something could be done, so that, as I have said, the personal contact could be established between the disabled man and the officials who are going to determine his case, so that very much better results would be obtained. Now, take the present situation in New York, acording to the lists of assistant vocational officers that I have here and which were announced last September, and I do not know what changes have been made in this respect since then, but what I am saying now is based upon information at that time, District No. 2, comprised Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, with one office, and that office at New York City. How is a fellow living up in Lawrence County in the northern part of New York to get personal contact even with the district vocational officer? In most places, he can not do it.

As many men left the hospital and were discharged from the service before the Vocational Board had reached them, these men are against it.

Mr. SEARS. Before we passed a bill that was another hard feature.

Mr. DONOVAN. 132,000 of them.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. I am really through now. Those are my rec ommendations.

The CHAIRMAN. I think the committee would like to ask you some questions along the line of your observations. Is it necessary for you to leave now?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. I really ought to be in New York to-morrow, but if it is going to be too much of an inconvenience to the committee

The CHAIRMAN. We will keep the committee a little while now, unless there is an urgency for an adjournment.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. I am very much obliged to you.

Mr. VESTAL. It seems to me that the suggestion from the witness relative to the work in the hospital is the strongest suggestion that has been made. It seems to me that, as I understand it, your suggestion there is that men should be in these hospitals to take care of these boys before they get out of the hospital. I think if that was done, we would eliminate a whole lot of this trouble. I did not know but it was being done more than intimated by Mr. Wickersham.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. They might have done that more than they did before December, when I took this up with Mr. Lamkin. I do not know what the existing situation is. That seemed to me at the time to be a crying need, and I do think the board would not have had so many of these cases if they had done it from the beginning. Mr. VESTAL. I am of the same opinion.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. But this development now is different from when the work started. Here are some 70,000 men who are undoubtedly entitled to training who are not getting it; 60,000 anyway, a very large figure, a substantial part of the total number of men entitled to training, which these men have lost. The problem is how to get at it. Mr. SEARS. I have been rather interested in Mr. Wickersham's statement. I simply want to emphasize the fact that this committee and, I think, the Vocational Board, wants to get the money to the boys. Whether this system of establishing in each State a branch

would accomplish it or not, the committee would be glad to go into
very carefully. In my State, for instance, there has been practically
no complaint along vocational lines, but a great deal of complaint
about allotments and ratings and disability. They get 10 per cent
disability one month and the next month get 40 and the next month
15. So I think you will find throughout the country a great deal de-
pends upon local conditions. If you care to, I would like for you to
go further into it, and also read the hearings of the joint committee
of the Senate and the House last year, was it not, Dr. Fess?
The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. SEARS. In which we had these experts called before us.
Mr. WICKERSHAM. I would like to read that very much.

Mr. PLATT. There is a certain amount of rehabilitation work not for the purpose of vocational training, but for security purposes, done in the hospitals, is there?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. I believe there is, but I do not know very much about it.

Mr. PLATT. I know there is in some hospitals. Have you ever considered the question of whether laws should have been so framed as to leave the whole matter to the Surgeon General's Office?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Yes; I have.

Mr. PLATT. One of the foreign countries has done it that way. I do not know whether it is England or France.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. I do not know that.

Mr. PLATT. Would that not have been a better plan?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. I think it would. I fear you would again run into the difficulty of the split in the authority of the Bureau of War Risk Insurance and the Surgeon General, if the Surgeon General were to have that work. I am very much in favor of putting all the work in one bureau.

Mr. PLATT. Is there any reason why a bureau organized to insure ships should have been given the insurance to soldiers?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Not that I know of.

Mr. PLATT. I am glad to hear you say so.

Mr. DONOVAN. Is there any better reason of putting it in a bureau that is primarily a bureau of insurance after being started as a bureau for the insurance of ships?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. So far as I can say I can offer no explanation for that.

Mr. DONOVAN. I was interested in your statement relative to the English system and that was pretty extensively gone into by Mr. McMurtie before the Committee on Rules and it has certain features that seem to be appealing, but, of course, the beginning of the establishment of the benefits of this law to the crippled men or the injured men, I take it, must first be arrived at after the physician has made his diagnosis and prognosis and reported. That is true, is it not?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Yes, sir.

Mr. DONOVAN. Dr. Fess asked you whether or not you thought the plan as suggested of the English system would work with having a representative in the several towns and that representative have charge of the local bureau, or a prominent man, and I would assume that one of those prominent nien especially would have to be the prominent physician of the town.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Very likely.

Mr. DONOVAN. The burden in the first instance would come upon that physician.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. That is true.

Mr. DONOVAN. He has to ascertain what would be the facts medically upon which he could lay his foundation, which must come from standards of minor sources. Is that not true? Would not that necessarily follow that that medical board from which this must emanate must be at the central office in Washington or some place else? Now, is it not substantially the system now followed by the present administration except that it does not reach out in its tributaries to the local communities, boroughs, ond towns? That is what I would like to see. Would it not be an extension of this particular system and could you avoid the so-called supervisory element. that we have now to contend with which I confess holds back progress?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. You can not avoid that element. You must have that or eliminate the laying down of general rules for the guidance of subordinate officials. There is no way you can avoid doing that right there as to the present system and the possible changes in the system. The present system, to my way of thinking, has fallen. first, because of the lack of sufficient tributaries.

