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including hospitalization for those who served in the armed forces of the United States in time of war, or their dependents, shall be restricted to the following classes of beneficiaries:

(1) Those wounded in combat; (2) those suffering from injury or disease incurred, in fact, in line of duty; (3) dependents of those killed in action and the dependents of those who died of wounds, injuries, or diseases incurred, in fact, in line of duty. Our line of cleavage is service connection.

Mr. BRADLEY. How do you feel regarding civil-service preference for veterans, those who are not disabled?

Mr. BULL. The present system, as I understand it, is to give a veteran a preferential status of 10 percent disability preference. Is not that true?

Mr. BRADLEY. I am not familiar with that.

Mr. BULL. I believe it is 5 percent if there are two applicants, one a service man and one a nonservice man. If they make the same marks, then the service man gets 5 percent.

Mr. BRADLEY. Because he served his country.
Mr. BULL. My personal opinion on that is that

Mr. BRADLEY. What is the policy of your organization? I do not care about your personal opinion.

Mr. BULL. We believe the veteran should be given a 5-percent preference with an additional 5 percent for disability as he now receives. Mr. ENGLE. Under your statement, as you have read it, that would be showing a preference to a veteran which he is not entitled to by reason of that? In other words, your organization would be opposed to that, under their constitution and bylaws?

Mr. BULL. Giving a preference to a veteran on service connection? Mr. ENGLE. Yes.

Mr. BULL. Whether service connected or nonconnected?

Mr. ENGLE. We are talking about nonservice connected.

Mr. BRADLEY. I take it from what you have read, you are applying your policy to anything which a veteran might claim because he served his country, and you state you are not in accord with that view?

Mr. BULL. Frankly, I am not prepared to answer that question. If you want to draw that inference from it, that is your privilege.

Mr. ENGLE. When the soldiers' bonus question came up, there were a number of advertisements signed by your organization, I believe, appearing in the Saturday Evening Post and other magazines. Do you recall that?

Mr. BULL. I recall one, and I think that was the only one.

Mr. ENGLE. How extensively was that advertised, in opposition to it?

Mr. BULL. It was as extensive as we could possibly make it.

Mr. ENGLE. Do you know how much your organization spent and who paid for opposing the bonus?

Mr. BULL. I know we spent about all we had to stop the payment of it.

Mr. ENGLE. Members of your organization used their bonus money by contributing it to your organization, to finance the campaign against the bonus? That is true, is it not?

Mr. BULL. Some of our members did contribute their bonus money.

Mr. BRADLEY. They put it up before they got it, did they not? They paid what they anticipated they might get as a bonus in fighting the giving of the bonus?

Mr. BULL. No; I do not think so.

Mr. ENGLE. They drew the first half of the bonus, as I understand it, to pay for the campaign against the payment of the second half. I think that is true, is it not?

Mr. BULL. I remember that some of the people were asked to pledge their bonus money, and when they drew it, they paid it. I do not know whether any money came in before or after, but we were against the prepayment of the bonus, and that we were as vigorous as we could be, is true.

Mr. BRADLEY. Do you have a list of those who contributed their bonuses?

Mr..BULL. Yes. Would you like to have it?

Mr. GRISWOLD. Could you come back on Monday morning, Mr. Bull?

Mr. BULL. Yes; I will be glad to.

Mr. GRISWOLD. I would suggest that the witness suspend until Monday, and return on Monday, when we can complete our questioning.

Mr. BULL. Are there any other questions to be asked?

Mr. GRISWOLD. I presume there will be.

Mr. BULL. All right, sir.

Mr. GRISWOLD. If the committee consents, we will hear Mr. Green for a few minutes.

STATEMENT OF HON. LEX GREEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

Mr. GREEN. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I understand that the committee has before it legislation which would, if enacted, extend the time in which application may be made for burial reimbursement. I appear before your committee to ask your committee, if it will do it, to report such legislation in your bill. I have a number of cases that failed to get in their applications for the $100 reimbursement until after the dead line caught them. I think that will be a very worth-while piece of legislation for your committee to enact, if you should see fit to bring it out.

May I, at this moment, also, advocate consideration by the committee of an item in your general bill, or of the general bill, if not in a special bill-I have introduced one for that purpose, H. R. 5576, to make a temporary disability rating of World War veterans permanent after 1 year. If a veteran has a temporary rating, and he may have it for several years, he is called before the Veterans' Bureau for examination, and it is found, maybe, that his temporary disability has decreased, or increased, whichever the case may be. I believe that, after he has carried a temporary rating of some disability for a 12-month period, that it is an unnecessary expense upon the Government and an unnecessary burden upon the veteran to have to appear after 12 months or 18 months and be reexamined by the Veterans' Administration, to see whether or not he still has that disability. After he has had it for 12 months, I believe then that it should be ruled by the Veterans' Administration to be permanent. Now, I would not like to see him barred from applying for an

increase in his disability. In this bill he can still apply for reexamination and rerating, but he would know he would not lose a little temporary disability pension that he has already received and is receiving. I think this is a meritorious one and I hope your committee, after its deliberations, will bring out legislation for that purpose.

