time operations. Whereas war workers were formerly given occupancy priority, veterans of World War II now have preference in buying and renting housing accommodations made available under title VI.

Mortgages insured under section 603 of title VI are limited to a maximum of $5,400 on a single-family dwelling, $7,500 on a two-family, $9,500 on a threefamily, and $12,000 on a four-family dwelling. However, in areas where it is not feasible to construct homes under these maximum limitations without sacrificing sound standards of construction, design, or livability, the Commissioner may increase mortgage maximums up to $8,100 on a single-family home, $12,500 on a two-family, $15,750 on a three-family, and $18,000 on a four-family home.

As of June 30, 1947, a total of 409,976 dwelling units had been financed under section 603 with mortgages totaling $1,722,119,292.

Mortgages on large-scale housing projects also are insured under section 608 of title VI. These may not exceed $5,000,000 and 90 percent of the necessary current cost of the completed project, including the land and proposed physicai improvements but exclusive of off-site public utilities and streets and organization and legal expenses.

The mortgagor must be approved by the FHA Commissioner and may be regulated as to rents or sales, charges, capital structure, and methods of operation. As of June 30, 1947, 684 mortgages totaling $247,811,178 on large-scale housing projects, which provided 47,938 new dwelling units, had been insured under section 608. The maximum interest rate on section 608 mortgages is 4 percent and the mortgage insurance rate is one-half of 1 percent, both on reducing balances. Two new sections have been added to title VI: Section 609 authorizes the insurance of short-term loans made by private financial institutions to finance the manufacture of housing. Section 610 authorizes the insurance of mortgages executed in connection with the sale by the Government of public war housing to individuals or corporations.

FHA is self-sustaining and for the past 7 fiscal years has paid all operating expenses out of income derived chiefly from premiums and fees. In addition, net resources exceeding $151,000,000 have been accumulated in its insuring funds for payment of future expenses, losses, and dividends.

Gross income during the fiscal year 1947 under all insuring operations was greater than in any previous year and amounted to $42,639,631. Expenses of administering all titles and sections of the act during the period amounted to $16,030,982, leaving an excess of income of $26,608,649 to be added to the various insurance funds.

PUBLIC HOUSING ADMINISTRATION

The Public Housing Administration was established July 27, 1947, under the provisions of the President's Reorganization Plan No. 3. It assumed the responsibilities and functions previously administered by the Federal Public Housing Authority.

The PHA has four principal areas of responsibility:

(1) The administration of the low-rent housing program under the United States Housing Act of 1937;

(2) The provision of temporary emergency housing for veterans, by relocating and converting surplus war housing and military structures;

(3) The management of public war housing during the period of reconversion and demobilization according preference to distressed families of veterans and servicemen;

(4) The disposal of Federally-owned housing determined to be surplus to the above needs.

The basic peacetime program administered by the PHA is the provision of Federal aid to local authorities to make available low-rent housing for families of low income, under the United States Housing Act. Before the problems of the defense and war periods interrupted construction of low-rent housing, local housing authorities in 173 communities built 334 projects containing 105,600 units for low-income families. Such housing has been predominantly urban, but a small number of farm housing units were constructed under a rural program started shortly before the war.

To keep rents within the means of low-income families, the PHA makes an annual contribution, or subsidy amounting to the difference between income and necessary expenses, including capital retirement. For the fiscal year 1947 these payments totaled $5,666,629. Through June 30, 1947, these Federal subsidy payments totaled $56,211,611. In addition, the local community is required to make an annual contribution equivalent to at least one-fifth of the

Federal contribution. The communities commonly make this contribution by exempting the projects from State and local taxes.

As of June 30, 1947, the total housing built or awaiting construction under the United States Housing Act comprised 216,779 dwellings in 801 projects. This included some 52,000 units under Public Law 671, which authorized the wartime use of low-rent housing funds for war-housing construction. In accordance with the law, most of the Public Law 671 projects were transferred to low-rent status after Presidential findings that they were no longer needed to serve war housing purposes. Projects with about 3,000 units remained in war use on June 30. Some 21,000 low-rent units scheduled in areas not requiring them for war housing were deferred in order to save critical materials and labor for the war program.

The low-rent housing program also includes 50 projects (22,000 units), originally built by PWA, and transferred to PHA administration.

