Mr. COCHRAN. You would have had about a hundred thousand applications for a limited number of motorcycles. Mr. VOORHIS. You probably would and you would have had to allocate them, and you would have had to have a system of preference as to their sale, and you would have had to see that they were equitably distributed. And I think that is all part of the job. Mr. McCONNELL. Do I get the idea from you that you anticipate sales by the Government agencies direct to the people?. Mr. VOORHIS. I think that depends on what the item is. I anticipate some sales like that. Mr. McCONNELL. Would that preclude the sale of larger quantities through the trade channels? Mr. VOORHIS. I spoke of that before you came in. No, it would not preclude it. But I think preference should be given to sales in smaller quantities rather than in larger quantities. I think it is obvious why it should be done. I think otherwise your small dealer, your small businessman, would not have a chance at a lot of the stuff, because it is easier to dispose of it in huge quantities. The CHAIRMAN. If you were to sell directly to the consumer, would you not be eliminating your small businessman, the man we are trying to protect here? Mr. VOORHIS. Yes, in cases where you sold directly to the consumer, you would. But I think there are instances where some of this mechanical equipment, like trucks, things like that, might well be sold directly to the farmer, for instance. The CHAIRMAN. Of course, the automobile dealer was the first casualty of the war. He has been paying taxes and trying to maintain his organization, in the hope that the war would be over soon and he could go back into business. If we supply the needs of the local community with cheap, Government trucks, that fellow will be driven out of business. Mr. VOORHIS. I think that would have to be considered. I do not think you could go too far with that. The CHAIRMAN. He has been rendering a service, keeping up his force, servicing the war workers and farmer's truck, seeing that it is repaired, and so forth. We do not want to destroy him. Mr. COCHRAN. You must not think for a minute that he has been driven out of business. The CHAIRMAN. A lot of them have been pretty badly shaken. Mr. COCHRAN. Do not think that they have not been making some money. I had to buy an automobile. Mine was ruined by people who were driving it, who did not know how. I got permission to buy a new automobile. I had to have one. The CHAIRMAN. I did not know a Member of Congress was in an essential industry. Mr. COCHRAN. I made myself an essential industry. The man from whom I bought that automobile had had it over 2 years, and under the ruling, I paid that dealer $15 a month rental, from the day that he had that automobile, which was added to the price of the automobile. He had that automobile down in a cellar with other automobiles, and he could not have paid more than $5 a month rent for that cellar space. Mr. VOORHIS. Mr. Chairman, I have a couple of points that I would like to make. Another specific point is that I believe that it should be made possible for the Smaller War Plants Corporation to make purchases of equipment for the account of the small businessman. I think there are going to be instances where that could be done by the Smaller War Plants Corporation and then redistributed by them at no profit to them to a considerable number of small businesses, and I believe it would facilitate small businesses being able to participate. In the next place, I think the bill ought to specify any agencies to which authority to sell is to be delegated. What I honestly believe is that this program ought to be centralized in one agency as much as possible, but if it is going to be delegated, I think the bill ought to specify, and I will tell you the reason why. One reason is that I think, for example, that land which could conceivably be useful for agricultural purposes ought not to be disposed of by the R. F. C. I think every acre of it ought to be put in the farm tenant bureau program and handled in that way. The CHAIRMAN. Who would you have dispose of the industrial property? Mr. VOORHIS. I think that is different. I do not care. that the R. F. C. would be the best. The CHAIRMAN. How about your housing projects? Mr. VOORHIS. That is right. I suppose Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. Clayton told us yesterday that they did not intend to sell anything. He told us yesterday that he did not have more than 50 employees. That is what he said. He has a'ready designated the agencies to handle this. The R. F. C. is selling lands and plants. The Procurement Division of the Treasury is handling consumers' goods, and so forth. He has already delegated agencies and they are operating now just along the lines you suggest, with the possible exception not the agencies that you suggest, but he is not going to sell anything directly. Mr. VOORHIS. I know. Mr. COCHRAN. He is going to supervise it and be the director of it. Mr. VOORHIS. That is right. Mr. COCHRAN. Everything abroad he is going to let Mr. Carmody have. Something was said about the Foreign Economic Administration yesterday. There is no administrator in this Government