Mr. ROBSION. Do you mean that you got the money from the Catholic Council of Defense to put this equipment into the schools? Rev. O'GRADY. Yes; to get the school going. Mr. ROBSION. Of course, you still keep the equipment? Mr. ROBSION. But you would not have put it in there except for your purpose to help train the soldiers? Rev. O'GRADY. Yes; that is what it really was intended for. Mr. ROBSION. Now, did you have any auto-mechanic texts? Rev. O'GRADY. It has been impossible for us to secure a text which would cover our work in auto-mechanics. We have had to develop a new course of our own. We have had no experience on which to base our course. It is entirely new. We have had to work out our own problems. For instance, we found that there was no existing information, or no organized information, on the mathematics of the automobile, on the type of mathematics that would fit into the course in auto-mechanics, so we had to develop our own course. We found the same true in the other supplementary work which is necessary for proper training in auto-mechanics. Mr. ROBSION. You feel that to make this vocational training a full success, you must have individual personal contact with the disabled soldier? Rev. O'GRADY. We certainly must. in the problem. It is fundamental. It is a most essential matter Mr. ROBSION. Without speaking in the light of any criticism of the board or anybody else, you feel that under the present plans, or the present system, that we have not that? Is that true? Rev. O'GRADY. Of course, I have been very slow in criticizing the board. I feel that a great many persons who had devoted themselves to criticizing the board-if they would simply come around and offer whatever suggestions thay had to make to the board, and if they had expended as much energy in assisting the board to solve its problems as they did in criticizing, we would be much further ahead than we are now. I feel that a lot of time has been wasted uselessly. Mr. ROBSION. But did we have the sort of plan that we ought to have had? Rev. O'GRADY. Well, I am afraid that we do not, Congressman. I think we need some improvement. Mr. ROBSION. And do you feel that they ought to pass on these cases first hand, the fellow that talks to the man and looks into his eye and gets the facts in his case-do you feel that he ought to pass upon his case? Rev. O'GRADY. Yes, sir; he certainly ought to. Mr. ROBSION. And that the man sitting in Washington, however fair he may be, or however sympathetic and just he may be with the case, with the cold type before him he can not give that sort of decision that the crippled soldier ought to have in most cases, can he? Rev. O'GRADY. I think you are right. That really has been my experience. The CHAIRMAN. I want to ask one or two questions in reference to employing service men-you mentioned it a moment ago. May I ask you whether you would give it as your judgment that the service man should be added to the board rather than to the teaching force or the advisors? Rev. O'GRADY. I feel that it is important that he be added to the teaching force, that it is almost essential that he should be added to the teaching force. I feel that it is necessary that the service man should have something to say in deciding cases that come up for decision before the board, before the district officers of the board. It is not so essential that the national board have on its membership a number of service men, but I do feel that the men should be made to feel that their own brothers were having some say in regard to their cases. I feel that the district offices should have service men attached to them. Of course, it ought not to be necessary to take a large number of those cases before the board at all. They or ght to be decided by the man who interviews them in the district office. The CHAIRMAN. Let me make the question more specific so your answer may be direct. Congressman Greene introduced a bill-it is before our committee. now-upon which we have had two different hearings, adding a service man to this Federal Board for Vocational Education. The matter has been discontinued owing to this investigation, therefore it has not been acted upon. It has been discussed pro and con. Now, let me ask you from your standpoint, should the committee act favorably upon an additional member to the board and make that a service man? Rev. O'GRADY. That is a rather difficult problem to pass on without some serious thought. Of course, there are two sides to it. There is a danger that a service man on the board might introduce too much special influence. I do not see that there is anything to be gained by introducing him on the board. It seems to me that the present board members are the men who understand their problem; they are men on whom we can relay to decide general policies. I feel that it is more essential that we have the judgment of the service man in deciding particular cases rather than in deciding policies. The CHAIRMAN. May I ask in connection with this your opinion? One of the complaints is urged in this language: "We charge that the board has adopted an attitude of hostility toward the disabled soldier." What have you to say about that? Rev. O'GRADY. I believe that it is untrue. In my experience it is untrue. The CHAIRMAN. If there were a spirit of hostility on the part of the board that would naturally be relieved, would it not, by the addition of a service man? Rev. O'GRADY. Well, of course, I am not ready to admit, after my experience in dealing with the board, that the board has shown any nostility toward the service man. The CHAIRMAN. If you notice, I put that in the subjunctive-if there were. Rev. O'GRADY. It would help, of course, to prevent that criticism from being repeated, if you had a service man on the board. It would give the soldiers probably a great deal more confidence in the board. The CHAIRMAN. That idea was brought out in the hearing, that it would be a friend at court, and it might relieve criticism that would otherwise be made. Rev. O'GRADY. That is true. Of course, criticism has been made and a great many people have accepted it. A great many people who have read the criticism in the New York papers have accepted it as true. That criticism, of course, has got around among the men, many of the men, and they probably feel, although I have not met any of the men who feel that way, that the board is hostile to them, but there may be some men who feel that the board does not have their interests at heart. The CHAIRMAN. Father O'Grady, have you had any chance up in New York to ascertain whether there has been unnecessary delay about the office there? Rev. O'GRADY. You mean in the New York office? The CHAIRMAN. Yes; the New York office. Rev. O'GRADY. Well, I should not want to pass on the work of the New York office. I have heard of a great deal of criticism of the work in the New York office, but I have always felt that that criticism was made by persons who were more or less jealous of the Federal board. That is my honest conviction. The CHAIRMAN. What do you mean by that? Rev. O'GRADY. Well, certain individuals, I understand, felt that they should be permitted to do this work; they felt that other organizations should be permitted to do it; probably they felt that the War Department should have undertaken this task. They probably felt it should have been handed over to some private organizations. Now, I haven't a sufficient number of facts on which to base a conclusion like that, but on questioning a number of persons who have criticized the Vocational Board in New York, I learned that they do not understand the difficulties which the Federal board was facing. I found that they did not understand the difficulties which one had to face, which I was facing every day, in dealing with the men. The CHAIRMAN. I noticed a moment ago when you said that Congress had not been very generous, you explained that you did not refer to the general appropriation. Rev. O'GRADY. No; I did not refer to that. I am not in a position to pass on that. The CHAIRMAN. The limitation on the salaries was what you meant? Rev. O'GRADY. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Let me ask you, what is the character of contract that you have with the board? What I mean is, does the board employ the teachers, or does the university employ the teachers? Rev. O'GRADY. The university employs the teachers. It has organized a special department under which those teachers work. The CHAIRMAN. All the teachers in the university? Rev. O'GRADY. No, sir; we have taken some of the university teachers, and then we have added a number from outside. We have added a number of auto-mechanics, machinists, electricians, and men who are capable of teaching clerical work to the number of men, to the few engineers we secured from the university, and they make up our department. The CHAIRMAN. Do they have a contract with the board? The CHAIRMAN. You do not have them teaching, then, that are under the control of the board? Rev. O'GRADY. Well, while they are not directly under the control of the board, we have worked out our courses in cooperation with the board under the direction of the board. Now, before we have employed the men, we have always consulted with the board as to their qualifications. Then the board's representative visits our school regularly; he visits the classes, he passes on the type of instruction given by the instructors, so that indirectly the instruction comes under the Federal board. The CHAIRMAN. So that the low salary is not subject-is not a matter for the board to regulate it is a matter for the university? Rev. O'GRADY. It is a matter for the university. The CHAIRMAN. You determine the kind of men that are necessary in order to get the proper personality? Rev. O'GRADY. We, of course, have the fixing of that when we fix the salaries, but we have been free in regard to that, except that we have been limited, of course, by the amount of money that we have received. The CHAIRMAN. Now, may I ask you, Father O'Grady, a specific question that involves some things that have been up before us— Do you have