Mr. RABAUT. What relation would it have to reconversion of some of these buildings?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. I think that is a little bit hard to answer. I am rather dubious about the degree to which it would be helpful there. I think it might have value if we get it completed soon. enough, in some of the work that the Army and Navy are doing jointly in the Pacific. I think its greatest value is in future projects, frankly.

Mr. RABAUT. Well, it comes very late, it seems to me, in view of the testimony developed by my colleagues.

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. I am only suggesting that it probably won't be done if we do not get it done now.

Mr. LUDLOW. Give us the amount of the cost again?

Mr. CAWLEY. $62,100. That is the drawing and drafting room project.

Mr. TABER. Does that mean that industry and the Government just kind of go to sleep between wars altogether? You have not any confidence in the wheels keeping turning after the war is over? Why is it necessary for this project to be gone ahead with by the Government? Has not this organization, this American Standards Association, or whatever it is, been going a long time?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. Yes, sir.

Mr. TABER. Does it not have contributed funds to operate with? Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. The Standards Association?

Mr. TABER. Yes.

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. Yes; it is supported by industry.

Mr. TABER. And it has been for a long time?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. That is right.

Mr. TABER. And this $62,000 is probably a very small part of what their total operation involves, is it not?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. That is quite right.

Mr. TABER. Why is it that this particular set-up has to be done by the Government, rather than in the course of their regular operations by industry?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. I think the answer to that, Congressman, is that the Army and the Navy and the other agencies have had their own nomenclature and their own method of specifications, and their own standards in these things, each of them.

Mr. TABER. And the standards have been different?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. Yes, sir the standards have been different. This is strictly for the Government, and they are seeking to find common standards, common nomenclature, and a common method of specification so necessary to expedite Government or military purchases or plans where industrial production is involved.

Mr. TABER. You have a program here as half a dozen other things, like screw threads, cylindrical fits, photography, and cinematography. Why are we doing those things? You have quite a set-up here for different things. I am wondering if any of this is covered by Dr. Bush's organization?

Mr. CAWLEY. No.

Mr. BELSLEY. No, sir none of this.

Mr. TABER. None of it?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. No, his is a research proposition rather than standardization.

Mr. TABER. Is not this research?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. No, this is standardization.

Mr. TABER. The whole business is standardization?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. That is right.

Mr. TABER. You have a lot of stuff in here that is supposed to be research and development, or has been anyway. You had $3,500,000 that you were spending on it. I suppose that they were doing research work mostly.

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. You mean that this development of standards was doing research work?

Mr. TABER. No, I supposed that this bureau was doing research and development work.

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. They are, yes, sir; they are doing research and development work.

Mr. TABER. I just do not understand. This year you have an allotment for that particular purpose of $3,500,000. Is it not the same sort of thing that they are doing?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. No, sir. They have been working on new projects and entirely new types of developments, new inventions to meet new conditions and requirements. They have been working on new materials.

Mr. TABER. Have you not been doing the same thing?

Mr. CAWLEY. Congressman, we will have Dr. Keyes here this afternoon on that.

Mr. TABER. He will explain that?

Mr. BELSELY. Yes, sir; that is quite different.

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. This is purely a standardization of practices and nomenclature. There is no research development in this.

LUMBER PROGRAM

(See pp. 674 and 679)

Mr. TABER. On this lumber business, what are you going to do there with $1,000,000? Is that allocated to this Madison, Wis., set-up?

Mr. CAWLEY. It is reimbursed to the Forest Service Bureau of the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. TABER. That is that Madison, Wis., set-up, is it not?

Mr. CAWLEY. No. They may run that laboratory, but this is for reimbursement.

Mr. TABER. I thought that was where their laboratory was.

Mr. CAWLEY. That may be their laboratory, but this reimburse ment involves the payment of forest rangers and other personnel in the Forest Service Bureau to assist the War Production Board in obtaining lumber, production from the very small lumber establishments throughout the eastern, the southeastern, and midwestern parts of the country,

Mr. BELSLEY. Mr. Congressman, the Madison laboratory is largely engaged in scientific research of forest products.

Mr. TABER. I understand that.

Mr. BELSLEY. This lumber project does not contemplate research at all. It is a question of getting lumber out of the woods. Mr. TABER. I see.

Mr. BELSLEY. Of helping the cutters of lumber or wood to produc lumber.

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. This is to help the farmer and the small operator, to show him what wood to cut, and how to market it, and how to cut it, and help him get the labor he needs, and help him on draft deferments and other production problems.

Mr. TABER. You mean that these woodsmen do not know how to do that?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. Well, we have brought into this program hundreds and hundreds of farmers and small woodcutters who have never cut wood before, and they have tremendously augmented our supply. We have depleted wood lots, and we have run the risk of doing it to the detriment of certain areas of the country for the future.

We have tried to avoid that by giving these men the right kind of advice and the right kind of help in their problems.

Mr. CAWLEY. And they also train prisoners of war.
Mr. BOESCHENTSEIN. That is right.

Mr. CAWLEY. As of March 1 they had approximately 17,000 prisoners of war engaged in cutting wood for these small sawmills throughout the country. The Forest Service takes them over and trains them and puts them to work in that particular activity.

RATIONING OF PRIORITIES

Mr. TABER. Now, this set-up of yours has nothing to do, as I understand it, with the rationing of priorities, or does it?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. We have a great deal to do with the priorities on all materials.

