Mr. DONNELLY. That is right.

Mr. TOLAND. They knew nothing about it?

Mr. DONNELLY. No, sir.

Mr. TOLAND. I would like to submit these bids, Mr. Chairman, and have the witness, Donnelly, identify them. These are all the bids. I want you to identify all of these documents and see if you haven't signed every one of them.

Mr. Yocum, while he is going through those, I would like you to look at that statement and see if that isn't your signature.

Mr. YoсUM. That is my signature.

Mr. TOLAND. I offer that in evidence.

(The statement was received in evidence, marked "Exhibit No. 197," and is printed in the appendix of this volume.)

Mr. TOLAND. Mr. Donnelly, when you finish looking at those bids, will you look at these and see if you didn't submit them?

Mr. Patrick, is it a fact that Mr. Donnelly, after a representative of this committee called on you, either brought to you or sent to you copies of bids that he had submitted on behalf of your company? Mr. PATRICK. It was either before or after. That I don't recall. Mr. TOLAND. Is this your signature?

Mr. PATRICK. Yes, that is my signature.

Mr. TOLAND. I offer the letter in evidence.

(The letter of October 14, 1941, was received in evidence and marked "Exhibit No. 198.")

Mr. TOLAND (reading).

We are enclosing herewith copies of the letters which we discussed this morning.

This is addressed to Mr. Burns.

These were delivered to us last week by a representative of the Atlas Iron & Steel Co.

As previously told you, the writer did not see these copies until last week. Also, as informed you, neither Charles F. Rohleder nor the Atlas Iron & Steel Co. requested a bid from us on this material.

As per your request we are enclosing these copies and you may if you wish have copies made of them before returning to us for our files.

Are those the copies, Mr. Donnelly?

J. S. PATRICK.

Mr. DONNELLY. Are these all the estimates that we were supposed to have furnished; is that it?

Mr. TOLAND. Those are the ones that I just referred to, that you furnished to this gentleman after a member of the staff had called on you; isn't that right? Isn't it a fact that after Mr. Burns called on you, you then sent those over to this gentleman here?

Mr. DONNELLY. I don't know whether it was after or before. He was in there

Mr. TOLAND (interposing). We will put Mr. Burns on the stand later.

Mr. Donnelly, will you look at those exhibits and see if you didn't also sign your name as bidding both for your own company and the Philadelphia Iron Works?

Mr. DONNELLY. I can tell you-I can explain.

Mr. TOLAND. Didn't you do it?

Mr. DONNELLY. Yes, sir; I did it.

Mr. TOLAND. Do you often go around signing your name to other people's papers?

Mr. DONNELLY. No; but mistakes can happen.

The CHAIRMAN. What happened?

Mr. DONNELLY. All right; I will explain the whole thing. In the course of working for this Charles F. Rohleder, it was a case of getting the material up there as soon as they needed it. In other words, they would call on the phone at any time in the morning or afternoon and have to have it right the same day. The job couldn't go on unless they had the material. So we worked nights and Sundays to get the material there and do the work on the material; and then after you get the job done, then you have to get these complimentary bids, and we never had anything like that in the length of time we had been doing business, so it was all new to me. So it was a case of going to this gentleman's concern, and this gentleman's concern, and getting some stationery.

Mr. TOLAND. Whom did you get it from there?

Mr. DONNELLY. From the Philadelphia Iron Works.

Mr. TOLAND. Did you get it from the gentleman here [Mr. Patrick]? Mr. DONNELLY. Not from him.

Mr. TOLAND. Whom did you get it from?

Mr. DONNELLY. From the clerk in the office.

Mr. TOLAND. Did the head of the company know you were doing it? Did you get authority from the head of the company to do it?

Mr. DONNELLY. Yes, sir.

Mr. TOLAND. Who is the head of the company?

Mr. DONNELLY. It is a four-man partnership in this concern.

Mr. TOLAND. Who gave you authority to get the stationery?

Mr. DONNELLY. It may have been Mr. Moore, or Mr. Patrick, or his father.

Mr. TOLAND. Can you tell who it was?

Mr. DONNELLY. I wouldn't want to pin it to anybody.

