about housing only to find themselves in the street. In brief, lenders and tenants alike are offered a degree of security that exists nowhere on this earth.

GOVERNMENT'S EVIL POWER SPREADS INTO BUSINESS AND LABOR GENERALLY

The USPHA will determine building wages, working rules, apprenticeship, materials, operating, maintenance, and all the rest.

If we give the public housing agency the billions it asks for, we will be giving to Government the small block of "stock" through which it can get control of the whole company. This Government capital will be like the late Mr. Insull's purchases of a small part of the stock in many businesses in order to get control, through a holding company, of a large number of underlying companies.

The USPHA will be a huge holding company which grants the cities their own money, and lets the political party in power there grant the taxpayer's money to local landowners, builders, unions, suppliers of fuel and paint, maintenance men, and investors. In return for past favors and future prospects they gratefully deliver their votes. And thus their political party power is maintained and expanded. Public housing is the greatest known build-up of political patronage.

PUBLIC HOUSING AS A TRANSMISSION BELT FOR POLITICAL AND
BUREAUCRATIC PROPAGANDA

The joint committee found that the United States Public Housing Authority itself had 6,571 employees, under its present "dormant" program, with a budget of over $11,000,000 a year for administration-and propaganda. In addition, there are 18,700 employed locally in the cities on the projects.

Interesting confirmation of the impact of this propaganda machine is found in the report on slum clearance submitted by Senator Wagner. The Senator reported that 9 out of 10 answers to his questionnaire were in favor of Federal public housing, but then it must be remembered that he sent his inquiries to mayors and other officials, most of whom are hoping to add patronage to their pay rolls and votes for their party.

The FPHA is, in fact, an ever-increasing propaganda machine. Out of a budget of 11 millions it has kept up a constant stream of slanted releases. Almost the whole of the budget of any Federal agency will be used for such enlightening propaganda, if the agency heads believe that the State is more important than the individual citizens. Staff members writing reports, speaking to meetings, traveling by plane and train, taking part in committee meetings-can all be lightly turned into agents of a Government mass propaganda, to remind people of the slums and the low-income families of the failure of private enterprise, while preaching rosy sermons on the Government's fostering care of the

common man.

Congressman Harness brings out the evidence of such propaganda in publichousing activities in his committee report on the investigation of propaganda for the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments.

In San Diego, for example, propaganda was carried on boldly on the very premises of the housing projects in the election of Government officials. Their speeches and literature included misrepresentation of the statements made by opposition candidates.

They also circulated petitions for political candidates in violation of the Federal law.

The techniques employed were described under oath by Mr. Hinton A. Miller, an assistant housing manager in Los Angeles. He said he was told to attend the Jackson Day dinner, where John Arvin, regional director, boasted of being head of an organization that could muster that kind of a turn-out. The $25

was paid to the personnel office of the project.

At a luncheon the FPHA officials turned out en masse.

"Mr. Arvin-"

**

Mr. Miller said "told us that the purpose of this meeting was to organize us as a machine to swing the primaries * * by organizing the tenants in our projects and getting out their vote on primary-election day."

The Government workers were told that they had the approval of the regional director, Mr. Langdon Post, to take part in political activity although it was illegal under the Hatch Act.

Another technique was described by Mr. Dillon Myer, PHA Administrator, as quoted by Congressman Harness:

"The great bulk of the American people-"

Said Mr. Myer-"do not understand how vitally the outcome of this struggle can affect their welfare."

He went on to point out that the whole future of housing was the basis for a life-and-death battle between a small group of power-hungry men and the larger interests of the world as a whole.