who has rendered better service than Mr. Carmody. Everyone will agree with that statement. Mr. VOORHIS. I agree with you. I think the agencies that are to be designated ought, so far as possible, to be specified in this bill. I hear all the time from Members and other people, too, about the fact that the Congress delegates too much authority, and we complain about it particularly when the agency in question is dealing with human beings, but here where you have got billions of dollars' worth of property involved, and it is going to be sold under circumstances that at best are going to be difficult, everybody says that we have to delegate unlimited discretion. I do not think we do. I think we can write a bill that will be a tight bill, if we try, and I think that we ought to try. 62395-44- -10 I would like to say a couple of words about Government plants. I think that is the most crucial thing of the whole business. The whole purport of my bill-I do not need to go into it in detail is to prevent the sale of those plants in such fashion as to strengthen monopoly, and it would give to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice the function of saying whether the industry in which the plant was to be used was an industry in which monopoly existed already. The CHAIRMAN. Would you leave that much discretion to the Department of Justice? Mr. VOORHIS. To determine that fact; yes. The CHAIRMAN. The only time they have ever found any violation of the Smith-Connally Act, the antistrike act, was when the strike occurred in Philadelphia; so I do not know that they have every determined that a monopoly existed in this country. Mr. VOORHIS. I am talking about the Antitrust Division. Mr. COCHRAN. There is a special provision in here that protects the Antitrust Act, and I do not think it should be in here, because there is nothing in it that interferes with the Antitrust Act. Mr. VOORHIS. I know that, but if you are going to take some of these plants that the American people have bought and paid for and sell them to a corporation that already completely dominates the industry, what that corporation is going to do 9 times out of 10 with it is to junk and hold it out of use, and I think we can do better than that. Mr. GOSSETT. What you have in mind is, for example, to say that the Standard Oil Co. would take over the Big-Inch pipe line. Mr. VOORHIS. Exactly. Mr. GOSSETT. And General Motors buying up all the trucks and things like that? Mr. VOORHIS. That is right. General Motors acquiring a huge bunch of plants that the Government has bought and paid for, when they are already in a very strong position, although automobiles is not the most serious case. There are other industries much more serious. All I tried to put in my bill was that if monopolistic conditions did exist within an industry, that until those conditions had ceased to exist the Government should retain title to that property and should lease it on condition that it be used to 75 percent of its capacity, and if it was not so used the lease would cease to operate. But in cases where there was not a monopoly condition in the industry, then the Administrator would be free to make a sale of the property. Mr. COCHRAN. Here is a paragraph that will interest you. It is in section 12. There are two words here that will interest you. It is section 12, paragraph (g): To dispose of surplus property as promptly as feasible without fostering monopoly or restraining trade, or unduly disturbing the economy, or encouraging hoarding of such property; and to facilitate prompt redistribution of such property to consumers. Mr. VOORHIS. I know. Mr. WHITTINGTON. It is the very first objective that we have, to discourage monopolistic practice. It is in the fourth line of the bill. Mr. VOORHIS. I think that there ought to be some specific provisions as to how that is to be done. Mr. COCHRAN. We have a section in paragraph (d)— to afford smaller business concerns and agricultural enterprises generally an opportunity to acquire surplus property on equal terms with larger competitors. * * * Mr. VOORHIS. If the committee does not think well of the more drastic proposal as I have made it in my bill, I would suggest on page 14 of the bill under consideration, 5125, section 14, that instead of having the specific provisions which are in there as to the disposal of Government-owned plants for synthetic rubber or aluminum, that that list be expanded to include at least steel, airplanes, ships, and petroleum products. I think that list is too short, and I do not see any reason why just aluminum and synthetic rubber should be singled out, though I think they should be in the category they are in. However, I think there are other industries where the same thing would be true. I was up in Pennsylvania not long ago and I saw a plant there about 2 miles long that the Government had built that Carnegie, Ill., is operating. I suppose there will be a question about that. Finally, Mr. Chairman, I want to say that in my judgment special consideration in connection with this matter should be given to the schools of the United States. The reason why I believe that is that I think the schools of our country are