Mr. BELSLEY. In some instances it is our regular personnel assigned on request. In other instances individuals have been requested by particular committees.

Mr. CANNON. You just said, as I understood you, that you had to increase your force recently for that purpose? Mr. BELSLEY. That is right.

Mr. TABER. The committees really appoint them?
Mr. BELSLEY. That is correct. Not all of them.

Some are our

regular people who are assigned up here, but in many instances the committees ask us to appoint particular individuals.

Mr. CASE. Which was the larger group?

Mr. BELSLEY. The White House.

Mr. CASE. I mean, of the congressional committees.
Mr. BELSLEY. The Senate Small Business Committee.
Mr. CASE. How many were there?

Mr. BELSLEY. Twelve.

Mr. CASE. Do you have any assigned to the House Small Business Committee?

Mr. BELSLEY. Not that I am aware of.

Mr. CASE. Are those 12 men selected by you with particular qualifications for the examination of small business?

Mr. BELSLEY. Let me point out that those that are assigned, 10 are in grade CAF-7 or lower, largely clerical. There are 2 that are in higher grades, 1 in CAF-13 at $5,000, and another in CAF-14 at $6,500. We do not pick the people who are assigned to the committee in that sense; no.

Mr. CASE. I am not thinking of the grade; I am thinking of whether they are stenographers or investigators or what they are. Can you list the classification of those people?

Mr. CAWLEY. Yes, sir. We have that information here.

insert it in the record if you want us to.

Mr. CASE. Yes; please do so.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. How long have they been serving?
Mr. BELSLEY. Some have been serving quite a while, sir.

We can

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. When you are making up the table that Mr. Case referred to, can you put in another column to indicate how long they have been serving in each instance?

Mr. BELSLEY. Yes, sir.

(The information is as follows:)

Mr. CAWLEY. I would like to state that our appropriation for this year covered 43 positions. When we raised that to 52, the Bureau of the Budget was then considering our 1946 estimate, and we justified our request for 52 on a going rate basis.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. You have 52 now; have you not?

Mr. CAWLEY. Yes, sir. But it has only been recently increased.

OFFICE OF THE VICE CHAIRMAN FOR CIVILIAN REQUIREMENTS

Mr. CANNON. Dr. Elliott, I see that you propose a reduction of a little less than half and by the end of the year, according to the relaxation of controls outlined on pages 7 and 8 of your general justifications, it looks as if there might not be a great deal of need for your organization, especially during the latter part of the year?

Mr. CAWLEY. Mr. Chairman, we have a proposed reduction from 450 employees to 95 employees on June 30, 1946.

Mr. CANNON. When is that reduction to take place? All at one time?

Mr. CAWLEY. Gradually.

Mr. CANNON. What would be your strength on June 30, 1946? Dr. ELLIOTT. We have been brought down from about 727 during the year to about 467 now. We are going down all the time.

Mr. TABER. How many are you planning to get to in June?

Dr. ELLIOTT. Something less than 100. If we are lucky enough to have these shortages disappear in that time we will close up shop and wind up the whole business. The difficulty that we are going to have to face is not to get rid of the people that we ought to keep, but to keep them. There will not be any trouble about liquidating.

Mr. CANNON. If all that service should cease, you would be in position to clear up?

Dr. ELLIOTT. Yes; very quickly. I think the only troublesome feature is that the rate of reduction is a little bit tedious because of some of the civil-service regulations. We sometimes have to hold people on.

Mr. TABER. How long have you been in this position, Doctor? Dr. ELLIOTT. Not quite a year.

FUNCTIONS OF OFFICE FOR CIVILIAN REQUIREMENTS

Mr. TABER. What does your organization do? Give us a little story of what it does.

▶ Dr. ELLIOTT. Its primary function is to try to see that civilians in the United States get a fair deal.

Mr. TABER. What does it actually do?

F Dr. ELLIOTT. It has three divisions which act like industry divi sions which take up over 50 percent of our personnel. They are the Government Bureau, the Service Trades Divsion, and the Wholesale and Retail Trade Division.

Mr. TABER. What does the Government Bureau do?

Dr. ELLIOTT. It attempts to get construction projects through for Government agencies all over the country. It looks after hospitals and their requirements, uniforms, X-ray equipment, and things of

that sort.

Mr. TABER. Can they not do that themselves?

Dr. ELLIOTT. They seem to find it very useful to them to have someone to champion their cause in Washington.

Mr. TABER. How on earth could 43 people be devoted to that?

Dr. ELLIOTT. The work load of that Bureau, which I have cut down very considerably since I took it over, has increased to about 1,500 major applications, construction projects, and things of that sort that have to be dealt with. The Government Bureau has to issue priorities for Government organizations to see which one gets them.