The following letter was sent out on the stationery of the Housing Authority of the City of Tacoma, to building contractors and others, telling them what financial contributions they were to make to the campaign of the National Public Housing Conference to help carry on the propaganda for Senator Wagner's bill. It was written by a man named John Schlarb, Jr., who signs himself as "executive director, Housing Authority of the City of Tacoma, legislative committee member, National Public Housing Conference," and the letter is on the letterhead of the Housing Authority of the City of Tacoma, Wash., dated October 1945. The letter reads:

"GENTLEMEN: Some time ago I wrote to you asking for a contribution in support of the National Public Housing Conference. The letter was written at a time when we were all very busy with war work and it might be that you have overlooked it.

"I am taking the liberty of writing again now because under the leadership of the National Public Housing Conference the postwar public-housing program is rapidly assuming its final form and it is, therefore, urgently necessary to draw together the people in our region who want to participate in the program. "The omnibus housing bill sponsored by Senators Wagner and Ellender providing for postwar housing developments on a large scale, both public and private, is now under consideration in the United States Senate. The material for the bill was prepared by the National Public Housing Conference and that is why I, as the northwest regional committee member of the conference, ask you now for your support.

"The postwar program of the 32 housing authorities in this region will be affected by the bill now in Congress and these local authorities are all anxious to see it pass.

"Contributions in support of the conference have already been received from a number of firms which constructed the Nation's public war housing. Those firms whose total contracts were less than $500,000 gave from $250 to $500 while those whose contracts were more than $500,000 made $500 contributions. These contributions are deductible for income-tax purposes. A copy of the program of the National Public Housing Conference is enclosed.

"I would very much appreciate it if you would reply to my letter because we are forming a regional organization and it would be most helpful to know how you feel about the problem.

"Cordially yours,

"JOHN SCHLARB, Jr.,

"Executive Director, Housing Authority of the City of Tacoma, Legislative Committee Member, National Public Housing Conference." Another interesting exhibit is a letter from David L. Krooth, cochairman of the Housing Legislative Information Service. For a time he was general counsel and Acting Commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration.

I am informed this letter was sent to all employees of the Federal Public Housing Administration, and is a request, if not an order, that they contribute funds for an emergency drive of the National Public Housing Conference.

We have already seen that the NPHC works through Government employees and those in receipt of Federal funds, to recruit members and funds for its regular drives for support of housing.

The Krooth letter follows:

"FIGHT FOR HOUSING TODAY, JUNE 25, 1947

"WASHINGTON, D. C., May 24, 1947. "DEAR FELLOW HOUSER: Now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of the program.

"Forty-three national organizations are cooperating in the Housing Legislation Information Service by supplying blow-by-blow information about the congressional prospects of pending legislation on housing. These organizations are being invited to sponsor a national demonstration to urge the passage of the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill, S. 866, by the Senate before the July adjournment. "Fight for housing day: To do this, June 25 is being designated as National Fight for Housing Day. Meetings will be held in different parts of the country

simultaneously, culminating in a national legislative conference in Washington. Extensive press coverage and radio publicity are to be arranged. The plan, and such a plan takes money, you know, will be financed by a special fight for housing fund.

"This letter is written to you because you work in the housing program and, I am sure, believe in it. Because you have seen what housing is, why it is needed, and what it can do for our cities, and our people, you are invited to make your support tangible and effective. Some funds have been pledged on condition that additional money is raised from other sources. That's you.

"What to do: If you want a national housing policy, and national housing program, use the enclosed envelope and mail your check, money order, or cash to the Fight for Housing Fund. Since commitments must be made at once, send your contribution by return mail, please.

"We need privates and generals both in this fight. Make your contribution as large as you can or as small as you must, but send it now. This is an emergency drive for immediate help. It has no relationship to the continuing work of the National Public Housing Conference.

"Yours sincerely,

"DAVID L. KROOTH,

"Cochairman, Housing Legislation, Information Service."

This is good socialist propaganda technique. It makes the lesser lights of the bureaucracy feel that they are engaged in a great crusade, that they are on the side of the angels. It is the identical method used on a national scale by Socialist and Communist governments which tell their people that they are fighting a defensive war against the wicked men who would destroy them.