Mr. DONOVAN. I agree with you absolutely. If you will permit. ine to offer you this just quoted from an examination here so that I may not be mistaken. I now read from the hearings of the Committee on Rules, Sixty-sixth Congress, held October 9, 1919, upon what was known as the Rogers resolution.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Yes.

Mr. DONOVAN. Mr. Rogers, who is much respected by other members of this committee, and the House in general, was interested and speaking of his resolution made this statement:

These boys, some of them, have got to be reached out for and almost forced to go upon this vocational work: otherwise they will let go. In other words, we must go out and get these boys and not sit back here and say, "Here is a fine thing if you will come and get it."

Now, Dr. Fess said, and it is a fact, that the policy of going out and corralling boys that had not heard of vocational training, and that seems to now be the complaint, where a number of these men were discharged without ever knowing that they had these rights under this law.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. No doubt of it.

Mr. DONOVAN. The law was not enacted and there were a number of cases on that subject. Dr. Fess said-I will quote it, and I think it is a complete answer to it:

The committee or the representatives of the board before the Appropriations Committee, having stated the needs for funds emphasized that particular function, and if you will refresh your memory you will remember what a censure they received from the Committee on Appropriations and from Congress for going out and hunting up people and thereby increasing the cases. That was made the subject of very severe criticism.

Now, in furtherance of that, as a matter of fact, the appropriation was not on this committee that it should be for doing follow-up work, and if I recall, the bill was vetoed by the President, sent back and then it was increased. So there is a rather complete answer why

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there has not been these tributaries throughout. Now, I want to just ask you this question.

Take the matter of insurance, it is so that that case is now through the different functions of the war-risk insurance and that is the only governmental agency that deals with insurance.

How could we make a shorter cut in the insurance matter, even by analogy with private insurance proceedings, where the individual files his application with the local agent and he files his medical certificate and that goes to the local agency, to the State agent, and finally to the home office.

I would like to have you make a suggestion as to some other rule we could take of a short cut than a proceeding in that way. Whether it is on the vocational training or not we would be glad to have you suggest that idea in the enactment of this law.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. I should think a Federal central office laving down general rules; that is, a central office in Washington laying down general rules

Mr. DONOVAN (interposing). I believe in the coordination idea. That is where the trouble is here. These are different questions.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. They make trouble time after time.

Mr. DONOVAN. The public health, war risk, and the Federal board; I think that is the damnation of the whole thing.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. So do I. I feel it would strengthen it. In the first place, if you have the central office to establish general rules, both as to research rules, as to the amount a man should be entitled to receive, and to the class of training and compensation, and so on, and then have the branch office in that State, whose job it is to interpret those rules to the local boys, I think it would be quite as short a cut as you can make in this country, where the distances are so much greater than in England or any of the foreign countries.

I do not see how you can avoid that in the State between the central office and the board that sees the man. Otherwise you run the risk of what now exists of a man in Lawrence County, N. Y., who may want to see the district vocational officer in New York City. Mr. DONOVAN. Let me suggest: Is there any branch office? I think I have heard that suggestion-that they have a Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse office.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. It does not say anything about that in this list. Those are not on this list. They may have.

Mr. DONOVAN. They should have.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. They may have branch offices in other States than New York.

Mr. DONOVAN. Did you say that you did not think there was sympathy by the board with the men; the right kind of sympathy? Do you mean that the Federal board, composed of the several secretaries and the three laymen, have shown any given disposition antagonistic or unsympathetic, or do you mean that, for instance, up in our place in New York that the manager has not been good.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. I spoke of the local men, the Federal agents, and not of the board secretaries or other members of the board. I should like to add a word there that two cases were called to my attention last week which seem to be cases of real hardship that were referred to by letter to Mr. Lamkin of the Federal board, and he got immediate action on them. But that should not be.

Mr. DONOVAN. No.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. That man should not have to come to me because I know Mr. Lamkin, or because Mr. Lamkin is willing to act on something for me.

Mr. DONOVAN. Let me ask you another question. Before Mr. Griffin was in charge of the New York office, from its inception, September 1, 1919, and from what I gather a large part of these complaints, discourtesies, etc., the general upset was during the time of his administration. Now, do you recall whether that is the fact or not?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. No; I do not.

Mr. DONOVAN. He was removed later, and I do not know whether it was justified or not.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. I do not. I have heard some comments, but not what I would consider real information. I am not really in a position to answer that.

Mr. DONOVAN. We are very much obliged to you, Mr. Wickersham. Mr. WICKERSHAM. I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will adjourn until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.

(Thereupon, at 5.30 o'clock p. m., the committee adjourned to meet at 10 o'clock to-morrow, Wednesday, March 31, 1920.)