indicate that the delay in certifying this claim for payment was in any way the fault of Mrs. Hovde and the Veterans' Administration is not advised as to any specific reason for the delay.

The basis for Mrs. Hovde's contention is that she has been inconvenienced and penalized to the extent of losing her pension for a year due to the delay of a Government agency in certifying her claim on the retirement fund. Although Mrs. Hovde's position is quite understandable, there is for consideration that nonservice-connected pension is justified largely upon the ground that the payments are actually needed for current support of the recipient, and the purpose of providing annual income limitations is to restrict payment to those who have such actual need. Her income during the calendar year 1945 exceeded the $1,000 limitation, regardless of the reason why it was received that year, and to authorize payment of pension to her by special enactment under those circumstances would constitute preferential treatment and would be discriminatory as to other widows actually having occasional annual incomes in excess of $1,000 and whose pensions are disallowed or discontinued for the particular years that the income happens to exceed that amount.

The fact that the delay in paying to the claimant the amount to which she was entitled from the retirement fund resulted in her receiving that amount in a year when she was otherwise entitled to full pension benefits was largely fortuitous and coincidental and certainly was not a usual or anticipated consequence. The general law and regulations provide for no exceptions to the rule that the time of actual receipt rather than the due date of income shall govern in determining whether the income limitation has been exceeded. So long as this general principle prevails it is believed that it would be basically inconsistent therewith to recognize exceptions in cases of the kind under consideration. Private relief legislation in this instance, even though based upon strong circumstances, would doubtless be invoked as a precedent for many other cases involving delays by the Government which happened to occasion loss of pension rights that would not have resulted had payment been received at a slightly earlier time.

It should be noted that there have been a number of proposals in recent years to modify or eliminate the provisions of law relating to income limitations in connection with pensions for World War I widows. Four bills (H. R. 295, H. R. 460, H. R. 1352, and H. R. 2566) have been introduced in the Eightieth Congress proposing increases in the income limitations, and one (H. R. 1453) to eliminate altogether such limitations. In the Seventy-ninth Congress, H. R. 561, H. R. 4170, H. R. 1182, and H. R. 558 contained similar proposals to repeal the income limitations, and H. R. 4485, and H. R. 4378 proposed to modify the limitations. Two bills (H. R. 3564 and H. R. 1183) in the Seventy-ninth Congress contained proposals relative to exclusion of insurance and social-security payments in the computation of annual income. One bill (H. R. 1113) proposed to exclude all insurance payments.

In view of the foregoing, the Veterans' Administration is unable to recommend favorable consideration of H. R. 633.

Advice has been received from the Bureau of the Budget that there would be no objection by that Office to the submission of this report to your committee. Sincerely yours,

OMAR N. BRADLEY, General, United States Army, Administrator.

WESTBY, WIS., August 7, 1946.

Congressman WILLIAM H. STEVENSON,

Washington, D. C.

DEAR SIR: I am sending this inquiry to you, to see if you know any way in which I can go about to collect my pension as a World War I widow for the year 1945. I have received my pension of $35 a month since January 1946.

The facts are these: My husband, Joseph Benjamin Hovde (file reference at Veterans' Administration-XC3306,651), was a veteran of World War I and a rural letter carrier, when he became ill in September 1943 and was hospitalized at Veterans' Administration Hospital, Wood, Wis., from then until July 3, 1944, when he died. Having to give up his work in September 1943, we, his family, had therefore no income from then through 1944.

I notified the Post Office Department at Washington of his death, and wrote immediately to Civil Service for his retirement fund. They should have been able to have paid this to me promptly. Instead I had to write them twice, and

finally received a promise that it should be in my hands by December 1944. But it did not arrive until January 15, 1945. And because I got it in 1945 the Veterans' Administration credited that as my income for 1945 and denied my pension for 1945. Had Civil Service sent it as promised, only 15 days earlier, the Veterans' Administration would have had no grounds to deny my pension for 1945, as then the amount would have been credited to me for the year 1944-which year I had nothing. I had so counted on it, to do needed repairs on my home and to help out on ever-mounting expenses. I sold my car then in November 1944 to tide me over.

Why should a veteran's widow be thus inconvenienced and have to lose this $420 for the year through someone else's negligence in paying promptly what was rightfully hers? Everyone feels it is so unfair to me, as Civil Service had from July 3 to the end of the year to get it to me. Insurance companies pay within the month and sooner. Why should Civil Service take 6 months?

Had the case been reversed, and had it been my debt to the Government, 1 not only would have had to pay it, but been penalized by paying interest charges for holding out on them.