Title V of the Lanham Act (as amended by the Mead-Lanham Resolution of December 1945 and March 1946) authorized appropriations of $445,627,000 to pay certain costs of relocating and remodeling surplus temporary structures to provide emergency homes for veterans and their families. Under the program, the local community pays for site acquisition and preparation, including on-site utilities, while the Federal Government pays the cost of demounting, transportation, reerection, and connecting to site utility systems. The Act also authorized PHA to transfer additional surplus temporary structures to local bodies for remodeling and conversion at their expense. As of June 30, 1947, some 173,000 accommodations to be completed with the use of Federal funds had been allocated of which 168,000 were completed and 5,000 were under construction. In June 1947, the Congress appropriated $35,500,000 to permit the completion of some 8,000 additional units on which construction had been suspended due to exhaustion of funds. Including those accommodations on which local bodies and schools are bearing all conversion expenses, the temporary re-use program is expected to provide veterans with more than a quarter of a million dwelling accommodations. In addition to veterans accommodated by the relocation of surplus facilities, at the end of June 1947 about 300,000 veterans' and servicemen's families were living in public housing not relocated or remodeled under the reuse program. Such families accounted for over 50 percent of all occupied war and low-rent housing units in programs administered by the PHA. Veterans receive preference in the turnover of all units in such projects, and consequently the percentage of veteran occupancy continues to rise.

The major wartime function of PHA was to provide publicly-financed housing for in-migrant war workers and their families in areas where a lack of housing was handicapping or threatened to handicap war production. The PHA was responsible for the construction and management of about four-fifths of the total so provided, the remainder being provided principally by the War and Navy Departments and the United States Maritime Commission.

Some 850,000 public accommodations were made available for in-migrant war workers and their families. This figure includes accommodations supplied by reuse of trailers and temporary or demountable units that were moved from one location to another.

The PHA on June 30, 1947, had some 410,000 units in the public war-housing (Lanham constructed) program to dispose of when surplus to veterans and other demobilization needs. These include:

About 200,000 temporary family units, 32,000 dormitory units and 14,000 stop gap units, including portable shelter units unsuitable for long-term use as housing. These must be removed by July 25, 1949, except where the Administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, in consultations with communities determines that there is a continued need in connection with orderly demobilization. About 164,000 permanent family units, including 94,000 of standard construction, and 70,000 demountables, which will be sold to veterans, occupants and other private purchasers unless sold or transferred to other Federal agencies or State and local governments.

In addition, there remained some 38,000 family and dormitory units converted from existing structures during the war to house essential war workers. These are mostly under seven-year leases, and will be returned to private owners at the expiration of the lease term or sooner if the owners purchase the unexpired lease term.

PHA also has disposition responsibility for thirteen subsistence homesteads projects, which were transferred from the Farm Security Administration and three Greenbelt towns, which were transferred to the PHA in 1942.

NATIONAL MEDIATION BOARD

The National Mediation Board was organized under the provisions of Public Act No. 442, Seventy-third Congress, approved June 21, 1934, entitled "An_act to provide for the prompt disposition of disputes between carriers and their employees, and for other purposes," known as "the Railway Labor Act." It is an independent agency in the executive branch of the Government and is composed of three members appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Board annually designates a member to act as chairman and maintains its principal office in the District of Columbia, but it may meet at any other place.

The Railway Labor Act applies to express companies, sleeping-car companies, and carriers by railroad subject to the Interstate Commerce Act, provides that such carriers, their officers, agents, and employees shall exert every reasonable effort to make and maintain agreements concerning rates of pay, rules, and working conditions, and to settle all disputes, whether arising out of the application of such agreements or otherwise. All disputes between a carrier and its employees shall be considered, and, if possible, decided with all expedition, in conference between representatives designated and authorized so to confer, respectively, by the carriers and by the employees thereof interested in the dispute. The Railway Labor Act also applies to every common carrier by air engaged in interstate or foreign commerce, and every carrier by air transporting mail for or under contract with the United States Government, and every air pilot or other person who performs any work as an employee or subordinate official of such carrier or carriers, subject to its or their continuing authority to supervise and direct the manner of rendition of his service.

