Mr. BANKHEAD. Do you remember whether the members of the Court of Claims raised any objection to this assumption of private jurisdiction?

Mr. RAMSPECK. No, sir; I do not know.

Mr. PURNELL. I think your statement to the effect that it cost on the average of $45 to print and report each one of these bills is a very important statement.

Mr. RAMSPECK. I do not know the cost but I know it must be a very considerable expense, because oftentimes the different claims that are voluminous documents included in the reports of the departments, with testimony affidavits, etc. And that estimate does not include the cost of the labor of the executive departments in sending up those reports year after year. Senseless labor and great cost. I have had claims with documents and statements of evidence, that accompanied the claims that high [indicating about 6 inches].

I do not know of anything else, Mr. Chairman, which I can add to what I have said.

Mr. BANKHEAD. A modest calculation on the basis of the statement just made that it costs $45 to print and report each one of these private bills, shows the total cost of presenting one of them to be $45; and as we have 1,600 claims annually, at least that number were disposed of at the last session of Congress, we have this preliminary cost of printing, etc., amounting to $72,000.

Mr. UNDERHILL. And that does not cover the entire cost.

Mr. RAMSPECK. Every one of these is referred to a department and they send in a report.

Mr. UNDERHILL. And that includes that in the case.

Mr. RAMSPECK. And bear in mind that every time the bill is reintroduced all that procedure is gone through again.

Mr. MCMILLAN. I would like to ask Mr. Ramspeck if he can indicate to us how many of those bill are now reintroduced into this new Congress that were considered by his committee last year, and which never reached the Private Calendar.

Mr. RAMSPECK. I could not state accurately, but there are several hundred of them. We passed a resolution at the last meeting of the committee that the chairman should report all bills favorably reported last year on which there is no minority report and on which there was no action taken.

Mr. UNDERHILL. Did that make exception of those which had been vetoed by the President?

Mr. RAMSPECK. It did not.

Mr. UNDERHILL. There were three bills vetoed by the President, as I understand it.

Mr. RAMSPECK. It was simply those not reached. It did include those passed by the House and not passed by the Senate.

The CHAIRMAN. We will not hear from Mr. Butler.

Mr. BUTLER. Mr. Chairman, I do not know of anything particular that I can add to what has been said to the situation which exists here.

I want to say at the outset that I believe the present system of handling claims is wholly inadequate; and that the Congress is in no position whatever to properly and instantly pass on all the claims that are submitted here; and I am firmly convinced that jurisdiction

should be conferred upon some court already in existence or, regardless of cost, some court should be created to give the private citizens of the country who have claims against the Federal Government an opportunity to present them where they can be properly heard. Now, it strikes me as a most unjust situation, where 1 man out of 435 Members in the House of Representatives is permitted to say that the claim of the citizen which has been sufficient importance to be introduced and considered by a committee of 21 Members of the House of Representatives shall not be considered by that House because of the objection of this 1 man.

I submit, gentlemen, it is ridiculous, that it is ridiculous for the Congress of this country to say to the citizens of the country: "Yes; you are entitled to have a bill introduced into Congress, but if one man objects to it, you as a citizen, with a meritorious claim, shall not be heard." That is the situation as we have it here, and if we are going through the semblance of the consideration of a bill, then we should give it some consideration. Those bills which are reached on the calendar should be given real consideration, consideration which is due them; because if a Member introduced a private bill for a citizen against the Government, he is as much entitled to have it considered just as well as a bill of any other kind which is introduced before Congress. And if some remedy is not provided, either through the suggestions submitted by Mr. Purnell of the Republican caucus or by Judge Crisp, we might as well abolish our Claims Committee.

It is discouraging for members of the Claims Committee to work day in and day out-and I mean that literally-learning about a claim and then present these claims honestly, and then have within the power of one man arbitrarily to rise and say: "I object; it shall not be considered." That, in plain language, is what we have

now.

When a man objects, that one objection throws the bill out from consideration. The House in effect to the Member who introduces the bill and to the committee which reported it, "Your bill is not worthy of consideration of the House."

We know that the Federal Government through its many departments is reaching out into many new fields, coming into contact with many citizens of the country, never before touched. I think we should not delay the possibility of prompt hearing of these bills right now; yet, as Members of the House of Representatives, the committee should take into consideration that something must be done or else Congress must say there shall be no remedy for private grievances against the Government. But while we are considering that we should not deny justice to those whose claims against the Government are fair.

During the short time I have been a Member of this Congress I have seen claims certified by one of the departments, giving a privileged status in the House, and considered by the House on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Those are private claims of persons and corporations against the Government of the United States, certified by the departments, amounting in many instances to many and many millions of dollars, and yet we do not hesitate to give a privileged status to that class

of claims of great magnitude, and to give them prompt consideration. Yet we will take a small claim of a citizen, reintroduced for passage by one of the departments, and it goes to our Claims Committee, and after action by the committee we report it out, and then one objector can prevent the passage of that bill. We should either say that the claims should be considered, or they should not be permitted to be introduced; and there will be no committee to consider them.

I noticed with particular interest what Mr. Underhill said about another matter. I have had that very thing happen; bills come from that body and then to be confronted by the statement: "The Senate passed it, why can't you pass it?" We should at least have a method of considering these bills when they come out of committees; or we should not have a committee taking them up, and utilizing its time and the money of this Government uselessly, or else we should provide a proper means and procedure for their consideration.

I suggest and hope that you will agree with me that this committee should be abolished or we should consider and pass these amendments which will make its work useful instead of futile.