going to be about the most important agencies and the most important helps in the post-war period that there are. The passage of the G. I. bill is going to give them a monumental task. In many instances these schools have had equipment for vocationaltraining purposes which was taken out of the schools at the beginning of the war and replaced with Government-owned equipment for the training programs. That equipment belongs to the Government. Some of it has been taken out of the schools subsequently to be used elsewhere. There is a great deal of equipment that will be used and useful to the schools. Certain tools can be used in their vocationaltraining program, also motion-picture projectors and things like brooms and stuff like that. Just for the sake of discussion, I want to suggest all this equipment has been paid for by the American people once, and that there is at least some logical argument to be made that such of the equipment as could be useful to the schools might be directly given to some of the schools. Mr. COCHRAN. On page 12, paragraph (b), there is this languageTo afford public, governmental, educational, charitable, and eleemosynary institutions and cooperative organizations an opportunity to fulfill their legitimate needs. Mr. VOORHIS. That is right. Mr. COCHRAN. They can buy all they need under the terms of that. Mr. VOORHIS. I know, but there are a good many school districts that will not be able to buy. They will not be financially able to purchase, and I think that there are instances where it would be worth while to have a program where you would do this-where lists of the available supplies would be furnished to the State boards of education and through those State boards of education to the local school districts, and where schools might make application for certain of this equipment which they need in their educational programs in the future, and I think that on certification of the State boards of education those school districts are not in position to make cash payments in the full amount asked for that equipment, I do not see any reason why it would not be all right to assign the property to that school district even if they could not pay for it. Mr. COCHRAN. Do you not know that the States of the Union today, taken as a whole, are in a better financial position than they ever were? Mr. VOORHIS. I think that is true. Mr. COCHRAN. That applies to your State. Mr. VOORHIS. It does not apply to every school district equally in our State at all. Mr. COCHRAN. I was surprised to read the other day where they had about $70,000,000 in Missouri. If there is one State that should be able to pay, it is your State. Mr. VOORHIS. I am not complaining about my State. Under my proposal, I do not think my State would get as much benefit as some of the other States would, but if the equipment is going to be made available to specific school districts, it does not by any means follow that all school districts are in that same situation, and it seems to me some machinery ought to be set up where schools that did lose equipment as a result of governmental action might have a possibility of replacing that equipment with other comparable equipment. Mr. COCHRAN. This bill from start to finish provides that nothing is going to be given away except that which is absolutely declared to be of noncommercial use and scrap. Mr. VOORHIS. I understand that. Mr. COCHRAN. There is no provision in the bill such as you suggest, and if you put one in you would have to put in others. Mr. VOORHIS. I do not know of any others that would be comparable to this school situation. Perhaps there are others. I have been unable to think of any. Mr. COCHRAN. That was brought out and discussed thoroughly. Mr. VOORHIS. I know, and I can appreciate the committee's desire to stick to that principle. Mr. COCHRAN. I am talking about the hearings that were held and the recommendations of this Board in submitting this legislation. Mr. VOORHIS. I can well appreciate the committee's desire to stick to that. I would only add to this school proposition that to stick to that principle in the case of schools will favor the wealthy school districts at the expense of the poorer ones, inevitably. The wealthier school districts will be able to purchase the surplus property and the poorer ones will not. I think that is inevitable. I would personally like to see some provision put in the bill so that upon proper certification from State boards of education, or perhaps by getting the State department of education to pay some portion of the cost, that the poorer school districts might have a chance to participate. Now, in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I have taken longer than I expected, and I want to say simply that I believe the bill we finally enact and bring into the House on this question of surplus property disposal should be the tightest bill we can draw. I think it should tell precisely what the objectives are and how they are to be accomplished. I think it would be better if the machinery were set up under a national civilian board and if State boards under that board were set up in the various States to carry out this all-important |