partments in their plans for relaxing contracts, reconversions, and so forth.

Mr. CAPOZZOLI. My purpose in asking you that question was because you have been called in to assist, from the point of view of your activities during the war in these various localities where there has been an influx of migrant population because of the war situation. For example, I am thinking about the San Francisco Bay region, which I visited last year as a member of the congressional committee investigating shipyards. At that time the housing situation was in different shape. I do not know how much improvement there has been in connection with those workers in the shipyards. The thought I had in mind was whether you are familiar, more or less, by virtue of the demands made upon you, with the particular areas where this increase has taken place. I thought you might be interested and might give us some information to show where there is going to be a movement away from these areas. That would help you in your program, more or less, to plan ahead, in the sense of expectation as to what particular housing construction can be had in certain localities as distinguished from others.

Mr. BLANDFORD. We are deeply interested and constantly in touch with it. During the war housing program, you will recall, the formula has been, while we supplement it by our contacts with procurement agencies and W. P. B.-the fundamental procedure has been to ask the War Manpower Commission to tell us how many migrants are coming in. They get the production schedule from the procurement agencies, they estimate the local supply, they subtract one from the other, and they tell us how many in-migrants there will be. We do not do that, because that would be duplicating an activity that the Government is doing elsewhere. But we are closely in touch with it all the way through; and we are utilizing our housing, providing our housing, and will ultimately demolish our housing, according to Government figures on migration.

Mr. CAPOZZOLI. Many witnesses who have appeared before this committee have made it very plain that they feel that the Federal Government should step out of the picture in the field of construction. On the other hand, a few of the witnesses who have appeared before us have advocated Federal grants or Federal loans in connection with the construction programs of the future. Do I understand your position correctly when I believe it to be that you would advocate private construction, as we all do, but that you certainly do not go on record as saying that under no circumstances should the Federal Government come in in a proper case and assist; is that right, sir?

Mr. BLANDFORD. Yes, sir; if I may restate it. Most of my comments have necessarily and appropriately been related to housing. Mr. CAPOZZOLI. Certainly.

Mr. BLANDFORD. In the housing field, we identify housing as preponderantly a privately financed, private enterprise operation. It presently varies, however, within a framework of governmental assistance: credit through savings and loan institutions, or the homeloan bank system, or mortgage insurance through the F. H. A.

It is an area of preponderantly private enterprise with governmental assistance. Post-war, our efforts should be to devise new tools to help private enterprise do more to get down to the lower-income groups.

Mr. CAPOZZOLI. But the theory remains that we should devise new tools?

Mr. BLANDFORD. Yes, sir. We should encourage private enterprise to reach for this goal of a million and a half; but if there be needs remaining, which with all the tools we can think of and devise private enterprise cannot meet, we should not fail to provide for them.

Mr. CAPOZZOLI. The Federal Government, in other words, should interest itself by loaning or insuring, as the case may

be?

Mr. BLANDFORD. By insurance of various kinds, or there might even be suggested a plan of yield insurance.

Mr. CAPOZZOLI. You agree that there should be Federal participation to that extent?

Mr. BLANDFORD. Yes.

Mr. KILBURN. He went a little further and said that when the Federal Government did participate, it was still up to the local communities to run it.

Mr. BLANDFORD. That is another way of saying that there ought to be on the shelves of the Federal Government all kinds of assistance available that are appropriate, and that Congress considers appropriate, but that the communities themselves must make up their minds what kind of communities they want themselves to be, what their housing needs are, and how they intend to meet them. That responsibility is completely local. The communities can then come up, look at the Federal wares on the shelves, and ask for what they can use. Mr. KILBURN. If that were carried out, the only strings the Federal Government would have would be the F. H. A. restrictions on mortgages.

Mr. BLANDFORD. There are other forms of assistance.

Mr. KILBURN. They surround mortgages with a great many restrictions. I myself think that they should revamp those, because there are a lot of communities that cannot fulfill those requirements, yet they have perfectly good mortgages.

Mr. BLANDFORD. All our tools, including mortgage insurance, ought to be reviewed in the light of experience. I think the feeling is, broadly speaking, that F. H. A. has made a very real contribution toward developing a sound mortgage market. I mean the long-term amortized mortgage at reasonable interest rates, with good standards of construction.

Mr. KILBURN. I think it is rather refreshing to have the head of a department come in and tell us that the Government ought to get out of that business.

Mr. CAPOZZOLI. But I want to be careful to see that Mr. Blandford's opinions are clearly and correctly stated in the record as not being opposed to Federal intervention in proper cases.

Mr. BLANDFORD. I clearly indicated that the Government must cooperate with private enterprise.

Mr. ARNOLD. We had as our witness yesterday Mr. Thomas Holden, president of the Dodge Corporation. In his statement, I think in two different places, he indicated that there might be a building boom after the war. You have been in the building business from the Government's standpoint. Do you think that that is likely to occur? I gather from Mr. Holden's statement that instead of the Government having to help very much in the building business, there is going to be a boom in building in the cities and towns.

The CHAIRMAN. A million and a half structures would indicate something along boom lines.

Mr. BLANDFORD. Yes; but I hope that it will not be in the framework of an unplanned boom. I hope it will be within the framework of as large a volume as a million and a half units, because they are needed and will provide jobs and will help our post-war pick-up. But they should be related to the needs in the communities, although the communities will assume the responsibility of seeing that they are. I would not call such a volume a boom. I hope it will not be within that framework. Whether we shall even get that much is going to depend on the wisdom with which we prepare.