Mr. MAAS. Why did you bother to go and get the stationery? Why didn't you get some printed and save yourself that trouble? Mr. DONNELLY. This saved the printing. [Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead and finish your statement.

Mr. DONNELLY. So, anyway, it was a case of hurry up and get these complimentary bids up there. Well, that one particular one where I signed my own name to another company's letter was a case of where I had about 15, 5 of each, rather, and I got them mixed up. I took them up and said, "These are all right?" O. K.; they were all right. In other words, I did what I thought was right to expedite the work. I didn't care about how much

Mr. TOLAND (interposing). You didn't mix them up on the price; did you?

Mr. DONNELLY. I might have even done that.

Mr. TOLAND. Take a look at it. You certainly were the lower bidder for your own company.

Mr. DONNELLY. Here is what I would like to put across to you. That same job or that same work on any one of them-you put that out to competition and see if you can get it done for the same price. I don't believe you can do it.

Mr. TOLAND. Did you have that gentleman's [Mr. Yocum] authority to sign his name?

Mr. DONNELLY. No.

Mr. TOLAND. Mr. Yocum, did you have the authority of the company or any official of the company to sign its name?

Mr. YoCUM. No.

Mr. TOLAND. Did you have authority, Mr. Donnelly?
Mr. DONNELLY. No.

Mr. TOLAND. How did you get his company's stationery?
Mr. YoCUM. I gave it to him.

Mr. TOLAND. When was that?

Mr. Yocuм. I don't remember the exact date.

Mr. TOLAND. What was the conversation you had at the time you gave Mr. Donnelly the stationery?

Mr. YOCUM. He asked me if I would let him have 10 or 15 of our letterheads.

Mr. TOLAND. For what purpose?

Mr. YoCUM. He didn't say, and I didn't ask him.

Mr. TOLAND. When he made bids and signed your name or the name of a representative of your company, he was doing it without your knowledge and authority?

Mr. YoCUм. That is right.

Mr. TOLAND. Is that your signature on this statement?

Mr. DONNELLY. Yes; that is my signature.

Mr. TOLAND. I offer it in evidence.

(The statement dated October 13, 1941, was received in evidence and marked "Exhibit No. 199.")

Mr. MAAS. Did you ask him what he wanted the stationery for? Mr. YOCUM. No; I didn't.

Mr. MAAS. If I came over to your office and asked for your stationery, would you give it to me?

Mr. YoCUM. If I knew you were in that business I probably would;

Mr. MAAS. Then you knew it was going to be used for estimating. Mr. YoCUM. I knew that, but I didn't know to whom or why.

Mr. MAAS. But you were perfectly willing to lend your company's name and your stationery to this type of estimating? In other words, you are going to let somebody else, not in your firm at all, submit estimates for you without your approval, without submitting them to you at all?

Mr. YOCUM. This is the first and only time I have ever done that. I don't think I would ever do it again.

Mr. MAAS. How did you happen to do it? What were the motives that impelled you to do it? This isn't a trial. Tell us why you did it.

Mr. YoCUM. To be frank with you, Mr. Donnelly and I are friendly and I didn't think there was anything wrong with it. I didn't give it a thought when I handed him the 10 or 15 letterheads. Mr. MAAS. You knew what they were for?

Mr. YoCUM. I assumed they would be used for estimating for bidding.

Mr. MAAS. And you knew that would not be a bona fide bid?
Mr. YoCUM. Yes.

Mr. BRADLEY. Did you know they were going to be submitted in connection with some work involving the United States Government in any way?

Mr. YoCUM. No, sir; I was never told what jobs they were for. Mr. MAAS. But you knew they were going to be used in order to comply with the requirement that there be more than one bid, that is the reason the estimates were being submitted

Mr. YoCUM. I didn't know how many bids had to be submitted. Mr. MAAS. You knew they had to have more than one or they wouldn't have asked for your stationery.

Mr. Yocuм. That is right.

Mr. MAAS. You have been in this business and you know the purpose of requiring more than one estimate is to protect the contractor, the Government in this case, in the price he is paying. You knew that you were lending your stationery, and therefore your firm's responsibility and its reputation, to cheat somebody; I am not saying to cheat them out of money, but to cheat them out of complying with the requirement, and the purpose of the requirement was to obtain more than one bid. The purpose of getting more than one bid is to get the lowest bid. You knew that, didn't you, from general business knowledge?