any trouble with the board in collecting your money? Rev. O'GRADY. For a while they were back on their payments. During the past four months we have had no difficulty. Now their payments are up to date. They pay regularly every month. For the first few months after we had organized, we had some difficulty in that regard, but it was never a very serious difficulty in our case. The CHAIRMAN. In the results of your training, are you entirely satisfied that the vocational rehabilitation is justified by results? Rev. O'GRADY. Yes; I am entirely satisfied that it is justified, not alone in the actual technical results, in the actual amount of technique imparted, but in the changed attitude of the men. The men who have been in our school have changed their attitudes. entirely; they seem to be new men, they seem to have an entirely new outlook on life. They seem to be more ambitious. The CHAIRMAN. We have had this criticism before the committee often since this investigation began, complaint on the part of the men because they were placed in institutions where they were not able to do the work assigned to them. Have you experienced anything of that kind? Rev. O'GRADY. You mean where they had no courses? The CHAIRMAN. Where their prevocational work had not been sufficient to take that up? Rev. O'GRADY. Well, we have not had that experience, Congressman. As I explained in the beginning our school was a trial school for the first four months of its existence. Then, of course, we organized the special vocational courses supplemented by the related vocational work, and since the school has been specially organized for that purpose we have been able to take care of any defect in the preliminary training. The CHAIRMAN. You would not take in men to do work unless their preparation before they had come would enable them to do the work assigned to them, would you? Rev. O'GRADY. No; I do not think we have done that. So far as I know, we have not taken any man like that. The CHAIRMAN. I would not take it that the university would do that. There might be some schools with which the board has dealt in the many that they have dealt with that might get someone in 4661-20-vOL 1- -40 do certain work that they are not prepared to do. It is a question who is at fault there. Rev. O'GRADY. We had one man in the law course, who had, I believe, just completed three years of high school, and we got the university law department to accept him by a special concession, but he was able to keep up with his classes pretty well. That is the only case that I can remember. The CHAIRMAN. How long do you think this work, under ordinary circumstances, will continue? How long does the university con template it will continue it? Rev. O'GRADY. We had contemplated continuing until September, 1921. Now, of course, that is a good guess. We had no exact facts on which to base that estimate. The CHAIRMAN. Is the university satisfied with the contract under which they are working, and the results of their work? Rev. O'GRADY. I might state that they are pretty well satisfied. It has met a great amount of inconvenience to the university. Now we use the university machine shop in the forenoon and there is naturally a good deal of breakage, and the machines are sometimes injured and we sometimes have some difficulties in that regard. Then we have had to occupy one of the university dormitories. They have had to give up that dormitory this year and give it back to us. Now, for that reason and for other reasons, the university has seriously inconvenienced itself in order to take care of the men. It has interfered with their own work to some extent. The CHAIRMAN. We are very much obliged to you, Father O'Grady. Dr. Buckler, you will be sworn. Please give your full name and your present address to the stenographer. STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS H. BUCKLER, NEW YORK CITY. (The witness was sworn by the chairman.) Dr. BUCKLER. My name is Thomas H. Buckler, 141 East Eighteenth Street, New York City. The CHAIRMAN. Doctor, your name was given to the committee as one who had had some relationship with the vocational training. Will you please state to the committee what your relationship has been? Dr. BUCKLER. You mean how I happened to be connected with it? The CHAIRMAN. Yes; you might give your connection with the board. Dr. BUCKLER. In, I think it was about December or the end of November, I had a letter from Mr. Wright, who was the head of the Society for Improving the Condition of the Poor in New York, to Dr. Prosser. Mr. Wright had seen me about some other work, and in talking to me he found that I had given quite a great deal of study to vocational education for disabled soldiers. The CHAIRMAN. When was this? Dr. BUCKLER. This was a year ago in December. That would be December, 1918, and I came to Washington with the letter and Dr. Prosser was not here. He was in New York. I went back to New York, missed him there, and then I went down to the Federal bureau, the district office, which was then at 280 Broadway, and found Mr. |