Mrs. LUCE. Until capital is conscripted, there will not be 100 percent participation in the war.

Mr. WARNER. Well, to have 100 percent participation, you would have to conscript capital and labor; that is right.

Mrs. LUCE. You would be in favor of some conscription of capital? Mr. WARNER. The American Legion has, since 1921, been in favor of universal service in time of war, and conscription on as nearly an equal basis as can be of industry, capital, and labor. That is correct. That is really the American Legion's stand. The American Legion, let us say, has recently, like everyone else and like Congress

Mrs. LUCE. In your part of the country let us say there is a shortage of manpower developed and they need men out there and they find proper housing does not exist and, because of priorities on war materials, it is impossible to build houses; you would, of course, favor conscripting every private house in that area and making it mandatory for every private home owner to take in war workers in order to house them, and also to put their cars and automobiles at the disposal of the workers so that they could get to the factory or to the place where their wartime job existed?

Mr. WARNER. Yes; it might be necessary to go that far, if you have a fairly general housing shortage around your industrial communities where your plants and manufacturing facilities are located. I feel, however, as I stated before, this bill-and I am really only speaking in reference to that, but cognizant of these other things in a general way-goes quite a long way toward helping level off your housing situation; because it will enable the Government to place workers where the housing condition is better, rather than have them pile in like a bunch of tumbleweeds, willy-nilly, and without any provision being made for them ahead of time.

Mrs. LUCE. But you are in favor of the conscription of private transportation, private homes and, in effect, capital, plants, and hotels?

Mr. WARNER. If necessary, I would say "Yes." And I would say possibly and I am not prepared to speak on this and I might want after reconsideration, to retract this statement 100 percent but very generally I should think, if necessary, and maybe I am not prepared to say, that legislation drafted along the line of this, with reference to the facilities to which you refer, if that were necessary, should be enacted and might be-I do not know; I am not really prepared to say. Mrs. LUCE. În connection with the wage differential, that is to say in the case of a man taken out of his job in the city where his family is comfortably located, a job which he feels is paying him well, and put somewhere else, let us say on a farm, for the duration where housing conditions are nothing comparable to what he has had, where the wages are very much lower-you would admit it is unjust. I mean perhaps it is a necessary sacrifice in time of war, but, neverthelessMr. WARNER. It will be that.

Mrs. LUCE. It will be that?

Mr. WARNER. That is right.

Mrs. LUCE. Now, that being the case, you believe in the conscription of profits in time of war?

Mr. WARNER. Yes, of the excess-anything over a reasonable

amount.

Mrs. LUCE. Well, you would conscript my profits if you moved me from a lucrative job to one which pays much less-you are conscripting my profits.

Mr. WARNER. I am talking about war profits-anybody profiting by the war.

Mrs. LUCE. Those would be war profits, if I profited in a job which was not essential to the war industry.

Mr. WARNER. Generally speaking, I would feel that; but I can conceive where all of them might not be war profits. I cannot speak on that 100 percent.

Mrs. LUCE. But you do believe in conscripting the private individual's, the civilian's, profits or differential in his wage which he loses from being moved from a well-paying job to a poorly paid one, or a comparatively poor one?

Mr. WARNER. I think that question probably had better be handled by the income tax and Victory tax, and the recapture of certain profits.

Mrs. LUCE. That is not profits; he is losing money. I am taking the case of a man losing money by being moved from a good job to a lesser job.

Mr. WARNER. Yes.

Mrs. LUCE. Also like yourself, who are moved from your profession to a coal mine, because that is personally conscripting your profits. And why should not this be done to capital as well?

Mr. WARNER. I think I followed you; I am not really sure; but I would say "Yes," if I understand your question.

Mrs. LUCE. I mean I am in perfect accord with you. You are for making this 100 percent straight down the line to win the war? Mr. WARNER. Yes; that is the Legion's plan.

Mr. JOHNSON. I would like to ask one question there. Mr. Warner, when you talk about conscripting property, do you mean, this, for instance? I am thinking of a factory now that one of my colleagues is operating. He has 250 men working for him. Do you mean to say you think we should pass legislation that would give us the right to go into that factory and take it over during the duration and possibly lower that man's salary away below what he is getting now?

Mr. WARNER. If necessary. I mean if it is necessary 100 percent to the war effort. That is the practical effect now. The Government can do that now.

