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Senator CHANDLER. Mr. Chairman, and Senator Austin, I want to say that when I was Governor of Kentucky this fine young man worked for me in the Public Service Commission. I expect it was the first job he got when he came out of college.

Senator AUSTIN. He has a good Governor.

Senator CHANDLER. I had a good boy. He is one of my beloved friends. He has been a great servant of the people of the country. I have great pride in what he has done in the service of the people of the United States. I want to say that on the record because I have the greatest confidence in his ability, his integrity, and his word.

Senator AUSTIN. He never worked for me but I have listened to him for nearly 2 hours and I can say that I have not heard a witness in all the time that I have been engaged in this study who saw the vision so clearly as he does and is so able to present it.

The CHAIRMAN. Surely, Mr. Krug, that is worth missing your train for.

Mr. KRUG. I thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any other questions?

Senator KILGORE. Just one, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Krug, this business of one agency shutting down a plant when another agency is contemplating taking over the same plant, so that there is a dead shutdown, instead of telling those workers, "Now, in 3 weeks the Army will take this plant over," so that they will stay on the job, have you anything to say on that? I have run into so many cases where large bodies of skilled manpower have been dissipated.

Mr. KRUG. I think it is working much better than in the early part of 1944 when these cut-backs first got in the pool, but it is far from perfect yet.

Senator KILGORE. I am referring, for instance, to Elmira and South Charleston, and various others, where there was a total shutdown, and yet had the employees been told the plant was giong to close down for a week they would have stayed and would have been available for work.

Mr. KRUG. We have a committee now which includes the Army, Navy, and Air Forces, the Maritime Commission, the War Manpower Commission, and our own people that look at every major change, the purpose of it, and that is to make sure that no other agency is about to take over that plant, to make sure that if we have no need for labor in that area we get in and make arrangements so that that labor will take these new jobs, before it drifts away from the plant. I think it is better than it was 4 or 5 months ago. Senator KILGORE. It was bad at that time.

Mr. KRUGG. Yes.

Senator KILGORE. One more question. I think that the people in government who have been considering this have been taking the general line that all workers so drafted are going to be willing workers. Isn't that right?

Mr. KRUG. Yes.

Senator KILGORE. Have you ever studied a pamphlet prepared by General Hershey when he was but a major on the history of the draft in the United States?

Mr. KRUG. No; I haven't. I would like to read it.

Senator KILGORE. If you read the history of the draft law, in the Civil War, World War I, and the present war, you will find it took a long time to bring our minds around to the fact that people can be drafted to defend our country.

Mr. KRUG. I don't think we are going to have to draft any large number of people but I think you need a law on the books. Give us the right to do it. The fact that it is on the books will mean that many people will be recruited for war industry through the voluntary approach because they will realize the urgency of the need. You get many people to volunteer for the Army and the Navy when they realize the need. I think many will volunteer for war work when they know how desperately important it is.

Senator KILGORE. Another thing. I am interested, of course, in coal mining. Twenty-five percent of our skilled miners have gone into war plants. How under this law would you get those men back in? You have to have men who know mining.

Mr. KRUG. The most difficult problem we have is coal mining. Frankly, recruitment for coal mines, is a problem that I am very happy is not on my back. I think the only way is to get more mechanized operations.

Senator KILGORE. They are mostly mechanized in the East now. That is one reason you have to have such highly skilled workers. I know one mine that has only 50 percent of the machinery in operation because they can't get the men. And the over-all picture in the mechanized mines is that it is down 25 percent.

Mr. KRUG. If we hadn't been able to get the increased production from the mechanized means that we have been able to get in the last 3 years I don't know where we would be. We might have to get the Army to release some men for coal mines. It certainly is not the sort of thing for which you could recruit in New York City.

Senator KILgore. No.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Krug.

Mr. KRUG. Thank you, gentlemen.

(The tabulation submitted by Mr. Krug is as follows:)

[blocks in formation]

Iron ore mining...

24.8

30.3

Smelting and refining of nonferrous metals (including some lead and zinc).
Drawing and fabricating of nonferrous metals (including some lead and zinc).
Aluminum manufactures...