The act also provides that representatives for the purpose of the act shall be designated by the respective parties. The Mediation Board investigates and certifies disputes arising among a carrier's employees as to who are the representatives designated and authorized in accordance with the requirements of the act. The Board may take a secret ballot of the employees involved or utilize any other appropriate method of ascertaining the names of the representatives. The act established the National Railroad Adjustment Board, composed of 36 members, 18 of whom are selected by the carriers and 18 by such labor organizations as have been or may be organized in accordance with section 2 of the act. The Adjustment Board, located at Chicago, Ill., was created to handle disputes growing out of grievances or out of the interpretation or application of agreements concerning rates of pay, rules, or working conditions. The Adjustment Board is divided into four divisions, as outlined in section 3 (h) of the act.

In deadlocked cases the National Mediation Board is authorized to appoint a referee to sit with the members of the Division for the purpose of making an award. The parties, or either party, to a dispute may invoke the services of the National Mediation Board in any of the following cases: (a) A dispute covering changes in rates of pay, rules, or working conditions not adjusted by the parties in conference; (b) any other dispute not referable to the National Railroad Adjustment Board and not adjusted in conference between the parties or where conferences are refused. The Mediation Board may proffer its services in case any labor emergency is found by it to exist at any time.

When mediation services are requested or proffered, the Board is authorized to put itself promptly in communication with the parties to the controversy and use its best efforts by mediation to bring the parties to agreement. When unsuccessful in bringing about an adjustment through mediation, the Board shall at once endeavor to induce the parties to submit the controversy to arbitration in accordance with the provisions of the act. The failure or refusal of either party to submit a controversy to arbitration shall not be construed as a violation of any legal obligation imposed upon such party by the terms of the Railway Labor Act or otherwise.

When an agreement to arbitrate has been filed with the Mediation Board a board of arbitration shall be chosen in the following manner:

The representatives of the carrier or carriers and of the employees shall each name one arbitrator (or two if the agreement to arbitrate so designates); the arbitrators thus chosen shall select the remaining arbitrator or arbitrators. On failure of the arbitrators named by the parties to agree on the remaining arbitrators during a period stipulated in the act, it shall be the duty of the Mediation Board to name such remaining arbitrator or arbitrators.

The agreement to arbitrate shall be in writing and shall stipulate, among other things, that the respective parties to the award will each faithfully execute

the same.

Copies of arbitration awards shall be furnished to the respective parties to the controversy, to the clerk's office of the district court of the United States for the district wherein the controversy arose or the arbitration is entered into, to the Mediation Board, and to the Interstate Commerce Commission.

If a dispute between a carrier and its employees is not adjusted under the foregoing provisions of the act and should, in the judgment of the Mediation Board, threaten substantially to interrupt interstate commerce to a degree such as to deprive any section of the country of essential transportation service, the Mediation Board shall notify the President, who may thereupon in his discretion create a board to investigate and report respecting such dispute. The act also provides that after the creation of such board no change in the conditions out of which the dispute arose shall be made by either party to the controversy during a period of 60 days.

The Mediation Board makes an annual report to Congress of its activities and of the activities of each of the four divisions of the National Railroad Adjustment Board.

NATIONAL SECURITY RESOURCES BOARD

The National Security Resources Board was created by the National Security Act of 1947, Public Law 253. It is a permanent civilian agency of the United States Government and reports directly to the President. As outlined by the Act, the function of the Board is to advise the President concerning the coordination of military, industrial, and civilian mobilization, including:

Policies concerning industrial and civilian mobilization in order to assure the most effective mobilization and maximum utilization of the Nation's manpower in the event of war.

Programs for the effective use in time of war of the Nation's natural and industrial resources for military and civilian needs, for the maintenance and stabilization of the civilian economy in time of war, and for the adjustment of such economy to war needs and conditions.

Policies for unifying, in time of war, the activities of Federal agencies and departments engaged in or concerned with production, procurement, distribution, or transportation of military or civilian supplies, materials, and products.

The relationship between potential supplies of, and potential requirements for, manpower, resources, and productive facilities in time of war.

Policies for establishing adequate reserves of strategic and critical material, and for the conservation of these reserves.

The strategic relocation of industries, services, government, and economic activities, the continuous operation of which is essential to the Nation's security.

