Mr. MARTIN. The reason I am stressing that point about the women in the draft is because the principal objections I have had voiced to me through my mail, objections to this proposed bill, have been directed for the most part to any idea of coercion in the matter of putting women to work.

Mr. CLARK. Of course, I am much troubled by this. I regard it as a wholly false issue to talk about the Austin-Wadsworth bill as instituting a system of compulsion, as distinguished from what you would call "voluntary." It does no such thing. What it does is to say, "Everybody in the country is liable to serve. So the executive officials, when they need 5,000 people here or there, can say to the public, 'These men are needed, and can also say, 'If necessary, you will be ordered to go.'

Now, may I give you one illustration that goes home, to my mind. I was in North Carolina a short time ago, as I mentioned before the Senate committee, and talked to a man in the United States Employment Service there who was getting people for the Wilmington shipyards and the New River Marine Corps base, many thousands of workers needed at both places. He had his 18 to 65 registration completed in a remarkable degree, of the men in that whole area. He knew his people-and it is a very vigorous population there, almost wholly native Americans. I said to him: "Well, do you get them?" He said: "I get them in numbers about 50 percent and in speed about 50 percent of what I ought to get." I said "Why?" I didn't tell him about this bill, but I asked him why, and he gave me a very simple answer, "They come in and I tell them they are needed at Wilmington or New River, and that they will get high pay, and they say, 'Well, we have got work now. We are satisfied. Do you think I really ought to go?' And I say 'Yes.' And almost invariably the man says, 'Well, Uncle Sam has my address. When he needs me let him. send for me. Now, if I could reply to those men when they say 'Is there a law which requires me to go?' and I say, 'No, you don't have to go. That is your own choice,' and they say, 'Very well then, let Uncle Sam send for me when he needs me, just like my brother in the Army,' if I could say to those men, 'Yes, there is a law whereby Uncle Sam can get you to go there and build those barracks and ships,' I wouldn't have to order a single man from this district." And that is the experience in England.

Mr. MARTIN. There are a great many men who are strongly in favor of this Austin-Wadsworth bill, as far as men are concerned, who are a little reticent about supporting it as far as women are concerned.

Mr. CLARK. That is simply because they don't think the war is very serious, because in England, of course, where they think about the war, where they have been under the impact of war, they take it for granted that you have got to apply it to women just as much as to men.

Mr. MARTIN. I want to pass quickly on to another point here. I want to express my hearty approval of your comment in opposition to the creation of a penalty army. I thought your statement on that, your quotation from some of the editorials opposing the penalizing of men by bringing them as a class into the Army as a type of penalty was well worth emphasizing again.

Now, a point on the farm legislation that is bobbing up piecemeal. I might add that possibly one cause for its bobbing up piecemeal is the real emergency that faced the farmers at the beginning of the crop

season, and they could not wait on general legislation, that is, they felt they had to hurry on with their phase of it.

Mr. CLARK. May I put in here that if we had had this law a year ago, provision could have been made so that that crisis would not have occurred.

Mr. MARTIN. That is right. The reason for this law, that has brought about this approach piecemeal, is not any desire on their part to tear down the systematic approach, but because they were faced with an immediate crisis.

Mr. CLARK. I agree. I am objecting to the delay that produced the crisis, not blaming anybody, Congress or the farmer or anybody else. I think it had to be done very quickly.

Mr. MARTIN. The one remaining point I want to ask about is the number of people you think will be needed to administer this act when it becomes law?

Mr. CLARK. Well, my answer is definitely no more than at present, and I would say less, because when you have to operate by Executive edict and under this piecemeal system in a state of confusion, you create a vast bureauracy.

Mr. MARTIN. You mean at present under the Manpower Commission?

Mr. CLARK. Yes, that is a vast bureauracy, and it is going to get bigger. I would wager that if you had the Austin-Wadsworth bill, which would take over the useful part, or perhaps all, of the War Manpower Commission set-up, including the United States Employment Service, it would not be many months before that would function efficiently with less bureauracy.

Mr. FENTON. Mr. Clark, who comprises the membership of this citizen committee?

