contracts. S. 1718, the contract termination bill, proposes to settle basic problems of policy with regard to contract termination, and many witnesses are recommending similar congressional action in those other fields.

With regard to the organizational aspects of the legislation proposed in S. 1730 and S. 1823, a large variety of suggestions are now before the committee. These include (1) An Office of Demobilization which would operate under the Office of War Mobilization for the duration. of the emergency and be independent thereafter; (2) an Office of War Mobilization and Post-War Adjustment, which would supplant the present Office of War Mobilization; and (3) a Peacetime Production and Employment Board, which would be independent of the Office of War Mobilization and concentrate on programs for post-war production and employment.

Varying proposals have also been received on the scope and powers of this new agency. On the one hand, it has been suggested that the agency should have limited scope and little power. Such limitations are necessary, it has been contended, in order to prevent the overcentralization of Government power and to preserve the proper functions of established executive agencies. On the other hand, some witnesses have proposed that the scope of the agency's interest be as broad as our country's economic problems and include such fields as taxation, public works, and housing. Some have proposed that within these broad fields the new agency be given strong power to decide policies and initiate programs.

We have also heard conflicting points of view with regard to the question of representation for various economic groups on a top policy board and the question of whether such a board should advise the director or whether the director should be responsible to the board.

During this week and the week to follow, we shall hear from many leading citizens who will unquestionably aid us in arriving at proper conclusions on matters of both national policy and administrative structure.

Today, we will receive testimony from two outstanding leaders of American labor, the president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the president of the United Automobile Workers Union. Mr. Philip Murray will be our first witness.

STATEMENT OF PHILIP E. MURRAY, PRESIDENT, CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATIONS

Mr. MURRAY. I have a prepared statement I wish to follow. Before reading the prepared statement, I should like, with your indulgence, to present to the committee just a few matters that do not appear in the written paper. They have to do with full employment after the war.

I fully understand that most of the responsible groups in public life today are sincerely applying themselves to the task of preparing plans designed to provide full employment at the end of the war and each one of those groups, I assume, is performing its own particular task with due regard to the national welfare.

Whatever I may have to say, therefore, with regard to that matter is predicated wholly upon a common belief in the ranks of the labor

organizations that I am privileged to represent, that our union, and I speak now of the C. I. O., in the submission of proposals designed to provide full employment has in mind only one thing and that is the national well-being.

I think that we all agree that the victory will not necessarily be confined to defeating our common enemies on the global battlefields but that necessarily the energies of the Nation should be applied to obtaining victory here at home. Hence, the hope and desire on the part of the representatives and members of our organization is to make whatever constructive contributions we can in defining methods that should be pursued with reference to building up the largest possible maximum income obtainable during the post-war period. Our organization, therefore, lends wholesome support to the suggestions that have been offered the committee by Senator Murray and by the proponents of the other pieces of legislation now before this committee. Witl that thought in mind, I believe it is well that we should give consideation to the development of practical plans, plans that are easy ofunderstanding, plans that will meet with the approval of the people,all of which are calculated to provide full employment during the pot-war period.

It my have been suggested to the committee in the course of its hearing that there is a definite danger of tremendous mass unemployment inthe new war industries at the end of hostilities, that being particulrly applicable to the aircraft industry and yet, it seems to me, that common sense should lead the leaders of industry and labor and also our aders in the field of statecraft to the belief that the aircraft industry, as such, is in its infancy and that there are splendid opportunities fe the development of that gigantic industry at the end of the war proviing suitable plans of design, calculated to increase the output of commercial and private airplane construction, be made.

It is whin the realm of possibility that with a combination of private in'stment and Government loans, plus the building of thousands of lod airfields throughout the Nation, this air-minded country of ours caproceed now toward the perfection of planes designed to keep the acraft industry going at full swing immediately after the war ends.

Senator URRAY. Do you mean it could be kept at its present rate of productic?