Mr. TABER. You have charge of priorities in your division?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. The industry divisions are the operating divisions that carry out the priority determinations and policies of the Board with respect to different industries.

Mr. TABER. You carry out the policy of the Board as to priority in these different divisions?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. That is right, the policies and the directives and the regulations.

Mr. TABER. Now, is your bureau the one to which one makes application for priorities, or is it not?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. They make application either through the field offices or they make application to the industry divisions here in Washington.

WORK OF RADIO AND TRANSPORT BUREAU

Mr. TABER. Now, you have some of these units that are pretty well up. For instance, the Radio and Transport Bureau you have that still on the basis of about 75 percent of what it is set up for this current year. Why do you need so much in that particular unit?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. Radio and radar are still extremely tight items, and will probably continue to be so for some time. That is largely because of the rapid development, particularly in the radar field, where design changes come almost every couple of weeks. Equipment is taken out and put on a plane, or they put it on a ship, and find something that is not right in it, and bring it back and try to correct that, and we are confronted with constant production problems in connection with the radar situation.

The companies that are capable of making this complex radar equipment, and a great deal of the complex radio equipment, are still tremendously overloaded with business and probably will continue to be so for some time.

Of course, we have not had any civilian radios for a long period of time, and there will be a period of reconversion there.

Mr. TABER. There will not be any civilian radios now, will there? Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. No, sir; not for some little time.

Mr. TABER. How long?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. I would not try to crystal gaze to the extent of answering that, but I do not think that it is going to be as long as might be presumed.

Mr. TABER. You have not been releasing anything of that kind so that these people may begin to make them?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. No, sir; but there are a number of small producers who are not equipped to make some of this more involved radio and radar equipment, and as soon as the manpower, the tubes, and the condensers are available of the type that they can use, why, we certainly would anticipate a lot of them going ahead and producing for civilian needs.

Mr. BELSLEY. I might add that the man-year figure is a little deceptive, because actually the schedule of reduction contemplates having in that bureau about 297 people on June 30 of this year, but having it fall off to about 190 on June 30, 1946. It is off considerable by the end of the fiscal year, but that is not reflected in the average man-year figure.

Mr. TABER. Well, pretty close.

Mr. CAWLEY. I should like also to point out, Mr. Taber, that this bureau includes such major divisions as the Aircraft Division, the Radio and Radar Division, Transportation Equipment Division, and the Shipbuilding Division.

WORK OF SHIPBUILDING DIVISION

Mr. TABER. Do you have a Shipbuilding Division in here? Mr. CAWLEY. That is included in the Radio and Transport Bureau. Mr. TABER. I supposed that was all under the Maritime Commission and the War Shipping Administration.

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. This division has the job of coordinating their requirements, particularly for all of their components, engines and the winches, and the hundreds and hundreds of things that go into ships for which the Navy and the Maritime Commission, and to a certain extent the Army Transport are competitive. It also takes in ship radar.

Mr. TABER. Does this set-up, and this estimate take into account the cut-back that has been presented here by the President in the last couple of weeks?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. Yes, sir. It also take into account, as something of an offset to that, the increased number of repair parts that we are going to have to provide for putting some of these ships back into shape. That program is running very high right now because of the character of the warfare in the Pacific particularly.

FOREST PRODUCTS BUREAU

(See p. 691)

Mr. TABER. You have quite a lot of people here on piece work in the forest Products Bureau. It looks like 362 man-years; I do not know how many jobs that means, but it runs pretty big for the Forest Products Bureau, and those people seem to be departmental employees only. Why is it necessary to have such a big set-up as that?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. That Bureau includes the Paper Division, the Container Division, that is, all kinds of containers, wood, paper, metal, plastic, fabric containers, and so forth, the Lumber and Lumber Products Division, the Paperboard Division, and the Printing and Publishing Division.

The Printing and Publishing Division handles all the newspapers, magazines, books, and commercial printing problems of the Board. Those activities, all of them, deal with the supply of paper currently. We are in extremely tight supply on paper and for almost every type of container.

The same thing is true with lumber and with paperboard. As a matter of fact, I think that we are going to have considerable difficulty in getting enough, in terms of packages of one kind or another, to maintain the war and at the same time support the active reconversion program. Our problem is going to be to get packages to put some of these things in. A part of that results from the fact that in the Pacific the character of packages that have to be built has to be waterproof, they have to stand all kinds of treatment and require somewhere from two, three, to four times as much paper material as do packages for domestic shipment which are acceptable by the railroads here. And consequently that is going to present a serious problem.

CHEMICALS BUREAU

Mr. TABER. In your Chemicals Bureau you have 300 man-years; I do not know how many jobs that may be. How many people are there in that Bureau?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. Currently 367.

Mr. TABER. Man-years?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. That is positions, the number of filled positions.

Mr. CAWLEY. The number is estimated at 355 employees on June 30, 1945, and 235 employees on June 30, 1946, so there is a reduction. Mr. TABER. Of 120.

Mr. CAWLEY. One hundred and twenty employees.

Mr. TABER. You do not anticipate much, if any, drop-off in that set-up as of March 1?

Mr. BOESCHENSTEIN. That is an extremely complex operation, Mr. Taber. There are so many different types of chemicals involved in that Bureau. The butadiene, carbon black, sulfuric acid, phthalic anhydrate, and many others, some of which involve programs that are tight and will continue tight, and some of which the War Production Board will have to allocate through the entire war period or will need to continue for some time at least.

Mr. TABER. Is not the butadiene in the rubber set-up?