I have my home here, which with a little remodeling and repair could be made to house another family, which not only would help out on the housing shortage, but would give me a little necessary income, as how far does $35 a month go? The money denied me in 1945 would fix this up for me.

As Congressman, what do you think you can do to help me, as I am certain you too, see the unfairness of it. Please let me know if there is anything you can do to find a way that the pension for 1945 may still be granted to me.

Thanking you, I remain,

Sincerely,

MYRTLE (Mrs. JOSEPH B.) HOVDE.

O

JUNE 4 (legislative day, JUNE 1), 1948.—Ordered to be printed

Mr. MCCARRAN, from the Committee on the Judiciary, submitted the following

REPORT

[To accompany H. R. 1490]

The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the bill (H. R. 1490) for the relief of United States Radiator Corp., having considered the same, report favorably thereon without amendment and recommend that the bill do pass.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this proposed legislation is to reimburse the United States Radiator Corp. and, through the corporation, its more than 1,500 stockholders, for actual losses sustained in the manufacture of magnesium sand castings as part of the war effort, such losses having been occasioned primarily by reason of the corporation's reliance par upon representations and assurances made in good faith by agents of the Government but which were not fulfilled.

The amount of such losses as recited in the proposed legislationnamely, $491,187.89-is the figure arrived at by the Army Audit Agency and represents a reduction from an original claim of $655,819.96.

STATEMENT OF FACTS

In brief.-This is a case in which the claimant was induced by the Government to convert to the production of a military item on the assertion of the Army that such production was needed for the war effort, but where a production cut-back was ordered which left the claimant high and dry and without a market for its production, and where the claimant then had to reconvert to the production of another item.

The claimant.-The United States Radiator Corp., organized in 1910 to manufacture and sell boilers, radiators, and related equipment for industrial and home use, with its headquarters office in the city of Detroit, Mich., was and is publicly owned by more than 1,500 Ameri

can citizens, whose average stockholding is relatively small and furnishes employment to approximately 2,000 workers, many of whom are small stockholders.

To

Wartime magnesium program.-During the early stages of the Second World War, the military need of the United States for magnesium was considered so extremely urgent that cost was not a factor. procure magnesium, the Government set up numerous plants, and costs at some plants ran as much as five times as great as those at the plant which produced most cheaply; but the Government was taking all the magnesium it could get from all plants. The magnesium industry was built up from a prewar maximum production of only approximately 6,000,000 pounds per year to an annual capacity of more than 500,000,000 pounds. Maximum production was reached in January 1944, and in that very same month a series of cut-backs was ordered which reduced production to only 17 percent of designed capacity by the end of the year..

Procuring magnesium metal itself was only a part of the problem. An equally vital part was fabrication, including magnesium castings. It was in the magnesium-casting program that the claimant here sustained loss.

In all, 62 magnesium sand-casting foundries were set up in the program, with a total rated capacity, according to the War Production Board, in excess of 11,000,000 pounds per month. Several of these foundries, including those operated by Dow, Ford, General Motors, Wright, and Chrysler, were established entirely at Government expense, without any risk of private capital whatever. The United States Radiator Corp. was informed, in the late fall of 1942, when the Army Air Forces selected the corporation's Geneva, N. Y., gray-iron foundry for conversion to a magnesium sand-casting foundry to produce critically needed castings for the airplane program, that it was the next to the last of the foundries set up in the program.

Need for war effort.-Selection of the Geneva plant of the claimant for conversion to a magnesium sand-casting foundry was made after a Government inspection team had, uninvited, made careful surveys of two of the claimant's plants, each survey requiring more than a week.

Responsible officers of the Army Air Forces informed the claimant there was a critical shortage of magnesium sand castings and that the maximum production which could be attained at claimant's Geneva plant was essential to the war effort and would be contracted for by prime contractors of the Army Air Forces as soon as the plant was in production. The claimant was "requested" to convert its Geneva plant immediately for the production of 300,000 pounds of magnesium sand castings per month; and, when the claimant expressed doubt about its ability to make financial arrangements for providing all the facilities necessary in connection with such a reconversion, the claimant was instructed to make application to the Defense Plant Corporation for facilities capable of such production.

In accordance with such instructions, claimant applied to the Defense Plant Corporation for facilities to produce 300,000 pounds of magnesium sand castings per month. As in the case of all such applications, such facilities could be established only for essential war production; and, in order to secure such facilities, applicant was required to prove to the Defense Plant Corporation that it had war