Mr. CLARK. Well, there are only actually a few hundred men in it. I will be glad to submit the list to you. We have called the members, the persons who have come to some meeting we have had, or have subscribed, and the lists, of course, are open to the public, and our

accounts.

Mr. FENTON. Who is president, may I ask?

Mr. CLARK. Douglas Arant of Birmingham, Ala., is the temporary chairman. We elected some temporary officers in December. He is the temporary chairman.

Mr. FENTON. I was very much impressed with the type of testimony that both you and Admiral Land and my good colleague Senator Wadsworth have given on this bill. It is certainly something to think about, particularly when you hear reports such as came through the press this morning about the situation that General MacArthur finds himself in at the present time, plus the testimony of Admiral Land and Judge Patterson yesterday. We certainly must be in a pretty serious war at the present time, more serious than people in high office realize. I don't know what brought this on, whether it has been maladministration or not, but I certainly think maldistribution of manufacturing facilities has done a great deal to bring it about, and I feel quite concerned about the situation, and still have an open mind on the question.

Mr. CLARK. That encourages me, sir, because I think when anybody approaches this with an open mind, he can only come out at one place.

Mr. FENTON. And I think we are very much priviliged to have the type of testimony we have had here in the last couple of days.

Mr. CLARK. May I make one remark to Mr. Martin on your question about women? I do not feel that was very satisfactory. There is a Miss McGeachy, one of the first secretaries of the British Embassy, and a labor attaché there, a Mr. Gordon, who, if you are interested, could give you those figures. I met her the other day. She is an extremely able woman. In a general way the number of British women engaged directly in the war effort, what could be designated "War industry"-which I imagine would include their woman's land army, in ratio to population I think is about double the number we have; certainly, not less than double. It is all a question of ratio. You have to multiply by nearly three always. But I think if you wanted to follow it up through those two people you could get it.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Clark, is there any objection to putting in the record a list of your members and officers?

Mr. CLARK. Not the slightest.

Mr. JOHNSON. I wish you would do it then, please.

Mr. CLARK. Very well.

(The list referred to is on file with the committee.)

Mr. JOHNSON. One thing I want to ask you about is the administration of this law, if it goes into effect. Of course, you know that in the selective-service law all the local board does is to get the registration of all the eligibles, and then they have them classified, and then they pick them out by lot. You are familiar with that, are you not? Mr. CLARK. Yes, sir.

Mr. JOHNSON. Now, do you think that in the administration of this law there would be such a system invoked under orders from the President?

Mr. CLARK. No, I think it would go like this-I will have to take a specific illustration. Let us say copper mines. I think you all know that for a year or more they have been trying to get copper production up, and that it has been much below what it should have been and has held back the war effort because they haven't had enough hard-rock miners. I think there have been enough of the other miners, but the hard-rock miner is a trained man. Many of them deserted the mines, very naturally, for the shipyards, and so forth. I am speaking of Arizona, Montana, and Utah, where our big copper production is.

For a year or more they have been trying by every conceivable devise to get those extra thousands of miners. Now, if this law were in effect, if it were in effect tomorrow morning, and you wanted to get 4,000 hard-rock copper miners, it is obvious that there would be no sense in giving a quota to all the local boards in the United States, because in most of them there would not be any hard-rock copper niners, and in that sense there could not be the quota or lottery system. What would be done in practice would be the issuance of a call by the President or his deputy to the whole country asking the hard-rock copper miners to come forward to aid the war effort, telling them where they were needed, telling them what pay they would get, telling them they would have free transportation. Under the law they would have to be properly housed before they could be sent there. And then I say, according to British experience and what I believe our people would do, under that sort of authoritative call from

the President to the hard-rock miners of the country to solve the copper problem, I believe they would come forward, just as the man in North Carolina said he could get the men if he could say there was a law-they would come forward voluntarily, and they would be carefully treated by their Government, taken out there and housed, given free transportation, and so forth. If they didn't respond-suppose only 3,000 came forward, and they needed 1,000 more, then I think the local boards in the localities where trained hard-rock miners existed would have to be asked to find the thousand men to make up the deficiency. They would look over their classification cards and call the men in and say: "We are still short a thousand miners on the present call to go to Utah, to go to Montana, to go to Arizona. Will you go?" These are the local boards functioning now in, let us say, the few districts in the country where those conditions exist, and out of that process probably the necessary number of volunteers would come forward. You see, there is another chance for volunteers to come forward through the local boards.