Another propaganda device is the "exclusive meeting" technique. Selected representatives from "coperative agencies" are invited to preliminary meetings to orient them. These representatives are carefully screened. No one is invited or gets in who is not already committed to socialized housing and who would not be disconcerted by crude admissions of how best to fool the people. If the handpicked "representatives" are the executive secretary or the editor of the group's paper, so much the better. The representative's duty is to go back to his community or his association and spread the propaganda. This makes a pretty network. Here is the process by which so many editors, students, women and religious leaders have been persuaded that the TEW bill gives benefits to lowincome families and clears slums.

PROPAGANDA WORKS IN CONCENTRIC CIRCLES

The really important decisions taken by the inner circle are, of course, never seen and never heard. The next circle is the body of "factual" reports, which are issued ostensibly giving the facts-usually all on one side. Beyond that are the less formal speeches in which suggestions can be planted even more easily.

Beyond that come the rings of satellite private agencies, which pick up the statements of public housing advocates, and transmit them to millions of innocent members of private associations, who never suspect that the resolutions they pass in favor of help for the poor were formulated by some socialists in some Government office.

We cannot assume that the inner circle are all in Government employment. Sometimes they are and sometimes they are not, and very frequently they flit back and forth, coming into Government agencies to familiarize themselves with the mechanics and to help shape policies, and then going out again to one of the private agencies which forms a link in the series of concentric circles revolving about the public-housing program.

As the distinguished committee will know, our colleague, Mr. HARNESS of Indiana, has suggested that the higher strategy of this public-housing scheme has been worked out in Government bureaus. But who planted this Marxism there? What political influences are at work crossing the lines of this huge unmanageable bureaucracy of ours? How far are these plans for health insurance or public housing worked out by Communist government agents here or by their enthusiastic fellow travelers?

BUILDING OF A POLITICAL MACHINE

The power held by the public-housing group is skillfully used as bait to draw more satellites into their net. The purpose is violently political. The various groups become parts of a political machine, dedicated to the idea of state socialism.

The guaranteed annual payments of interest and capital can be used to draw in one group of satellites, the investors. Businessmen, builders, unions, and tenants follow. The employees in the public-housing agencies are the local headquar ters staff of the machine. The tenants are the infantry who deliver the votes. Tenants are corralled and corrupted in one of two ways.

First, the PHA has the power to decide where to put the projects. Throughout this land, there are many millions of families with incomes under $90 a week, or even with incomes under $64 a week, the official maximum set in 1947 for eligibility to become tenants in housing projects.

Naturally, various allowances must be made for these figures. They include young people just starting out in life; also, many families have two or more wage

earners.

However, many regulations give the PHA almost unlimited choice of where to put its projects. It can find its "low-income families" anywhere, under the broad definition it uses. So practical politics is free to decide to put the Government houses where they will "do the most good"—that is, where a critcal vote for Senator or Congressman or the electoral college is in doubt.

The well-known pattern of political patronage was worked out by WPA. Since it could find needy families anywhere, it simply became a matter to find them exactly where they would be most helpful to the party vote. Thus, when the agricultural vote was in doubt, relief funds were spent in farm States. When city votes became important, the "needy" in the city increased in numbers very rapidly. When a few critical States with a large bloc of electoral votes were hanging in the balance "relief needs" went up in those areas.

Housing is the WPA of prosperity. It doubles or trebles the corruption beyond anything ever dreamed of under the old WPA. It will become the crucial but permanent governmental spending fund for propaganda, for votes, for reelection. It is the 1940-48 speeded up version of the slogan of the 1930's "spend and spend, tax and tax, elect and elect."

The other way to corral the votes of tenants is direct. We saw references to direct action in Congressman HARNESs' records. But the pressure need not be crude. Most of the votes in areas with public housing would naturally vote for the public-housing party. It is easy to fill the houses with people who see eye to eye with the party in power, the spending party. It is easy to move tenants out who vote against the party building their houses. In the big cities the tenants in some districts vote 92 percent for that party.

