Mr. GADSDEN. I hope that is true.

The CHAIRMAN. You may go ahead.

Mr. GADSDEN. The point to which I want to call the attention of the committee is: Who is asking the Government to spend this extra million dollars so far as the public of Philadelphia is concerned? You had, as I understand, three witnesses before you on yesterday. One of them was the distinguished ex-Senator Pepper, for whom all of us have the greatest respect and regard, but I understand he disclaimed speaking for anybody but himself. One of them was counsel for a trust company which has an interest in one of these plots.

On the other hand, I say if there were any real demand in Philadelphia for the removal of this Federal courthouse wouldn't there be some business organization, wouldn't there be some esthetic or cultural organization or some taxpayers' organization coming here and urging it?

Yet, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, the record before your committee will disclose the fact that the entire business interests of Philadelphia are a unit; that the public press of Philadelphia are a unit-are a unit in which direction? Against this proposed removal of the Federal court to a new site on the Parkway. And as opposed to that volume of opposition what have you in the affirmative? Now, I leave that with you. It is a most extraordinary situation indeed, and

Senator TRAMMELL (interposing). I judge that under this bill it is contemplated that about a million dollars shall be expended for a site for a new building, is that it?

Mr. GADSDEN. Yes, sir.

Senator TRAMMELL. In other words, that would not make any particular contribution to the matter of taking care of the unemployed, would it?

Mr. GADSDEN. No; and I am glad that you mentioned that subject, and for this reason, that one of the purposes of the original appropriation was to aid in relieving unemployment, to get the work started at once. If the present site is retained the Government owning the property will mean that there will be no delay in starting its construction work and thereby immediate relief can be given to that extent to the matter of unemployment. Whereas, if you are going into the question of buying a new site let me remind you that it took, I think, two years to assemble the various tracts for the customhouse site at Second and Chestnut, notwithstanding the fact that the chamber of commerce representative made four visits down here to the Secretary's office in trying to facilitate the matter.

So, as I say, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, going to a new site would fail to accomplish the whole purpose of the original appropriation, which was to aid in relieving unemployment. Now, Mr. Chairman, I have taken longer than I intended. I want to ask you if you will hear certain members of our committee. The CHAIRMAN. Certainly. And I have been handed a list. I do not know whether you prepared it or not. But the next name on my list is Mr. Francis Brown

Mr. GADSDEN. No, Mr. Chairman, we want you to hear Mr. Paul W. Thompson, who will speak for the banking and financial interests of the city of Philadelphia.

The CHAIRMAN. Very well. We will hear him. Mr. Thompson please come forward and give your full name for the purpose of the record.

STATEMENT OF PAUL W. THOMPSON, PRESIDENT OF THE CORN EXCHANGE NATIONAL BANK & TRUST CO., PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Mr. THOMPSON. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I want to urge for your careful consideration, with all the force and words that I can submit, the question of economy in expenditure. I represent to-day the banks in Philadelphia, the larger banks, with resources very considerably in excess of $600,000,000. In our meetings we have discussed, and have heard with great satisfaction, the attitude taken by our President, our next President, our Senate, Senate committees, the House of Representatives, and committees of the House of Representatives, all directing their attention toward economy in Federal expenditures.

Furthermore, we bankers have sat in with the city authorities in Philadelphia and discussed the questions of finance, and have discussed the question of economy in expenditures. Of course, certain expenditures are necessary. We all recognize that. But we feel very strongly that only those expenditures which are absolutely necessary should be considered at any time, and more especially at this time.

We are all concerned with the matter of economy. Unless there is a very strong and compelling and controlling reason for spending more money than is otherwise necessary, why do it? I ask you in the name of taxpayers to give every possible consideration to the matter of economy.

And, why spend more money than one has to spend? Parenthetically I would like to answer the honorable gentleman on your left: My understanding is that the activities now centered in the Federal Court Building, with the exception of a branch of the post office, when the new post office in West Philadelphia is finished, will be confined to Federal court activities, and that the other Federal activities will be moved to the customhouse site when that is finished. So that if the gentleman had in mind, as I inferred from what he said, he did have in mind, the availability of space for Federal activities, I think inquiry would disclose that there is ample space in Philadelphia for it.

