Number of inmates of the United States Soldiers' Home, St. Elizabeths Hospital, and the various branches of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, and the amount paid such inmates from July 1, 1916, to June 30, 1917.

Institution and location.

United States Soldiers' Home, Washington, D. C...
St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D. C.
Battle Mountain Sanitarium, Hot Springs, S. Dak.
Central Branch, National Military Home, Ohio.
Danville Branch, National Home, Danville, Ill.
Eastern Branch, National Soldiers' Home, Me.
Marion Branch, National Military Home, Ind.
Mountain Branch, National Soldiers' Home, Tenn..
Northwestern Branch, National Home, Wis.
Pacific Branch, Soldiers' Home, Cal..
Southern Branch, National Soldiers' Home, Va...
Western Branch, National Military Home, Kans.

Total amount of attorney fees paid in cases where the pensioners were inmates of the above homes during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1917, was $843, making the entire disbursement on account of homes $4,847,446.63.

Total.

65th CONGRESS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 2d Session.

TO CONSOLIDATE EXECUTIVE BUREAUS, ETC.

MAY 9, 1918.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed.

MAY 13, 1918.-Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union discharged, referred to House Calendar, and ordered to be printed.

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

REPORT.

[To accompany S. 3771.]

The Committee on the Judiciary, having had under consideration the bill (S. 3771) authorizing the President to coordinate or consolidate executive bureaus, agencies, and offices, and for other purposes, in the interest of economy and the more efficient concentration of the Government, report the same back to the House with the recommendation that it do pass.

The committee saw no just reason why this bill should not pass. It only gives the President power to redistribute and coordinate functions, powers, and officers of the executive and administrative branches of the Government in the interest of the national defense, the successful prosecution of the war, and for the more efficient administration of the executive branches of the Government.

The act can not remain in effect longer than six months after the termination of the war.

The powers given the President can be exercised only in matters relating to the conduct of the war.

The moneys appropriated for any executive branch can only be expended for the purposes for which such appropriation was made. If the President concludes that any bureau should be abolished and the functions of such bureau conferred upon some other department or bureau, he is required to report his conclusions to Congress with such recommendations as he may deem proper.

Upon the termination of this act, all duties and functions of the various executive and administrative branches of the Government which may have been affected under the provisions of this act, shall revert to the respective branches as they existed prior to the passage of the act.

No substantive power is given to the President in this bill. Able lawyers contend that the Chief Executive now has the power to

redistribute and coordinate the executive functions of the Government, but since there is some doubt as to this, it is wise for the Congress to give express assent to the exercise of such power.

This

The bill is clearly in the interest of efficiency and economy. Every executive agency of the Government should be most efficiently utilized in the interest of a successful prosecution of the war. can not be done unless the power is vested in the President to cut "red tape," to coordinate and redistribute these executive functions wherever it is necessary in matters relating to the successful conduct of the war.

Mr. Taft, while President saw clearly the necessity of such power in the executive branch of the Government as is here conferred, even for peace times. In his message to Congress on March 13, 1911, urging the creation of an efficiency commission, he said:

Functions and establishments have been duplicated, even multiplied, causing conflict and unnecessary expense; lack of full information has made intelligent direction impossible and cooperation between different branches of the service difficult.

In the past, services have been created one by one as exigencies have seemed to demand, with little or no reference to any scheme of organization of the Government as a whole. I am convinced that the time has come when the Government should take stock of all its activities and agencies and formulate a comprehensive plan with reference to which future changes may be made.

The economy and efficiency report made to the Sixty-second Congress during its third session, in speaking of the lack of any concentrated effort to organize the administrative agencies into an efficient mechanism, says:

At no time has the attempt been made to study all of these activities and agencies with a view to the assignment of each activity to the agency best fitted for its performance, to the avoidance of duplication of plant and work, to the integration of all administrative agencies of the Government, so far as may be practicable, into a unified organization for the most effective and economical dispatch of public business.