PAN AMERICAN SANITARY BUREAU

The Pan American Sanitary Bureau is the central coordinating sanitary agency as well as the general collection and distribution center of sanitary information of the American Republics. It was created by the Second International Conference of American Republics (1901-2), and organized by the First Pan American Sanitary Conference (1902). Its functions and duties are fixed by the Pan American Sanitary Code (1924) and modified and amplified by the various international sanitary and other conferences of the American Republics. The Bureau is concerned in maintaining and improving the health, the medical care and social security of the people of the Americas, and in preventing the international spread of communicable diseases. It acts as a consulting office for the national directors of health of the American Republics, prepares the programs and publishes the proceedings of the Pan American Sanitary Conferences and the Conferences of the National Directors of Health, and carries out epidemiological and other scientific studies and investigations. It grants and obtains fellowships both from its own funds and from funds obtained from other sources for Latin American graduates in medicine and allied sciences. It publishes in four languages a monthly Pan American Sanitary Bulletin, weekly and monthly reports on disease prevalence, and other publications on sanitary subjects, including special material for Pan American Health Day, which is celebrated annually on December 2 in all the American Republics. The Bureau is governed by the Conference and by a Directing Council on which all member states are represented. The director is elected for a four-year term. The necessary personnel is assigned or employed by the Director to attend to the various duties imposed on the Bureau by the

Pan American Sanitary Code and the Pan American Sanitary Conferences. The Bureau is supported by contributions of all the American Republics. Address all correspondence to the Director, Pan American Sanitary Bureau, Washington 25, D. C.

PAN AMERICAN UNION

The Pan American Union is the official international organization of the 21 Republics of the Western Hemisphere. It was established with a view to developing closer cooperation between the nations of America, the fostering of interAmerican commerce, the strengthening of intellectual and cultural ties, and the interchange of information on all problems affecting the welfare of the nations of this continent. It is supported through their joint contributions, each nation annually paying that part of the budget of expenses which its population bears to the total population of all the Republics. Its general control is vested in a governing board made up of the 21 representatives of the American Governments. Its executive officers are a director general and an assistant director, elected by the board. They in turn are assisted by a trained staff of editors, statisticians, compilers, trade experts, translators, librarians, and clerks. It is strictly international in its scope, purpose, and control, and each nation has equal authority in its administration. Its activities and facilities include the following: Publication in English, Spanish, Portuguese, with separate editions, of an illustrated monthly bulletin, which is the record of the progress of all the Republics; publication of handbooks, descriptive pamphlets, commercial statements, and special reports relating to each country; correspondence covering all phases of pan-American activities; distribution of every variety of information helpful in the promotion of pan-American commerce, acquaintance, cooperation, and solidarity of interests. It also sets the date and prepares the programs for the International Conferences of the American State, known as the Pan American Conferences, and is custodian of their archives. Its library, known as the Columbus Memorial, Library, contains 123,570 volumes, including the official publications, documents, and laws of all the Republics, together with a large collection of maps. The Union also possesses a collection of more than 25,000 photographs. Its reading room has upon its tables the representative magazines and newspapers of Latin America, and is open to the public for consultation and study. It occupies and owns buildings and grounds facing Seventeenth Street, between Constitution Avenue and C Street, overlooking Potomac Park on the south and the White House Park on the east. These buildings and grounds, representing an outlay of $1,100,000, of which Mr. Andrew Carnegie contributed $850,000 and the American Republics $250,000, are dedicated forever to the use of the Pan American Union as an international organization. Pan American Union was founded in 1890, under the name of the International Bureau of American Republics, in accordance with the action of the First Pan American Conference, held at Washington in 1889-90 and presided over by James G. Blaine, then Secretary of State. It was reorganized in 1907 by action of the Third Pan American Conference, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1906, and upon the initiative of Elihu Root, then Secretary of State. At the fourth conference, held at Buenos Aires in 1910, its name was changed from the International Bureau of American Republics to the Pan American Union. The fifth conference, held at Santiago, Chile, in 1923; the sixth conference, which met at Habana, Cuba, in 1928; the seventh conference, held at Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1933, and the eighth conference, held at Lima, Peru, in 1938, considerably enlarged the functions of the Pan American Union. All communications should be addressed to the Pan American Union, Washington 6, D. C.

PERMANENT JOINT BOARD ON DEFENSE

The

The Permanent Joint Board on Defense was set up by the United States and Canada for the purpose of undertaking studies relating to sea, land, and air problems, including personnel and matériel, in connection with the defenses of the United States and Canada.

RAILROAD RETIREMENT BOARD, THE

Creation, authority, and purpose.-The Railroad Retirement Board was established by the Railroad Retirement Act of 1935 (49 Stat. 967), approved August 29, 1935, which, as amended by part I of the act of June 24, 1937 (50 Stat. 307)