NUMBER OF REGIONAL OFFICES Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. How many regional offices do you have? Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. How much personnel amongst those 13 offices? Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Yes; as distinguished from the district offices. Mr. FOLGER. We cannot distinguish it 100 percent, because. in some cases we have combined the regional and district offices. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Do you call it regional or district? Mr. FOLGER. Where we have a combination, we call it regional. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. How many district offices do you have? Mr. FOLGER. Eighty-six district offices and 45 branch offices. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. How much personnel do you have there? Mr. FOLGER. If I could break it down at all, I would say that the strictly regional offices would be about 1,600 and the remainder would be district. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. There are 1,600 in your 13 regional offices. How much in your 131 other offices? Mr. FOLGER. You must remember that in the 1,600 we also have a great many doing the type of work that is done in the district offices. as well. NUMBER OF PERSONNEL Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Your over-all personnel is what? MR. WIGGLESWORTH. In 131 district or branch offices you have a large amount of personnel, and an average of something like 125 in your regional offices, and, say, 40 in your other offices. Why do you need such a large personnel in your regional offices? Mr. FOLGER. If you use that figure of 125 there will be some percentage that will be doing district office work in the regional offices, and the remainder will be accounted for by the supervisory and accounting personnel. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Even so, it looks like a pretty big set-up. Mr. FOLGER. Taking the whole management load, it is less than 750 for the whole country. That includes the management of the regional and district offices. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. What do you mean by that? Mr. FOLGER. That is what we charge to the direct managing of the offices. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. I thought you had 5,000. Mr. FOLGER. Five thousand total employees. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. What is the figure of 750? Mr. FOLGER. That is what we charge to management. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. What is the rest? Mr. FOLGER. The actual supervisors, analysts, engineers, clerks, and so on. Mr. CAWLEY. Management also includes accounts, personnel, and service functions. Mr. CASE. You have 1,235 on the pay roll as of February 28, in the production end, and 1,150 estimated for 1946. That would not indicate very much of a reduction. Yet your statement says that after the second quarter it is anticipated that the production will be sharply reduced. Would not a sharp reduction bring you down considerably more than that indicates? Mr. CAWLEY. That actually figures out that the reduction will be from 1,545 at the start of the year to 515 at the close. Mr. CASE. Do you anticipate going up another 300 between now and the beginning of the fiscal year? Mr. CAWLEY. It was 1,291 at March 31. Mr. CASE. You expect that to go up to over 1,500 before the 1st of July? Mr. FOLGER. Yes; we do, or very shortly thereafter. We are having a very greatly increased load at the present moment. The biggest part of that load is to reinstitute part of the expediting service that was canceled last September. We canceled all redistribution activities which at that time were found superfluous. We recently received authorization from the Bureau of the Budget to reinstitute a small portion of that activity, which would include about 100 people, to deal with reconversion bottlenecks. That accounts for a big slice of it. We also have a new program on lumber and a temporary, but new, program on rubber. Mr. CASE. Can you get competent help at this time? Mr. FOLGER. We have a nucleus in our organization at the present time that we can build around, and by reassignment or upgrading the people we have and replacing them we can get by the hump. Mr. CASE. How many people do you have on the pay roll in connection with priorities? Mr. FOLGER. We had 1,545 on March 31, 1945. Mr. CASE. Is that to increase by the 1st of July? Mr. FOLGER. I do not think we have an estimate on that. Mr. CAWLEY. It goes up to 1,624. Mr. CASE. What do you expect to have there at the end of the year? Mr. FOLGER. We expect 625. Mr. CASE. And that figures out by man-years based on 1,232? Mr. CASE. What is your pay roll in the Management Section? Is that expected to go up by the 1st of July? Mr. FOLGER. No. It stays the same. Mr. CASE. What is that expected to be at the end of the year? Mr. FOLGER. Three hundred and fifty. Mr. CASE. In Compliance, what is your present pay roll? Mr. FOLGER. It is 740. Mr. CASE. Is that expected to go up about the 1st of July? Mr. CASE. At the end of the year is it expected to be 650? Mr. FOLGER. Four hundred even. Mr. CASE. Your Legal Section you expect to stay fairly constant? Mr. FOLGER. As long as we have compliance; yes, sir. It goes down slightly at the end of the year. Mr. CAWLEY. It drops from 53 to 35. BUREAU OF PROGRAM AND STATISTICS Mr. CANNON. Taking up the Bureau of Program and Statistics item No. 4, justified on page 10, I see your estimate proposes a reduction for 1946 under your allowance for 1945. There is going to be, and is, a constant lessening of controls all the time. Do you not think a still further reduction could be made in your estimate? Mr. Fox. We think we have made the maximum reduction possible in those areas which are tied in specifically with the controls. We also have certain areas of work not identified with specific controls; for example, our work with the Production Readjustment Committee. We provide all the staff work for that committee in organizing the materials to indicate the best location in which to make the cutbacks. Throughout the period when we are having cut-backs we have to provide all of this staff work and we must have the employees to provide it promptly. In addition, we are setting up to anticipate a little bit the major job of organizing the statistical history of the work of the Board by gathering statistical materials together, and those two things are covering a large part of our activities. Finally, a part of our work will continue so long as there is a war program. We are the only source for data on the aggregate munitions program and the progress of the war agencies in achieving that program. Such records will have to be maintained. REDUCTION IN ESTIMATES, 1946 Mr. CANNON. I notice in your justification that for the Bureau of Program and Statistics you are dropping for 1946 down to $1,259,550 as against $1,773,212 for the current year? Mr. Fox. Yes, sir. Mr. CANNON. Your whole program is shrinking rapidly, and practically the entire program is reduced in your 1946 estimate. It seems to me that to continue at the high level which you propose here would require a special justification. Mr. Fox. We anticipate that our personnel will go