Mr. JOHNSON. It is not the effect at all now, in my opinion; because if they take it he has a hearing accorded him to prove the value of the property, and all that.

Mr. WARNER. I followed that.

Mr. JOHNSON. What I want to know is: Are you really logical; are you willing to seek by this legislation to go and take this plant, where maybe the man is getting $20,000 a year-I do not know what he is getting and say "Well, you run this plant for the duration of the war and get $5,000 a year?" Do you go that far in your thinking?

Mr. WARNER. I want to get together with you on common ground. As I understand the present situation, I assume that man is operating on war contracts 100 percent?

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes.

Mr. WARNER. So the contract makes provision and can make provision with reference to salaries. As a matter of fact, the most of them do and all of them have a renegotiation provision, at least all over

$100,000, so that you can renegotiate. And unless their cost analysis. and accounting system is properly set up, if it is not set up correctly, your Cost Analysis Section of W. P. B. and the Joint Renegotiation Board can go in and level that up. And that machinery is fairly well set up, as I understand it. It might be that further legislation is necessary; I am not prepared on that particular matter.

Mr. ARENDS. I am sorry that I could not be here to hear all your testimony, but I was in another meeting. I wonder if you noticed the observation in the paper yesterday of the meeting of the State directors of the Selective Service, a meeting that they had with the Senate Military Affairs Committee, and the sum and substance of their report was that there was now quite an accumulation of labor available in the country, and there has been a movement back to the farm. Did you notice that?

Mr. WARNER. I did not.

Mr. ARENDS. It is rather interesting to get the report of that that has come in from 48 different States. Now, getting back to this question asked by Mrs. Luce.

Mr. WARNER. I think that has to do with the connection of the announcement of the new regulations, and it shows the minute that some public statement is made there is a shift, and as I understand it, on the stabilization problem a chap naturally feels that he does not want to be frozen in his present job. It is human nature. The grass always looks greener on the other plot, and he says, "I want to be frozen on the other plot."

Mr. ARENDS. There has to be some way to stabilize the flow of labor.

Mr. WARNER. Yes.

Mr. ARENDS. In regard to the statement Mrs. Luce made, I think these inequalities and injustices will creep out in a bill like this, about a man with a certain wage having to be subjected to a lower standard of living, but when you get down to the final analysis and you look at the boys in the service, I don't think anyone is subjected to the injustices that they are, not from the standpoint of the monetary angle, but from the standpoint of life itself, and I think that will have to be balanced off in some way.

Mrs. LUCE. I am not at all against the idea of this bill, but I want to follow it to its logical conclusion, and conscript everything-private homes, automobiles, and so on.

Do we have to go so far? That is the question. Secondly, are we prepared to go so far. May I ask that one question?

Mr. ARENDS. I believe that I agree with the lady, but can we work these inequalities out?

The CHAIRMAN. This colloquy is very interesting, but we have got to hurry.

Mrs. LUCE. May I ask one more important question of the witness? The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mrs. LUCE. Would the simplest way perhaps to do all this be to put the whole country under martial law?

Mr. WARNER. Oh, no. That is a different proposition.

Mr. WADSWORTH. May I make an observation there, sir. I think we should still have freedom of elections.

Mr. CLASON. Mr. Commander, I was wondering if, in drawing regulations to carry the purposes of this law into effect, following out the recent statement, you believe that this bill is a step toward the

Government during the course of the war taking over control of all manufacturing plants, and farm production, in other words, a step toward the Government taking control of all private property.

Mr. WARNER. If I understand your question correctly, Congressman Clason, I would not agree to that entirely. You mean that it is a step toward taking over everything?

Mr. CLASON. Everything that has to do with production for the war; whether it is in the nature of

Mr. WARNER. I would have to say yes, it is a step toward it, because it is taking control over manpower which is a definite step. Mr. CLASON. When you start dividing this manpower up and putting it in plants, in coal mines, and on particular farms, you are, in fact, taking over the places where you are placing those individuals? Mr. WARNER. That is right. It gets down to a war measure and necessity in time of war. Not to do that, I say, is flinching from delivering an effective war blow to the enemy.

Mr. CLASON. In other words, your position is that due to the conditions of this particular war, being as great as it is, and making such tremendous demands upon our resources, the Government, in its effort to win the war, should, in effect, enter further into a socialization of the American resources.