Mr. Yocuм. Yes, sir.

Mr. MAAS. And yet you say you didn't think about it. It wasn't a regular practice with you, was it?

Mr. YoCUM. No, sir; it had never been done before.

Mr. MAAS. And you didn't even ask to whom the estimate was to be submitted?

Mr. YoCUM. No, I didn't.

Mr. MAAS. Was your bid lower than Mr. Donnelly's? When you gave him the stationery, what was your bid?

Mr. Yocum. I don't know; I never saw it.

Mr. MAAS. Don't you know you gave it to him for the purpose that Mr. Donnelly would be the low bidder?

Mr. YoCUM. I didn't give that a thought, sir, to be honest with you.

Mr. MAAS. That is what happened, isn't it?

Mr. YoCUM. Evidently; I see that.

Mr. MAAS. And that enabled Mr. Donnelly to appear to have competitive bids when he fixed your price higher than his price?

Mr. YoCUM. Yes, sir; I see that now.

Mr. MAAS. What if he had made a very low bid for you and you woke up some morning and found you had a contract?

Mr. YoCUM. I would have been very much surprised.

Mr. MAAS. I'll say you would.

The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead, Mr. Toland.

Mr. TOLAND. Mr. Chairman, may I read this exhibit, exhibit 199, signed by the witness, Joseph A. Donnelly?

Joseph A. Donnelly, in his office at the above address, states that he is a partner in the above concern, that all the bids shown him, except one of his father, Michael Donnelly, were signed by him in his own hand or a disguised hand.

Do you write many different types of hand?

Mr. DONNELLY. I tried them left-handed, to tell you the truth.
Mr. TOLAND. You wrote some of the others left-handed?

Mr. DONNELLY. I am telling the truth.

Mr. TOLAND. You knew at the time you were doing it that doing wrong, didn't you?

Mr. DONNELLY. You may call it wrong, but—

you were

Mr. TOLAND (interposing). Why did you write one with your right hand, the other with your left hand?

Mr. DONNELLY. You mean to distinguish the two different types? Yes; I did them to

Mr. TOLAND. To deceive the Government or to deceive the people receiving them?

Mr. DONNELLY. I never had any thought in my mind about deceiving the Government; don't get me wrong about that.

Mr. TOLAND (reading):

He further states that these bids were on invitation of Ward, of Rohleder's office, who asked him to submit a bid and get two more complimentary bids. The bids were typed and prepared here in his office on his own and the other company letterheads.

Signed by the witness.

I would like to offer all of the bids and bid summaries in evidence. (The bids and bid summaries were received in evidence, marked "Exhibits Nos. 200A through 200Q." respectively, and are filed with the committee.)

Mr. TOLAND. I would like to state for the record that Mr. Donnelly's firm was successful 17 times when he signed the name and used the stationery of two other companies. All of the bids and prices of the other companies were higher than the bid he submitted on behalf of his own company.

The CHAIRMAN. What is your name?

Mr. YOCUM. Yocum.

The CHAIRMAN. And what is your name?

Mr. PATRICK. Patrick.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, does the record show that on those 17 bids that he signed those 2 companies' names?

Mr. TOLAND. The record does show that Mr. Donnelly signed the names of these two companies, and that Mr. Donnelly was the successful bidder.

The CHAIRMAN. You gave him permission to use your stationery, Mr. Yocum, and you knew it was for that purpose?

Mr. YOCUM. I gave him the stationery.

The CHAIRMAN. You knew what he was going to use it for?

Mr. YoCUM. I knew he was going to use it for an estimate; yes. The CHAIRMAN. You didn't know whether it was for the Government or somebody else?

Mr. YOCUM. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Did you know that, too, Mr. Patrick?

Mr. PATRICK. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Why doesn't it show a conspiracy between this gentlemen [Mr. Yocum] and that gentleman [Mr. Donnelly] with reference to these estimates?

Mr. TOLAND. That is a matter for somebody else to determine, not only as to these witnesses but other witnesses whom we shall present.