Mr. ENGLE. Mr. Green, may I ask a question?

Mr. GREEN. May I go on for 2 minutes?

Mr. ENGLE. Only on one point. Do you not think a year is rather short?

Mr. GREEN. Well, that is for the committee to consider. Anything is better than what we have now.

Mr. ENGLE. Pardon me, please.

Mr. GREEN. I must finish, Mr. Chairman. I would like to talk for an hour, but your time is limited. H. R. 2728, which I introduced, is a bill to amend the World War Veterans' Act of 1934, as amended, to provide an allowance for widows and children and dependent people of veterans of the World War. It would give compensation to them, regardless of the cause of the veteran's death, whether he received a pension or whether he did not, when he died. We have got to come to that. We have to do for the widows and orphans of veterans, and I would like for us to do it now.

Then there is H. R. 1991, and which, by the way, I am chiefly interested in, and I am seriously considering petitioning it out of the committee, and is a bill to reenact the law, providing for a disability allowance for World War veterans, and restoring the former serviceconnected disability status. My friends, we must, sooner or later, establish a disability allowance, so at least these veterans we have now will secure justice which it is impossible of obtaining now on the service-connected rule by the Veterans' Bureau. It is 20 years since they were discharged, approximately. The Veterans' Bureau holds, probably correctly, but I do not know, that those who have had service connection, where it exists, have already had it given to them in 99 out of a hundred cases. We have a large number of border-line cases, a large number of veterans who may be, or not, service connected, but who are destitute and on the relief rolls. If we reestablish a pension for them in some amount, beginning with 10 percent disability and graduate it on up to 100 percent, that will be a help. We now have $34 for 100 percent, nothing for any less. The country will be better off and those veterans will be happier and better citizens.

This is a bill to give to them a pension of $60 a month for total disability and scale it down to, I believe, 10 percent-give them $10 per month for 10-percent disability, or $12 per month, and scale it on up to $60 a month for permanent total disability. I commend that to your committee's consideration. I have put those figures in H. R. 1991, and they range from $12 for 10 percent to $60 for 100 percent. You can scale it on up to such amount as your committee may see fit to fix it at, but give us a disability pension for all disabled, honorably discharged World War veterans.

I thank you gentlemen very much for your patience.

Mr. GRISWOLD. The committee will adjourn until 10 o'clock Monday morning.

(Thereupon, a recess was taken until 10 a. m., Monday, January 31, 1938.)

WORLD WAR VETERANS' LEGISLATION

MONDAY, JANUARY 31, 1938

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON WORLD WAR VETERANS' LEGISLATION,

Washington, D. C. The committee met, pursuant to the adjournment, at 10 a. m., Hon. Glenn Griswold (acting chairman) presiding.

Mr. GRISWOLD. Gentlemen, the committee will come to order.
Will Mr. Bull come forward, please?

STATEMENT OF CORNELIUS H. BULL—Resumed

Mr. GRISWOLD. The committee was in the process of examining Mr. Bull when we adjourned Friday. Have you any further questions, Mr. Jarman?

Mr. JARMAN. I have a question, but I would like to have a minute here to get it in my mind. If somebody else has got a question to ask, they may do so.

Mr. GRISWOLD. All right, take your time. Meanwhile I might say to the committee that the Rankin bill to continue the examination of veterans' hospitals has ben passed by unanimous consent. Mr. O'Connor called it up on the floor, and it was passed by unanimous

consent.

Mr. JARMAN. Mr. Bull, I do not quite have in mind what I had in mind, but I will lead up to it. My recollection is that your statement-and I recall Mr. Hobart having made the same statement to us a year ago was that your organization, briefly put and in a sort of slang way put, is all for the battle-scarred or wounded and nothing for the man who was disabled in battle?

Mr. BULL. Let us put it in another way, Mr. Jarman: Service connection, because that takes in people who were disabled through disease or direct combat.

Mr. JARMAN. Because of tuberculosis, pneumonia, and so on?
Mr. BULL. That is correct.

Mr. JARMAN. Now, I believe you also said, with reference, I suppose, to this particular bill before us-H. R. 8793-about widows' compensation, that you favor-by the same token you favor everything, I suppose, for the service-connected widow and nothing for the non-service-connected cases? Does that follow?

Mr. BULL. That is generally true; yes.

Mr. JARMAN. Now, then, we will take two men, two veterans. One was a service-connected case, and lost a couple of arms, we will say. Another had no battle scars, no wound, or ailment or disease contracted during the war, but he died, later on becoming disabled by

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