress to authorize each indi

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