Mr. WARNER. Well, I would not like to put it that way becauseThe CHAIRMAN. Utilization.

Mr. CLASON. I said "socialization." That is the democratic viewpoint.

Mr. WARNER. I think it gets back, and I have endeavored, insofar as possible on a thing of this sort, and it is impossible to keep my own private and personal and political viewpoints out of it, I feel that I have reasonably succeeded, though perhaps not, but I feel that there is more danger of losing your governmental structure as we know it, let us say, the right of the people to govern by a government of the people, by the people, and there is more danger of losing that by delaying in the enactment of necessary war measures, and we feel this is necessary because it shortens the war. The longer you drag out the war the more you will deaden that spirit, that enthusiasm, that incentive, that initiative that is America. You will deaden it in a war. You will cover it with war rubble, and it is buried under war rubble. They will have to dig it out. If you make that war shorter, you can more quickly return the Government to the people.

Mr. CLASON. That is what I am wondering. After the war is over, you will have all these plants filled up with people who have been sent to those plants to work being paid out of the Government Treasury, or indirectly, similar conditions in agriculture and in every productive phase of American life that is nonessential after industry goes out of business. After the war is over and the boys come back from across, what is your set-up after this law has been in effect?

Mr. WARNER. When I speak of that, I feel that I have the background of one who came back from the last war. I never will forgetmy first very naive youthful talk. Someone thought that it would be a good idea for me to talk to a Rotary Club. I thought that they wanted a speech. They wanted to see a blessé soldat, that was all. So I spoke on universal military training. I did not have a single receptive ear. I say that what I say here today is built from the background of that, and I feel that I speak in the main the thoughts of the soldiers of the last war, and I cannot help but feel that the

soldiers of this war will speak for themselves, of course, and should, · and be given the opportunity to speak for themselves. The thoughts of the soldiers in the present war presently fighting will be spoken.

I am saying it rather vehemently because I feel it so earnestly, and I feel that is the position of the Legion with reference to this. Rather than hinder after the war the return to the people of their Government this will facilitate it.

Mr. CLASON. How would you arrange for the return to the individual of his property, the factories and other plants which in normal peacetime economy provided the employment, not only for these thousands that have left one place to go to some other place, but for the 10,000,000 or more that will be coming home looking for jobs.

Mr. WARNER. If I knew the answer to that, sir, I would say that my services would be very, very valuable. That is one of the problems. We have upon us the unfortunate evils of the war. We have those. They are here. They are with us because we are at war, a war that we cannot avoid. We have to fight through, and we have got to clean up after that war. That is a real problem.

Mr. CLASON. I would like to ask one more question. As I see the picture, then, you are willing to scramble the situation as between private ownership, Government ownership, and compulsory labor under this bill, and then wait to unscramble whatever you have got at the outcome of the war?

Mr. WARNER. We have a big armament to unscramble, so since we are in that business we might as well make it 100 percent.

Mr. CLASON. I think on this particular bill you have been dealing in generalities very largely, but so far as you know, this is the best vehicle for accomplishing the purposes which you have in mind?

Mr. WARNER. And the Legion says that very definitely. I can say that 100 percent. The American Legion with 22 years of experience in legislation of this sort, a large part of it with this very committee, says that very definitely.

Mr. CLASON. And you feel you would leave the regulations to the bureaucrats to write rather than have anything definite in mind at the time you pass this bill through Congress?

Mr. WARNER. That is always a problem in legislation. Sometimes you define and legislate too much, and you get tangled up with yourself. I would say that it should be left to administration by the selective service boards.

Mr. SPARKMAN. Mr. Commander, do you not think that there are a lot of unnecessary nightmares being had as to the result of the enactment of this legislation?

Now, let me for comparison do this: When we passed the original Selective Service Act, in section 9 we provided the same procedure with reference to industrial plants, and in that legislation we said that if the Government called upon any industry or any manufacturing plant to do a certain job, that plant, of course, voluntarily could comply with the Government's request, but if it failed to comply then the Government would have the right to take it over.

Now, isn't that exactly what we are saying in this-that the Government will call upon laborers voluntarily to fill the shortages wherever they occur, and if they fail to comply with that request then the Government will take them over and place them in those particular

areas?