Mr. MURY. Undoubtedly so, and I believe it could not only be kept at its sent rate of production, but it can exceed that rate of production, roviding the ingenuities of the leaders of industry, together witGovernment, are utilized to build the engines and the planes necessy to keep the wheels of that industry in motion.

I am consus of the fact that it may become necessary for the aircraft induty to produce the cheaper type of plane, designed to meet the neecof the private citizen and that there will be an immediate responsen the part of millions of our young men to the crying need of purching transportation of that description, just as they did the cheapeutomobile in the old days.

I have no plicular degree of apprehension concerning the fate of the aircraft instry, providing the ingenuities of our Government, industry, and or are fully utilized to develop that kind of an enterprise at thnd of the war, thereby continuing for that industry the fullest amot of employment.

Senator MURRAY. Does the management of that industry now share your views?

Mr. MURRAY. I cannot say, sir; I do not know.

Senator MURRAY. I can conceive of a vast expansion of the airplane industry in connection with commercial transportation, both of a passenger and freight nature, of course. I believe, also, as you have stated, there could be a very considerable expansion in the production of private planes for private use.

Mr. MURRAY. Unquestionably so, and I believe that that is just as inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun.

We are living in an air-minded world. The end of the war will find millions of these young men grasping for opportunities to utilize the advantages of this newer mode of travel and purchase a type of plane that might be manufactured at something like approximately $1,000 for their own personal use in traveling throughout the Nation. That is an idea. It necessarily has to be defined and people who manifest interest in the promotion of post-war planning must not confine themselves to the slogan of full employment without accompanying that suggestion with some constructive, creative idea designed to provide full employment.

It is well and good to dwell in the realm of preparation of charts, and so forth, but unless there is a creative idea behind it, anidea that the people will respond to, a popular idea, a practical idea alculated to provide the thing that the people want, and that is employment, full employment, then the plan of itself will fall of its own wight.

Another matter that attracts the attention of the reprsentatives of our own organization is this question of housing, which of itself is tremendously important. I do not think that the ideasof business with reference to the construction of new homes should neessarily be confined to the building of the old type of house. New ideas with reference to home construction must come out of this situation to expand our economy and to provide the fullest degree of mployment. Our organization has at the moment under consideratia some welldefined plans on national housing, not necessarily publicousing, but a combination, let us say, of both private and public hosing.

To undertake a comprehensive system of private ousing, it is absolutely essential that wages be maintained duringthe post-war period at the highest possible level to enable people to prchase homes, put down their installment, and pay off their obligatios regularly. As to other modes of transportation, particularlythe railroads, one can readily see there the greatest opportunitiesmaginable for expansion in our railroad systems.

True, there must be new equipment, there must more modern equipment, there must be the type of equipment thawill reduce the cost incident to transportation. It is estimated the approximately 50 percent of all the track, all of the freight cars novn use on American railroads are over 25 years of age. That typof equipment is completely outmoded.

It is interesting to note the post-war planning a ady undertaken by railroads like the Union Pacific, which proposeto modernize its entire railroad system. If other railroads follow th:pattern throughout the Nation, with proper governmental assistan where it may be necessary, the older equipment which is now inse can be made available to other countries more backward th we are in that

regard. Those countries need this type of equipment and need it badly and this outmoded equipment which we are now using in the United States could very well be utilized by many of those other countries for their immediate post-war needs and their immediate programs of economic rehabilitation.

These are concrete suggestions that I do not believe entail too much planning. They merely encompass the need of getting the interested groups together and effecting, with the assistance of a committee. such as this, the promotion in a legislative way of the ideas that our C. I. O. movement is trying to inculcate here for full employment and post-war planning.

There is another point to which I should like to make reference that is not included in the paper, and that is the C. I. O. plan with reference to the maintenance of the highest possible wage level.

Unfortunately, material in the public prints would create or attempt to create the impression in the public mind that the take-home pay of war workers during the war period has reached such a large height that no consideration should be given to the equation governing the life of the individual who is now receiving the larger take-home earnings. It must be borne in mind, and I believe rightly so, that the man who is working 48 hours to 54 and 55 and 60 hours a week today is going to have a shorter life than the fellow who ordinarily works 40 hours per week. We will reach the industrial scrap heap a few years sooner than he ordinarily would.