Langdon Post, who was regional director for San Francisco, for the PHA, said the following in his book, Challenge of Housing:

"Danger signals flash from the political thinking and opportunities inherent in a vast public-housing program. This last plum is a new brand of political fruit which has enormous possibilities of exploitation. Imagine the golden opportunities latent in a $500,000,000 housing program in New York City. Commissions, profits, fees, jobs, and finally apartments for at least 200,000 voters. It is a bonanza beyond the wildest dreams of the most optimistic politician." This is the reflection of an advocate and administrator of experience in public housing.

When the Federal Government puts a $500,000,000 expenditure into the budget of a city government, the officials of that city look to Washington, and not to the little taxpayers, who pay only hundreds or thousands.

Here again we see the development from WPA, WPA was an outright political subsidy paid to cities to meet part of their budget expenses and bring the mayors and other local leaders into line behind the spending administration.

WPA repaired streets, it repaired public buildings, it paid a good part of the cost of municipal housekeeping. In return the mayors were required only to speak well in public of the needs for WPA and to get out the vote in the districts where WPA funds were spent. Mayor LaGuardia, of New York, got the largest slice of WPA money. He headed the mayors' conference, which urged on Congress the need for even larger appropriations for WPA.

Federal contributions for housing and slum clearance will give city governments vast varieties of funds to spend in exchange for votes.

It is strange that so little attention has been paid to Federal subordination of our cities, Federal bribery of city officials with gifts disguised as welfare for the poor, Federal intervention in local government policies, Federal punishment for refusal to follow a centralized policy, Federal impoverishment that makes cities weak and dependent on the taxing powers of the central government.

A great deal of attention has been paid to the way the central government took over control of cities and Federal states in Germany. The same thing is happening in England and it is happening here. Here we need no violence and no pressure. It is all being done with money. And it was no less authority than Mr. James A. Farley who just recently reminded us that the New Deal, above all else, depended upon "the boughten vote" to remain in power.

Where the cities of a nation come to depend more on the central government for their revenue than they do on their own taxpayers, the cities are no longer self-governed. They are driven and managed, by silken reins or by crude pressure, from Washington.

When the cities of a nation all get their policy laid down for them by the central government and can be punished if they fail to go along, the constitutional foundation of the Federal system is giving way. The cities are being coordinated into one huge monolith central State apparatus designed in and directed by Washington.

To sum up, the Federal housing bill must be defeated for moral, economic, and constitutional reasons. The sordid past of public housing schemes here at home and abroad prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the fraudulent promises are not met. The really poor and trluy deserving people are simply cheated. That kind of deception is immoral and should not be encouraged by any part of our governmental system, whether national or local.

The devastating impact upon our free economy of a public-housing scheme with billions of Federal dollars has been pointed out in detail. Even if the Federal Government initially limits itself to 10 percent of housing, its wastefulness and corruption must crush any free-building enterprise and drive it out of business through inconceivably unfair competition.

Finally, but above all, the constitutional integrity and political self-government of this Nation demand that a drastic stop be put to any further expansion of a system of legalized party tyranny by spoils. Give the corrupt politicians in Washington and elsewhere these billions of housing dollars and you can bid farewell to the limited, constitutional government under which this country grew into the productive, inventive, and humanitarian giant of all time. Gentlemen, let us not cross the bridge of public bribery into the alien world of state socialistic compulsion. Let us stay on this side of that bridge and here remain free, guarding our constitutional government, that our children and children's children may know the everlasting meaning of the American life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Mr. TALLE. Does any other member choose to ask any questions? As I understand it, then, the open hearings on the pending bill are now concluded and on Thursday morning at 10 o'clock the committee will meet in executive session to consider the bill.

Tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock the committee will consider H. R. 6570 in open hearing.

(Whereupon, at 5 p. m., the committee adjourned.)

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