I do want to urge, as I say, as strongly as I can the question of the economy side of this proposition. Why spend a million dollars unless there is a very controlling reason for doing it?

You have a good site now, a site that is suitable, a site that has the approval, as Mr. Gadsden has told you, of nearly every civic body in Philadelphia. What is the reason for changing and for expending more money, in which expenditure we are all interested, both individually, and collectively? The taxpayers are greatly interested in it, the city of Philadelphia is interested; and as far as we can speak for them all in the city of Philadelphia, we believe this is the best place for the Federal court activities.

Now, if there were a great preponderance of opinion to the effect that the present location was not a good and sound one, then perhaps the expenditure of a million dollars or a million and a half dollars

would have some justification. But in the absence of any such attitude of mind on the part of the people of Philadelphia, who certainly have an interest in the welfare of Philadelphia, and who have an interest in not making any unnecessary expenditures, and all of whom contribute in some form or another to the Government revenues, then why should that extra $1,000,000 be expended, an amount that is not necessary.

I ask that serious consideration be given to the economic side of it, the question of the availability of the site, the question of transportation. The question of transportation, as Mr. Gadsden says, is a very controlling factor in the selection of the site. Certainly I think that if we were discussing this de novo in reference to site, you would certainly give careful consideration to the question of how people can get there, those people who need to go to the Federal courts. How can they get there? What is the easiest way, the best way for them? That would have serious consideration; and it seems to me it must be considered from the standpoint of ease and facility in getting to that location.

The bodies of Philadelphia, as Mr. Gadsden has said, all take the stand that they believe that the most available site is the present one.

In closing I just want to urge as strongly as I can the consideration of not expending additional money that is not necessary. Senator AUSTIN. I did not catch your name, sir.

Mr. THOMPSON. Paul Thompson.

Senator AUSTIN. Are you a practicing attorney?
Mr. THOMPSON. No.

Senator AUSTIN. Is there a practicing attorney here who is going to testify?

Mr. THOMPSON. Yes, sir.

STATEMENT OF FRANCIS S. BROWN, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA, AND PRACTICING ATTORNEY, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I appear here to-day as a citizen, lawyer, and property owner; as a citizen representing, as I believe, and speaking for the people who have to do with these courts and with the associated officers and the marshal's office and the clerk's office and all the other officers who are absolutely necessary to the functioning of the courts themselves.

This district represents 10 counties from which come hundredsyes, during the year, because the courts are in almost continuous session, thousands of jurors and witnesses to attend there.

As to the facilities, they have the Reading Railroad and there are a number of ways of getting there. There is a large hotel across the street. There are eating places all around, every place for their convenience. The theatres are in the immediate vicinity. In other words, those people come to a live place, a place where they can conveniently and expeditiously transact their business with the courts. That is one reason why I am for the present location.

As I was sitting here, it occurred to me that the nearest lawyer's office is four squares away from the Parkway site. There are no

lawyers' offices on the north side of Chestnut Street. In other words, the nearest lawyer's office is four squares distant, and most of them are four and a half to five squares. I will speak to you as a lawyer a little later.

In connection with the Parkway site, it is inconvenient as to accessibility; there are no restaurants; there is one little hotel, the Robert Morris Hotel, a square or two away. There are no eating places, no facilities of any kind in the proposed location. It is a place of monuments. True, as one gentleman has said, the municipal courts are there, but they take care of the people in Philadelphia, not the people who come from these adjoining counties, and the city owns the land.

I was appointed a member of the committee to select a site for the appellate court, which is our supreme and superior court. We did select one in the place mentioned, but there is no one attending there but the courts themselves and the tipstaves and the lawyers, and the prothonotary's office is located there. There is no reason in the world why the superior and supreme court could not have been squares away, because the lawyers are notified when their cases will be called, and then they attend with convenience to themselves.