[blocks in formation]

1 February.

'November 1943 data. Peak month not easily available, but November is close to peak. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates.

The CHAIRMAN. I will ask the reporter to copy into the record at this point a letter dated February 3, 1945, from Mr. W. H. Wheeler, Jr.

(The letter referred to is as follows:)

PITNEY-BOWES POSTAGE METER CO.,

The Honorable ELBERT D. THOMAS,
Chairman, Military Affairs Committee,

OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, Stamford, Conn., February 3, 1935.

United States Senate, Washington, D. C.

DEAR SENATOR THOMAS: As an industrialist and a former Government representative with considerable practical experience on the manpower problem, I most strongly urge your support of the May-Bailey bill. While this proposed legislation may not be perfect in a number of respects, it should, in my opinion, be enacted into law with the very minimum of delay. Three years is a long time to have temporized over an issue as vital and clear as this one.

I do not think the exact form of the legislation is very meaningful. I believe that the fact that it is on the statute books will be sufficient to accomplish the necessary results, with need to call into effect its penalty provision only in very rare cases. I happen to have just returned from a trip to Canada, where I discussed this question at some length with officials responsible for the execution of their national service law which has been in force since the beginning of the war. While their problem may not be as acute, they have met it far more adequately than we have, and with the need for exercising penalties extremely

rare.

Last October I resigned from the War Production Board, having spent the 21⁄2 years previous to that time as regional director for New England. In this capacity I had ample opportunity to observe the delays and set-backs to war production, by reason of inadequate manpower control. As an American citizen, I was and am thoroughly ashamed that we could possibly tolerate such a condition to exist. The combined efforts of the War Production Board, the War Manpower Commission, and the Selective Service, to plead, cajole, threaten, and implore cooperation, from both management and labor, so as to get manpower where it was most needed, was the most pitiful, ineffectual, inefficient, wasteful performance that could be imagined.

When I read or hear people talking again about solving the question through local voluntary effort, it seems to me ridiculous. This is exactly what we have been trying to do, over and over and over again during the past several years, with totally inadequate results. One device after another was tried, and they all failed of any real accomplishment for one reason only—there was no real legal backing.

Citing just one instance, it took us nearly a year of concentrated effort to get 3,000 more employees into the ball-bearing companies in central Connecticut, something less than 10 percent of their total employment, during a period when bearings were the most critical item in all of war production, and holding up practically everything that turned.

Despite the strongest statements published in full-page advertisements in the local papers by the Chairman of the War Production Board, and the Under Secretaries of the Army and the Navy, we received relatively little cooperation from labor and industry. It was frankly a shocking experience, with almost everyone appealed to pointing out what someone else could do to help the situation, but being unwilling to do much of anything themselves. I know that this situation has been repeated, and is being repeated, not only in New Englandbut throughout the country. It should not be allowed to continue a day longer than is necessary.

There can never be any justification, while we sent out able-bodied youths to die, for the rest of us back home to be allowed to pick and choose our jobs.

I hope, therefore, that you will do everything in your power to see that the May-Bailey bill is enacted into law with the minimum of delay.

Sincerely yours,

The CHAIRMAN. General Hershey.

W. H. WHEELER, Jr.

STATEMENT OF MAJ. GEN. LEWIS B. HERSHEY, DIRECTOR, SELECTIVE SERVICE SYSTEM

The CHAIRMAN. General Hershey, first of all, may I ask you this question: In your report to us on the bill you are the only one of the departmental chiefs, or nearly the only one, that did not mention

the suggested amendments; now, shall we assume that you are against those amendments?

General HERSHEY. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. We may assume that you are for the amendments? General HERSHEY. Yes, sir. If the committee wants, I can tell you why that letter was written as it was.

The CHAIRMAN. We don't need that. Your answer is that I, as chairman, may tell anyone that asks that you are for the amendments that were suggested?

General HERSHEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And there is no lack of harmony with you and your department in support of those amendments?

General HERSHEY. That is true.