Mr. Taft, in an editorial in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, points to the necessity of this legislation and commends the objects sought in this bill. From that editorial the following is quoted:

The bill will undoubtedly give to the President an elasticity of action which can make greatly for proper coordination. It enlarges his power, so it increases his responsibility for a lack of coordination in the future. There is duplication, indeed quadruplication, of functions that might well be put under one head. Take the matter of secret service. There is now a secret service in the State Department, in the Department of Justice, in the Treasury Department, and in the War Department. Clearly it would make for both economy and efficiency to have all the agencies engaged in the highly important work of ferreting out treason and spying in our vast and varied population of 100,000,000 and in 48 different States under one responsible head. Nothing is so vital to success in the Secret Service as the concentration of all the details concerning criminal conspiracies and acts in one office and under one control, where they may be compared, conclusions reached, and action taken. The Government has been criticized for failure to convict spies and traitors. Popular imagination on the subject has doubtless been stirred without facts to justify it. Still it is likely that more spies and traitors could have been caught had there been one Secret Service.

Another great field for improvement is in the matter of production and purchase for war purposes. Another is the matter of transportation. There are others. In some of these fields action has been taken, but its effect has been limited because of the lack of power in the President. The authority conferred by the President on Mr. Baruch it might be hard to sustain as legal until this bill becomes law.

Under this bill the President may not abolish departments. He may not create new offices and fill them. He may take a bureau out of one department and

put it in another and then unite it with a bureau or office there. He can not spend money for any function not expressly authorized by Congress. On the passage of this bill, however, nothing will prevent complete correlation and union of functions directed toward one specific end. This should make greatly for a successful conduct of the war.

The necessity for this legislation is exemplified by the following, which was submitted to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary February 25, 1918, by Mr. Overman:

A MEMORANDUM CONCERNING DUPLICATION OF SERVICE.

(1) In numerous cases more than one bureau or other administrative agency is authorized by law to render the same service. (2) In most of these cases the various duly authorized agencies are ambitious to render all the services within their power. (3) In some cases actual duplication of service has resulted. (4) In a large number of cases the legitimate development of bureaus and other agencies is hampered by the knowledge that it would bring about conflict with the work of other bureaus and agencies. Such conditions result in misdirection of effort and inefficiency.

For example, some duplication of service has arisen between the various scientific and technical bureaus in the Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce, and much more might arise if they should use to the fullest extent their existing legal powers and physical equipment. One case in point is that of investigations concerning the sources of supply of various raw materials used in industries connected with the national defense. Thus both the Bureau of Soils in the Department of Agriculture and the Geological Survey in the Department of the Interior might be interested in the sources of supply of potash and might institute investigations with a view of discovering new sources of supply. The same situation exists with respect to investigations concerning the quality of materials. In the comparatively narrow field of testing materials, the Bureau of Standards of the Department of Commerce and the Forest Products Laboratory of the Forest Service are both empowered and equipped to test timber and paper; the Bureau of Standards and the Bureau of (hemistry are equipped to test leather, the Bureau of Standards and the Bureau of Markets to test textiles, the Bureau of Standards and the Office of Public Roads and Rural Engineering to test road materials, and the Bureau of Standards and the Reclamation Service to test cement.

In the broader field of the utilization of materials and the improvement of technical processes, the utilization of American clay in the manufacture of high-grade pottery or the improvement of the process of glass making with a view to supplying a better grade of optical glass might be undertaken either by the Bureau of Standards or the Bureau of Mines. Another case where several bureaus might undertake to carry on the same technological study is that of aniline dyes. The Bureau of Standards, the Bureau of Mines, and the Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agriculture are all equipped to assist by making scientific researches in the establishment of an American coal-tar dye industry, and each has the legal authority to do so. Moreover, the United States Tariff Commission is charged with the duty of investigating the development of chemical industries in general in this country, including the development of the dye industry, although presumably it would not attempt itself technological researches involving the equipment of additional chemical laboratories.

What is true with respect to sources of supply of raw materials and technological studies in the fabrication of the finished products is also true with respect to the marketing of the products. The Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce has an organization covering the foreign markets of the world, and is capable of studying the opportunities for the development of American foreign trade of all kinds. The Office of Markets of the Department of Agriculture is also interested in the development of foreign markets, particularly in markets for agricultural products, and, to some extent, for manufactured foodstuffs, and even for other commodities, like cotton textiles, the raw material of which is mainly produced on American farms. While the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce does not assume jurisdiction over the foreign marketing of wheat or cotton, and the Office of Markets does not assume jurisdiction over the foreign marketing of manufactured goods containing no raw materials produced on the farm, there is a class of commodities, such as manufactured foodstuffs, where the authority of the two bureaus is not clearly defined.