If anyone has said that that is more accessible, he tells you what is not the fact and what is not the truth; and if you gentlemen will appoint a subcommittee of one or two to go and see, you will bear out my statement here to-day. It is inaccessible; it is out of the way. There are only two trolley-car lines that go anywhere near it. To get there from the lawyers' offices, where they are now, you would have to take two lines of cars. The site is nothing in comparison to the existing one at Ninth and Chestnut streets. All the Federal facilities and activities are east of Broad Street.

Some one has said in addressing you that what is constructed there will be there a hundred years from now. The river will be

there and all the activities growing out of that relation will be there a hundred years from now just as they are to-day. But we are not legislating for a hundred years to come; we are legislating for the present or a reasonably distant future, if you please, in considering this proposition.

Now, I come to the lawyer end of it. I hope you will pardon a reference to personality, but I have practiced at our bar for 53 years, and have been a member of the bar association for all that time. I was chancellor of the law association and have been a member for years and am a member for life of that body. I am president of the Lawyers' Club in Philadelphia, an organization of 500 active practitioners, and have been for the last 25 years, and I think I can say with pardonable pride that if any one man can speak for the bar of Philadelphia, I can speak for it, and I think no lawyer in this room will contradict that statement.

Speaking from the bar point of view, the bar does not want the Parkway site. They held a meeting at which there were only 200 present. Nobody thought that the subject was going to be brought up. When the matter was brought up there was a vote of 25 against 68 or 69. There would be 9 to 10 to 1, I have not the slightest doubt, if you put it before the whole bar association. They are unanimously against it. I have not talked to a lawyer who was in

favor of it, unless he had some personal interest in this particular place.

Everything leads right up to the courthouse from Broad Street and all that vicinity, and they should not be compelled to go twice the distance, and with no facilities after they get there, as compared with the present location.

Now, I will speak as a property owner. I have been for 30 years a member of the board of directors of the city trust. All the moneys appropriated for the city of Philadelphia for philanthropic and charitable purposes are under the administration of that board, and I am now the president of it and have been for some time, so that I think I am thoroughly familiar with it from that angle. We have the Girard estate, six millions of property, the income of which goes to support white male orphans in Girard College.

I am sorry to say that in that section we have a large building practically vacant; we have next to Lafayette a large building, and it is rapidly being depopulated; and we have the Stephan Girard Building at Twelfth Street, which is rapidly becoming depopulated. Why? Because the people are going away from that section of the city and going out to get upon the Parkway to ornament the Parkway.

I say that the Parkway is a millstone around the neck of the city of Philadelphia. We are turning people out of offices, creating all manner of hardship for them to pay interest on the bonds which were issued, a large portion of which has gone for the improvement of that Parkway.

One gentleman said he did not want to lose a chance to get the money. I never put greed before principle. It means one million and some hundred thousands for the purpose of erecting a handsome building there to adorn the Parkway which, so far as the people of Philadelphia are concerned, is too much adorned to-day. That is our situation.

We are paying $700,000 a year in taxes, and our property and all the property down in this section is gradually going down. We are very strongly against any further blow at it, especially when the object of it is adornment. I have no interest as a property owner except to protect that charity to which I have given 30 of the best years of my life.

I have taken some interest in this building. I have been going in and out of it for 50 years. I have been practicing for 53 years, so I think I am pretty familiar with that building. At the table where I sit to eat my lunch are six of the leading architects of Philadelphia, and they can not understand why the building could not be made suitable for the purpose. That is the basis of the letter which I had the presumption to write to you gentlemen. There is no reason in the world why the present building could not be made to suit the purpose. There is no reason in the world why the building can not have added to it four or five more floors, in the same architecture. It is a noble building indicative of the strength of this Government, as it is now; and the architects say that you could add four or five more floors and have the courts' business above.

They did that in Pittsburgh, and there is no reason why we can not do it in Philadelphia. The building is now 420 by 160, so you can see how large a building it is. You can put the courts up above.