Mr. TABER. The Government Bureau has to issue priorities?

Dr. ELLIOTT. Yes; as to who gets a tractor or a road grader, for instance. It acts like an industry division for the Government agencies. We usually work through the public works authority for the Federal Government.

STAFF BUREAU

Mr. TABER. What about the Staff Bureau? What do they do? : Dr. ELLIOTT. That is the one that prepares the estimates of programs relating to the needs of civilians. It represents them and tries to defend them against foreign claimants; it estimates requirements; it scrutinizes the requirements of all the other claimants, and puts me in position to object to their allocations if we think they are excessive.

Mr. RABAUT. Do you get Fire Department equipment?

Dr. ELLIOTT. Yes.

Mr. RABAUT. Would you get piping, such as water piping?

Dr. ELLIOTT. Yes: sewer pipe and everything of that kind. That is all issued through the Government Bureau.

Mr. RABAUT. They have all got to have priorities?

Dr. ELLIOTT. Yes, sir. It screens to see which one goes forward. It has been very well handled. I was quite skeptical of it when I took it over, but there is a good group of people in it who have done a conscientious job.

Mr. TABER. Does it require that many people?

Dr. ELLIOTT. I think it requires at least that many; but I am in hopes that when construction projects open up, that may not be the case. As long as textiles are tight somebody has to look out for the hospitals to see that they get sheets and nurses' uniforms.

Mr. TABER. You have people on the pay roll working on textiles? Dr. ELLIOTT. If I could get more who were any good I would get them; but I cannot. I mean, the difficulty is in having too few people. They work up until all hours of the night because the textile factor has increased in its importance and promises to continue.

Mr. TABER. Do you mean that these people are actually busy over in that set-up?

Dr. ELLIOTT. Yes. If you have any reason to question that, I wish you would check on it. They weren't busy when I came in there. I do not say, in that particular bureau, but there was some excess in there, and I promptly went to work with a meat ax and cut them down.

Mr. CASE. From what to what?

Dr. ELLIOTT. About 727 in July a year ago. It was a little bit more than that when I took it over. They have been cut to 467 now. Mr. CASE. Did you cut them down in the Textile and Leather Products Division?

Dr. ELLIOTT. No. That has gone down, unfortunately, because we have not held the people. But if I could get from industry the really competent kind of men we need-I have several positions there that I cannot fill at this time. It handles all the shoe requirements, leather requirements, clothes. We just put in quite a tough regulation on knit underwear, and we have to work with the O. P. A. to try to get them to increase price ceilings on some of those things. We do not have much luck at times, but what we can do, we do, to increase production through working with the Bureau and the use of all sorts of devices to see what can be done to break a bottleneck or even to keep a very close eye on foreign textiles and leather. We are frightened about goatskins being cut off from this country, and we have to work on that to see that our interests are at least represented. I do not say we always win a case; we do not.

WHOLESALE AND RETAIL TRADE DIVISION

Mr. TABER. You have a Wholesale and Retail Trade Division. What do they have to do?

Dr. ELLIOTT. They have a very difficult job, and one that is going to be more difficult, Mr. Congressman, as it goes on. They have to distribute short supplies where outlets have been reduced or, for one reason or another, people are not getting supplies from their regular suppliers. They use the W. P. B.-547 form. Where a man has got less than his quotas of deliveries for the previous year, they try to justify that on a wide range of items. I cut them down from 2,000 to 500.

They tried to redistribute farm supplies. That is another one of the things we have to handle and to see that they are properly distributed over the country. Their job is to keep control of retail inventories, and to keep the big stores from cleaning out the market. It is an exceedingly difficult job. I do not know that anybody can boast that it has been perfectly handled. I am not at all satisfied that it has been handled in the best way, but it has been backed by the retail dealers and others and it has worked very closely with industry advisory committees of both wholesalers and retailers.;

PRIORITIES FOR PUBLIC CONSTRUCTION

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Do I understand that you issue priorities for public construction?

Dr. ELLIOTT. Yes, sir. We recommend them to the Construction Bureau under the new set-up, and we are the point of first reference. Under a delegation of authority the action taken by the Government bureau is final for Lanham Act and other projects less than $10,000 in value.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Does that include Federal construction, for instance?

Dr. ELLIOTT. The Public Works Authority pretty well handles tha for the Federal Government, but they come through us. We are a channel for them, and they are put into the general pot. Other project applications are received from State, War, Navy, Treasury, Justice, Interior, Agriculture and Commerce Departments, the Maritime Commission, O. W. I., R. F. C, W. R. A., et cetera.