down from about 560 to about 350 in the Bureau. A large part of our funds covers special tabulations of statistics for the Board which are made for us by the Bureau of the Census and various other agencies. Hence, there is a stable financial figure other than personal services. We do expect to have a fairly sharp reduction in personnel. We will have to maintain certain activities in certain areas as long as we have a munitions program and so long as we are having constant changes in that program. Mr. CANNON. Are there any questions? Mr. TABER. What do you have to do that requires 550 people right now? There are not as many contracts being let now as there were. Mr. Fox. There are just about as many, but they are smaller. Mr. TABER. Why do you have to maintain, in connection with statistics, 550 people? Mr. Fox. I can give you a brief picture of what some of them are doing. FUNCTIONS OF THE BUREAU Mr. TABER. I would like to see some such picture, because I cannot see any justification for so many people. Mr. Fox. To start with, we are the staff bureau for all of the policy committees of the Board. We provide the analytical work for the office of the Chairman, Chief of Operations, Chief of Staff, and the Program Vice Chairman's office. Mr. TABER. Is not most of that available in other ways? Does not the War Department and the Navy Department and other agencies have the data required? Mr. Fox. In general, sir, these agencies submit requests for an allocation. Each of those requests is screened against need by our Staff to see whether it is a real requirement. Normally in the process of the screening operation, we cut down the requests of the various agencies anywhere from 5 to 50 percent. On the basis of such screening and analysis of the several submitted requirements, we develop recommendations which go on up to the committees for their review and final decision. All of that staff work, all of the screening work. all of the review work is done in my bureau. Mr. TABER. What kind of staff work and screening work do you do? Mr. Fox. For example, in the case of the military agencies, they submit a request for cotton textiles, combed-cotton textiles. We take that and see what the end items are for which the materials are needed. We check how much is needed to make those items. We go back to the Army, look at the schedules, look at their stock picture, look at the rate of build-up of stocks, and so forth. On the basis of such reviews we are very frequently able to recommend cuts in their requests, which makes more materials available for civilians. Mr. TABER. It does not seem like you would need any such number as this to take care of that work. Mr. Fox. We have in that work for the military agencies something like 60 or 70 people engaged in screening work. Mr. TABER. How many field offices have you got outside of your own bureau? Mr. Fox. Outside of it? Mr. TABER. Yes. Mr. Fox. None, sir. RELEASE OF INFORMATION Mr. TABER. I received a note from a constituent, as well as a couple of papers, last fall, stating that he asked for statistics as to production and that sort of thing in June which information was not received until the 9th of September. He tells me that at that time it was too late to be of any value. What do you have to say about that? Mr. Fox. The policy of the Board at that time was to release statistics on the over-all munitions production only after they were in final form and only after they were cleared by the military services, from the security standpoint. We have changed that policy during the past few months. We are now releasing the information for a given month usually on about the 20th of the month following. So we have stepped up these releases a good 21⁄2 months, sir. Mr. TABER. Is this type of information of any value when you get it to them? Mr. Fox. This general information as to the progress of the whole munitions program is about the only way you can measure how the total is going. We see many figures on individual programs, but these individual parts may be up or down. I would say that the only way we can judge the over-all progress of the munitions program is by such over-all measures; and that is the reason they are compiled. We follow in specific detail only those end item programs or materials which are now in very short supply. We compile such information for all of the war agencies. SPECIAL PROJECT Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Do you have a special project in here?. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. That comes to $1,988,000? Mr. Fox. No. I think at the present time it is about $799,000. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Tell us something about that special project. Mr. Fox. We have never set up in the War Production Board any kind of facilities for machine tabulation of our questionnaires. We have had other Government agencies do that for us. In this total we have at the present time about $400,000 for the Bureau of the Census. That is to cover all of the machine tabulation work which is done for the Board. Census also acts as our agent in the collection of certain types of data. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. How much for the Census? Mr. Fox. It is $401,700. Mr. TABER. What else? Mr. Fox. For the Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, $325,900; for the Bureau of Mines, $50,000; Tariff Commission, $11,500; miscellaneous, $10,000. The latter is primarily a contingency, to cover the possible continued need of work from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Power Commission, who have done tabulations for us in special areas in the past. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. What do you say is accomplished by this project? Mr. Fox. Practically all of our data on textiles, a good part on chemicals and pulp and paper are handled by the Census Bureau, as well as all of our tabulation work. The Forest Service collects information on lumber production and stocks, and they act as a consulting agent for the W. P. B. in the field on lumber problems. The Bureau of Mines conducts iron and steel scrap surveys, the United States Forest Service conducts surveys on lumber production statistics and stocks, and the Tariff Commission gets some of our synthetic organic chemical statistics for us, and also one or two other materials. These are the only sources of information available to the Board on these materials, and without the data we could not have a picture of the supply-demand situation and hence take appropriate action. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. In other words, it means, in addition to the 438 men you are carrying on the staff you are employing probably 350 more in these other agencies you have just told us about? Mr. Fox. It essentially amounts to that, sir. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. That seems like a tremendous set-up for statistical purposes. Mr. Fox. Well, most of the operations of the Board, as you know, have to be run on the basis of such information as is obtained from the various questionnaries. Mr. CASE. Is there any other of your funds that you are asking for that you expect to use to reimburse other agencies for doing an work for you? Mr. Fox. No, sir. 72467-45- -47 |