The CHAIRMAN. So that H. R. 1752, as amended in accordance with the suggestions made, meets with your approval?

General HERSHEY. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. If the bill takes its natural course, those amendments will be the chief things in conference with the House of Representatives. May I tell the conference you testified here that you are for the bill with the amendments?

General HERSHEY. That is right. I don't want to burden the committee. How the bill should operate is the same whether we had the amendments or not. That is why I have no objection to the amendments.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions?

Senator MAYBANK. I understood the general to say he had no objection to the amendments.

The CHAIRMAN. That is right. Is there any statement you wish. to put in the record, General Hershey, different from what you sent us?

General HERSHEY. No; I said I support the bill.

The CHAIRMAN. Are there any questions? I thought I would probably expedite the matter if I started in the way I did. I am not trying to foreclose any questions. I was merely trying to save time.

Senator MAYBANK. General, there seems to be confusion as to who is going to select the men that would be assigned. It is still left with the local selective service board to select who should be assigned; isn't that right?

General HERSHEY. I think as the bill has been amended there is more latitude in who can make that assignment.

Senator MAYBANK. No. Who selects?

General HERSHEY. I mean who can make the selection. As the bill is written now I believe the Office of War Mobilization will have to set up the procedure. If he uses Selective Service for the purpose of I would like to use the word "pushing"-the people toward the placement officers he will have to make some designation on who is going to do the several steps that might lead to setting up the means that are eventually used to prosecute men under the bill.

Senator MAYBANK. I mean the actual selection. That is left to the draft board?

General HERSHEY. The men that were deferred, as I understand, if the Director of War Mobilization should designate the essential list as the freeze list, then the only people you are dealing with are

the people who are not on the list that the Office of War Mobilization has designated.

Senator MAYBANK. But the selective-service board deals with them?

General HERSHEY. I think under the bill the Selective Service still has the right to induct or defer.

Senator MAYBANK. That is right.

General HERSHEY. That is the way I understand the bill.
Senator MAYBANK. That is right. That is all I wanted.

Senator O'MAHONEY. The selective-service local boards will do what, as you would like to see it work?

General HERSHEY. If the War Mobilization Director takes step 1 he freezes, and I would recommend that he freeze everyone he has frozen now under administrative procedure, that is, everyone in essential industry, but that is the first, and I hope the last, step. If any other steps have to be taken, then the Office of War Mobilization designates a particular area. I have recommended a cooling off period, that he designate the area, and that all the voluntary things we have talked about in other bills be allowed to operate before you actually close down. I would have an invitation period before I had an order period.

Senator O'MAHONEY. My question, General, was, What do you recommend the local boards do?

General HERSHEY. I am coming to that. Then I recommend that the War Mobilization Director, who is to specify either an age group or a group of people from certain industries, or all of the people outside of the initial list in this particular area, and then it is the local board's job after this period to start calling each fellow in and say, "Have you an essential job?" and "Why not?". My recommendation is that, when that time comes, to make a decision as to whether or not a man goes into the Army as a penalty or if he be remanded to the district attorney

Senator O'MAHONEY. But you are jumping 'way ahead, General, if I may say so.

General HERSHEY. All right.

Senator O'MAHONEY. When you say that the local boards shall call, begin calling these fellows in, that is the very vaguest sort of statement. What fellows are they calling in?

General HERSHEY. The local boards can't decide who they are calling in. Under the bill as presently written the Director of War Mobilization (1) tells them their job and (2) which category they are supposed to work on. The local board does not do anything except whatever duties the War Director gives them.

Senator O'MAHONEY. Then it is your concept of proper legislation that the War Manpower Commission or the Director of War Mobilization shall classify the registrants?

General HERSHEY. Not for service; no. I think all the placements ought to be done by the United States Employment Service. They are in that business. But when the man won't go, then if the Selective Service System is to be used the local boards must have a right to make a decision after considering all evidence. That is my feeling.

Senator O'MAHONEY. I am trying to determine what your idea is as to whether or not the local draft board will tap the man that is to go.

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