The Congress of the United States, in giving consideration to the needs of American industry, have already made provision in certain legislation and enactments to protect the interests of the industrialists or manufacturers, whose machinery has deteriorated due to overuse. Money is provided to take care of that sort of a situation. No special consideration has been given to the human machine by the Congress of the United States, where that machine inevitably breaks down due to overuse and the terrific strains incident to the greater work that he has to perform to meet the requirements of his country during a period of war.

Senator MURRAY. And that in its turn has its effect upon industry. Mr. MURRAY. Unquestionably so. It affects industry from the standpoint of its efficiency. It ofttimes constitutes a drag, not only upon the human machine, but upon industry as well.

I shall endeavor in the course of this paper-while reading this paper-to point out a few of those factors in order that your committee may have a greater appreciation of the problems that the average citizen has to contend with in his struggle to live during a war.

Above and beyond all of our domestic problems today is the problem of maintaining full production and full employment at current high levels of production. We must do this to back the invasion, to win the war, and to win the peace.

As cut-backs increase we shall need an established national policy to prevent disruption of war production. Such a program must be carried out by a central office, an office of war mobilization and adjustment, if our returning servicemen and our war workers released by cut-backs are to have expanding job opportunities.

The situation already developing is a challenge to the whole country, but especially to our "free enterprise" economy. The right of a man to a job at adequate wages must be recognized by American industry.

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The individual and his home and his 'family must be protected from the miseries which trail in the wake of unemployment.

Only so long as American industry recognizes its responsibility to the American people can it expect to enjoy its special benefits and privileges. The C. I. O. is on record as supporting the "free enterprise" economy. But in our definition such an economy is not a tool to be used merely to serve the special interests of the owners and managers.

Business is privileged to enjoy reasonable profits to be derived from serving the needs of the people. It has an obligation today to provide them with full employment. We are willing to cooperate with American industry in their attempt to derive reasonable profit, provided they live up to their obligations, but we propose that the responsibility shall be placed where it belongs. If industry fails, the American people will give expression to their protest. Let industrialists either deliver the goods with America's gigantic war-born productive capacity or be prepared to give others a chance to use it.

The American people expect that the workers in war industries, the workers throughout our economy today, and the returning servicemen will be able to maintain themselves after the war at constantly increasing levels of income.

We deplore all efforts to return this country to an economy of scarcity such as limited our efforts before the war. We believe, moreover, that any attempt to return to a scarcity economy will produce the most serious effects within this country. It cannot be done and it must not be attempted.

There are within the American business community important elements capable of running an expanding economy with the cooperation and assistance of representatives of the entire American people. These elements must be given an opportunity to demonstrate the productivity of which they are capable. If we arise to this occasion America in the post-war period will lead the way to the entire world. and generate a new period of prosperity throughout the world such as none of us could have imagined before this terrible war began.

To make this job possible, we need the passage now by Congress of a bill which creates an administration directed to seek full production, full employment and full consumption, on a rising standard of living.

The necessary legislation is embodied in Senator Kilgore's war mobilization and post-war adjustment bill S. 1823 whose passage we urge as part of a single bill embodying it and the Murray-George contract termination bill S. 1718. I shall discuss this in more detail later in my remarks.

Senator MURRAY. At this point, Mr. Murray, Senator Kilgore has handed me, through one of his secretaries, a committee print of a proposed bill to revise titles I and II of Senate bill 1823. I will ask that it be incorporated in the record following your remarks.

To lay down and direct the execution of general policies to achieve these objectives of war mobilization and adjustment we need a national board, representative of labor, business large and small, and agriculture. Such a board should have the maximum of authority compatible with execution of the job. An executive director will be needed to centralize the work of the several agencies charged with the work of manpower demobilization, disposition of war plants and