We must keep the construction industry going in nucleus, so that it will pick up quickly. We must fill up the channels of equipment quickly, so that they will not be empty. We must, over all, in our national economy get a prospect of employment in substantial volume so that people will be willing to invest in homes. We must make, as well as we can, plans with respect to our war plants, so that communities will know where they stand, and so that lending institutions in those communities will be willing to invest in new housing.

Mr. McGREGOR. The State of Ohio, through an act of its legislature, and appropriations therefor, has set up a post-war planning board. You would be in accord with that idea, would you not? It is Statewide and then goes down to the local planning boards. There will be an over-all planning program.

Mr. BLANDFORD. I am completely in accord with anything whereby States and cities face up the job and become prepared to assume responsibility, thus taking the load off the Federal Government.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any other questions? Thank you very much, Mr. Blandford. We are very grateful to you for your helpful statement.

Mr. BLANDFORD. Thank you. It is a pleasure to come back and speak to you.

The CHAIRMAN. We shall have another meeting of the committee next Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock. We will adjourn until that time.

(At 11:30 a. m., an adjournment was taken until Wednesday, February 23, 1944, at 10 a. m.)

POST-WAR PLANNING

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1944

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS,

Washington, D. C. The committee met at 10 a. m., pursuant to adjournment, in caucus room, House Office Building, Hon. Fritz G. Lanham (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will be in order.

We have with us this morning Mr. J. Raymond Walsh, director of research, Congress of Industrial Organizations. We are glad to have you with us, Mr. Walsh, and shall be pleased to hear you.

STATEMENT OF J. RAYMOND WALSH, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. WALSH. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I am very grateful, on behalf of the C. I. O., and more particularly on behalf of the committee of the C. I. O. charged with thinking about post-war problems, to have this chance to talk things over with you. The concern that this committee has had and continues to have with economic activity in the post-war period and what serious and responsible people would have us do in order to insure high economic activity is shared by us, as you might expect.

It seems helpful to us to think of this problem in two time parts: First, the problem of achieving or maintaining as high employment as possible in the transition from war itself to a peace economy; second, the somewhat more difficult, perhaps, and more long-run question of the maintenance of economic activity in the years ahead.

The CHAIRMAN. We have, of course, been giving consideration to those very two features. They are the ones before us just at present. Do you not think that perhaps another problem is going to arise after this period of reconversion and then after the period of relatively plentiful employment by reason of the lack of goods and the devastation the war has caused, namely, that we might then come into an employment depression? Of course, that will be some distance away. Mr. WALSH. Yes, indeed. Speaking for myself, and for the committee, too, we are almost more concerned about that than we are about the transition.

The CHAIRMAN. But naturally that does not come within our present contemplation.

Mr. WALSH. No; except as certain undertakings in the short run have implications for the economic and political activity in the longer period ahead.

So far as the transition is concerned, you are familiar, as we are, with the various estimates that have been made as to what unemployment is likely to be. We have used estimates of various Government agencies and have made our own on the basis of samplings through our union research departments. We have asked them, for example, to estimate what they think will be the amount of unemployment, based on various assumptions, in the industries, shipbuilding, steel, aircraft, and so on, where we have large organization. The estimates on transition unemployment account are very large. In some other cases, of course, in the autos, for example, and in textiles they do not expect large unemployment. The picture is different as you move from industry to industry. Then we have made a sampling of businessmen. I hold no particular brief for the sampling, because it was not very large. But in these several ways we have arrived at the conclusion that under the most favorable circumstances we shall have an unemployment after the war amounting at its apex to 6,500,000 or 7,000,000 people. I mean legitimate unemployment of people who want to work but cannot find work to do.

The CHAIRMAN. That is probably a more or less conservative esti

mate.

Mr. WALSH. Yes, it is. It is based on the most favorable assumption. We could put it this way: Unemployment is dictated by the physical necessity in many industries to undertake technical conversion that cannot be done overnight. It will take weeks, months, in some instances, as much as a year or more. But suppose the assumption is altered somewhat to the effect that there will be hesitation among businessmen and investors, because of general doubt as to public policy on international monetary stabilization-shall it be freer or not so free-on dismissal pay and bonuses to the servicemen and on the role of Government in our economy-everybody is questioning that, and everybody is uncertain about it. Some people want a great deal of it; other people do not want any of it. Such an assumption means that the conditions after the war will not be the most favorable; they will be something less than that; and therefore, unemployment will be greater than the conservative estimate just made.

The CHAIRMAN. I hope you will pardon me for interrupting. Of course, realizing that uncertainty, which is quite natural under the circumstances, it has seemed to us that it is incumbent upon the Federal Government to establish, insofar as it can, the Federal policy well in advance, in order that labor, industry, States, and municipalities may make their plans. It is with some such purpose, of course, that we are holding these very meetings.

Mr. WALSH. Yes; that is what I thought. Now, if we take that as one statistical figure about which we should be concerned, and a figure that is probably going to be larger than that, the C. I. O. is convinced that the Government must be prepared to meet a problem of such dimensions. Therefore, we find great merit in this committee's concern about public works.

Our C. I. O. post-war committee has given some consideration to this. The unemployment after the war will really be war-induced unemployment. It is part of the tremendous cost of the war. It is no individual's responsibility; it is our general responsibility. Therefore, we think the cost of adjustment to peace should be considered a war cost