And then in the last resort, if there have to be any mandatory orders, which I do not think there would be, but if there did, then the local boards would have to talk over each man's case, his dependents and all that, and finally, just as they do under the military selective service law, tap the man on the shoulder and say, "Well, you are to go to help the country."

Mr. JOHNSON. Just to carry out your illustration there, to get these miners they closed the gold mines in California, on the assumption that these gold miners would go to the copper mines, but it didn't happen that way. Only about 10 percent of them went to the copper mines.

Now, what I want to find out is what is your idea about that? Would the boards arbitrarily select the ones that should go, assuming that they have got all the volunteers they could get, or would they select those that did not want to go, select them by lot?

Mr. CLARK. There is no provision in this law for a lottery. It would be left to the local board's discretion to do it fairly and justly, and always there would be an appeal from the local board if a man thought he was not chosen rightly.

Mr. Johnson. I am trying to get from your experience and study whether that is one of the things that probably will be put in the orders that are allowed under this act to be made. Because there is a big problem in my mind of discrimination that we want to avoid. How do you think they would do that?

Mr. CLARK. I would trust to the sense of fairness of the man's neighbors. That is, let us suppose that there was a district in Michigan, wherever it might be, that was asked to supply 100 hard rock miners to that quota of 1,000, and suppose there were 500 of them there, the board would first place--would first call them in and say, "Won't you go?" And then they would talk it over with them, and most of them would be willing to go. Suppose they got 90 and there are 10 more to get. Then you have got to issue an order as to the 10. That is what troubles you?

Mr. JOHNSON. That is one thing; yes.

Mr. CLARK. I think they would bring the men in to the local board and say: "We are still 10 short. We have to order 10 men to go."

And they would talk over their cases and finally select the cases with the least hardship. Just as they did with the men for military

service.

Mr. JOHNSON. Of course, the reverse would be true, that you could have 20 people for 2 very interesting jobs, and you think that is the way they would do it, arbitrarily pick them out more or less? Mr. CLARK. You mean 20 volunteering?

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes.

Mr. CLARK. Then the local board would not function at all there. They would volunteer to the administrative agency.

Mr. JOHNSON. Suppose there are only two jobs, who picks out what to take?

Mr. CLARK. The experts, supposed to be experts, of the United States Employment Service, or something better, a man who would be sitting there locally, and he would interview those men and pick out the best 2 men who wanted to go out of the 20.

Mr. JOHNSON. Now, I don't know whether you had a part in the early days of the American Legion. They advocated this sort of a scheme at that time. Do you remember that? Did you participate in that?

Mr. CLARK. You mean in 1920?

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes; 1922, I think it was.

Mr. CLARK. No: not after 1920.

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes; there was in 1922 and 1923. They were very active.

Mr. CLARK. You mean this sort of a law?

Mr. JOHNSON. Universal conscription of property and individuals. Mr. CLARK. I didn't take part in that.

Mr. JOHNSON. Do you think there is a way to avoid discrimination, so that men of property, and property itself, will be put on a parity with individuals?

Mr. CLARK. Well, of course, I am-the British law, you know, Mr. Johnson-you probably do-was written on one sheet of note paper, and it merely says that all the subjects of the King and all the property in the realm is at the disposal of the Crown for the winning of the

war.

I am in favor of that principle.

Mr. JOHNSON. I am in favor of the principle.

Mr. CLARK. I think we have pretty much already done it as to property. I looked up the compilation that Mr. Bell has of all the laws with regard to the requisitioning of property for the war effort, and when you analyze it I say that right now there is a universal service law on property. You can grab any plant, you can commandeer any piece of land, you can take anything you need in this country.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Clark, as a lawyer you know that the man who goes into court to defend and justify the value of his property has a big advantage over the poorest sucker that you just take and put in a job. You know that.

Mr. CLARK. Of course. Mr. Johnson, I don't think that if this law were enacted there would be hardly any mandatory orders at all issued. I think the key to it is the enactment by the Congress of the universal legal obligation and once that is there, then you have a sanc

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