The situation is further complicated by the existence of the foreign trade advisers in the Department of State. With respect to domestic commerce, the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce has little actually to do, despite its somewhat indefinite grant of authority. Thus the domestic commerce in manufactured foods is subject principally to the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Chemistry in the Depart

ment of Agriculture, and matters relating to domestic commerce in sea foods, other than their inspection under the pure food law, are dealt with by the Bureau of Fisheries. Turning from the Government bureaus dealing with the industries of the country to those dealing more directly with the wants of the people, a similar confusion of authority exists. For example, there is a great subject of the public health. The Public Health Service has a broad grant of authority to engage in activities relating to health, exclusive of the health of persons in the military and naval service. The Bureau of Education, however, looks after the health of Indians in Alaska, and the Indian Office after the health of Indians in other parts of the United States. The States Relations Service has a somewhat indefinite grant of authority with respect to the care of the health of farmers, and the Bureau of Mines operates its mine rescue cars and in other ways concerns itself with the health of the mining population. Both the Public Health Service and the Army and Navy health services operate medical schools, and both the Public Health Service and the Army medical service operate hygienic laboratories. Locomotive boilers are inspected by agents of the Interstate Commerce Commission and safety devices designed for the protection of employees in interstate commerce and of the traveling public are also inspected under the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Steamboat boilers, however, are inspected by agents of the Steamboat-Inspection Service. The adminisstration of the United States employees' compensation act, applying to civilian employees of the United States, is intrusted to a special commission, but the administration of the soldiers' and sailors' insurance law, covering persons now in the military or naval service, is intrusted to the Bureau of War-Risk Insurance, whilst the payment of pensions to veterans of the Civil War and their dependents (involving duties of much the same general character as those involved in the payment of family allotments and allowances by the Bureau of War-Risk Insurance to dependents of persons in the military and naval services of the United States in the present war) is the function of a separate pension office.

The Public Health Service is interested in a general way in the prevention of the spread of disease. For example, it has been interested in preventing the spread of bubonic plague by rats and ground squirrels on the Pacific coast, and in the spread of various diseases by flies and mosquitoes everywhere. The Biological Survey of the Department of Agriculture is also interested in the study of rats and ground squirrels, and the Bureau of Entomology in the Department of Agriculture in flies and mosquitoes. Whilst the Biological Survey has a general interest in the wild animals of the United States jurisdiction over Alaskan fur animals is vested in the Bureau of Fisheries, and jurisdiction over the reindeer in Alaska in the Bureau of Education. Whilst the Bureau of Entomology is interested in all kinds of insects, whether noxious to man, to animals, or to the useful plant life of the country, the study of insects injurious to forest trees is a matter of special concern to the Forestry Service.

Turning from health to education, we find that though there is a Federal Bureau of Education with a general authority to study matters in relation thereto, there is also a Children's Bureau with a general authority to study matters relating to the education of children, a Bureau of Immigration with a growing interest in the education of immigrants, a Federal Board of Vocational Education with a special responsibility for the development of agricultural, commercial, and industrial training, a States Relations Service with a further special responsibility concerning the agricultural colleges and extension work in the rural districts, and a Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce with an incipient interest in the training of persons for employment in connection with foreign commerce.

The general subject of prices and the cost of living is one with respect to which a number of bureaus have more or less overlapping authority. The Federal Trade Commission, for example, has a general authority to investigate the reasonableness of prices, and to that end to study cost of production in various industries. But costs of production may also be studied by several of the bureaus which are primarily concerned with the technology of industry. For example, the Bureau of Mines has authority to study the costs of production of coal; the Office of Farm Management has a general authority to study costs of production on the farm; the Forestry Service has authority to study the cost of production of timber; the Bureau of Fisheries presumably has a general authority to study costs of production of fish; the Tariff Commission also, in connection with its general duty of investigating the fitness of customs duties, presumably has the power to study costs of production of protected commodities. Moreover, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Office of Markets may likewise be interested in the study of market prices and their relation to the cost of living. These are only a few of many instances where duplication of service either has resulted or easily might result if bureau chiefs used their legal powers to the full, regardless of the legitimate development of the activities of other bureaus.