Mr. BLANTON. My first service here was on the Claims Committee, and I was requested to go on that committee being advised that there was work of great importance to the Government, as important, if done properly, as any committee work of the House.

I will name one bill of importance: There was a bill before Congress concerning Governor Sevier and his heirs. Several prominent heirs lived in Texas, and some in my own city. That bill involved over a million dollars. It was referred to a subcommittee.

The parties interested promptly made out a prima facie case. I had given it some investigation and I found it was not a meritorious bill. I tried to stop the action of the subcommittee. Motion was made to report it favorably and it was promptly approved by every member of the subcommittee voting except myself. Then it was reported by the full committee-19 members present, 18 voting for it and I voting against it. It went on the calendar. When it came up I stopped it with the one objection, that one objection which seems so harsh here. It gave me time to investigate in the department all the old records. If you will examine my reports in a bound volume of your committee reports, you will find I produced a statement by Governor Sevier himself saying that he received everything he was entitled to from the Government.

He was the first governor of the State of Tennessee. I finally convinced that committee, months thereafter, that the bill was not meritorious, and I think it was by a vote of 14 against the bill that we finally killed it. That bill has been before Congress for years. Mr. PURNELL. Was it passed by the Senate?

Br. BLANTON. I think it has been passed by the Senate several times and that bill will come up regularly before your Claims Committee in every Congress. Every time I go home some of these heirs write me or come out and cuss me and tell me what they will do to me, and they tell me they will defeat me for Congress. That bill will come before Congress. I know about that bill because I have given it a lengthy study.

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I want to say to my friend from Massachusetts there has not been a man more devoted to the public service than Mr. Underhill. He has saved a great deal of money for the Government; and he has done splendid work.

There was another bill before the Claims Committee, when I was a member of it, which involved six million or seven million dollars when first introduced known as the McClintic-Marshall Construction Co. claim for work done on the Panama Canal. They finally managed to get General Goethals to report favorably on one of their later bills. I worked on that bill assiduously and I hammered on it, during Congress after Congress, for it was wholly without merit, and I finally got it reduced to a couple of thousand dollars. Those claimants were constituents of Mr. Edmonds of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the committee. He was always pushing the claim out, and I was sitting there to stop it. Mr. Edmonds finally got the bill passed for something like $132,000. Originally the claim was between six and seven million dollars.

Now, do my friends on the Claims Committee blame me for reducing that bill from six or seven million through several sessions of Congress down to $132,000?

You can look back and take the record, and you will find that I have not objected to any bill on which I did not have several unfavorable reports. And in every instance where colleagues showed that the department should be overridden and my objection should be overridden, I withdrew the objection and let the bill pass in those cases. But let me say this to you: If you increase the number of objectors to more than one in the first instance, when they can temporarily stop a bill, you open the door to all claims and let them all pass for it will be impossible to get more than one objection at first. You should have some machinery so that one objection could hold it up for the time being.

Mr. PURNELL. Suppose a bill is here, and one objection is heard. This proposal would provide for 20 minutes debate on that one objection.

Mr. BLANTON. That would be all right.

Mr. PURNELL. And then after consideration the question is to be again: What do you propose to do?

Mr. BLANTON. One objection should stop it when it first comes up. That gives an opportunity to discusse it. But in that instance, if the objector has 20 minutes of debate, he can not win out in those 20 minutes. He has to explain to the committee and show his records and data.

Mr. UNDERHILL. Is not the Claims Committee supposed to have had that examination made before it reported the bill out?

Mr. PURNELL. The fact that you ask prompts me to ask: Do you think it is humanly possible for any one single man to have sufficient knowledge to justify him in throwing his views against the combined mentality of the House?

Mr. BLANTON. Let one Member stop the bill temporarily. At the first meeting, and then if he can not by the next meeting convince some members of the committee, let the bill pass.

Mr. BANKHEAD. Do you mean seeing the Members privately and not by discussion on the floor?

Mr. BLANTON. Yes. On the first day when bills was introduced into this Congress, December 8, 1931, Mr. Quayle of California, introduced between 300 and 400 private bills in one day and one of them involves taking $5,000,000,000 out of the Treasury-five thousand million dollars!

Now, consider that.

Mr. PURNELL. Let me call your attention to this matter; Mr. Chairman. Here is the situation: There are thousands of communities throughout the United States where there are individuals who have or think they have just claims against the Government of the United States. It have a community where there is a man walking around a cripple, his wife killed in the same accident. They were crippled by a truck load of soldiers running along to a dance or something of that kind, and who ran by a stop light and killed the man's wife and crippled the man himself. Now people in that community know that in that case there is a rank injustice being done, and that this man has had no opportunity up to date even for consideration of his claim.

Mr. BLANTON. Whenever you have this unanimous consent day, who will be on the floor?-Only the members mainly, who have private claims and they will not support a single objector.

Mr. GREENWOOD. Both sides appoint three men, each to be there. So there are at least six people there.

Mr. BLANTON. What's the use of having them if you leave it to the Claims Committee?

Mr. GREENWOOD. I understood you to say there would be nobody there.

Mr. BLANTON. I meant if you require more than one objector to stop a bill. I will promise you I will stop all work on private bills, if more than one objector is required in the first instance.

Mr. Cox. Don't you think that to empower one Member to make null and void the work of the members of the Claims Committee and the consideration of the committee itself is against our principle of self-government, by majority of control?

Mr. BLANTON. No. He can only stop it once. That is a mere pause to give Congress an opportunity to look at the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will adjourn to meet again Saturday morning, January 16, at 10 a. m.