met in fiscal year 1950 mainly by reductions in administrative staff and not by retrenchment in service to the public. Three regional offices have been eliminated through consoldiation and housekeeping staffs in Washington have been reduced as a result of improved procedure and increased individual production. Further retrenchment cannot be made, however, without seriously impairing essential

weather service.

During fiscal year 1951, it is most important that the Weather Bureau (a) extend its fire weather-forecasting service; (b) meet international commitments by making additional ocean weather observations and establishing an additional station in the Arctic to be operated jointly with Canada; (c) expand domestic and international aviation weather service to meet minimum requirements; and (d) provide Northern Hemisphere weather maps in three dimensions to support defense efforts and to foster continued improvement in long-range forecasting.

Some additional mandatory increases, not connected with program expansion, are requested in these estimates to provide for (a) reclassifying positions approved by the Civil Service Commission; (b) paying the within-grade salary advancements; (c) financing the recent salary increases authorized by Public Law 429, Eighty-first Congress; and (d) increasing the per diem travel rate as authorized by Public Law 92, Eighty-first Congress.

PROCUREMENT FOR OTHER AGENCIES OF GOVERNMENT

Mr. ROONEY. With regard to the matter that you mentioned concerning procurement for other agencies of the Government; has not a program been in effect with regard thereto for some time?

Secretary SAWYER. A program by what department?

Mr. ROONEY. By the Office of the Secretary for Defense? Secretary SAWYER. I think they have made an effort since we started out about a year and a half ago to make information more available. They have been in continuous contact with our Department, I know. We have made a number of suggestions and, as I say here, just in the last week we worked out this arrangement by which this information would go into our district and regional offices.

Mr. ROONEY. Did they not spend a good deal of money, Mr. Secretary, and get out elaborate brochures and catalogs and directions, and distribute them extensively, as a result of the matters brought out in the Senate five-percenter investigation some time ago? Secretary SAWYER. That I would not know, Mr. Chairman; how much they have spent or what brochures they have gotten out, or what was the cause of it.

Mr. ROONEY. It might be well to look into it to see that there is not a duplication of work and expenditure of Federal funds.

Secretary SAWYER. I certainly agree to that, Mr. Chairman. Mr, ROONEY. It has been my understanding that this matter of 5-percenters has been fairly well cleaned up. If such is the fact I cannot see why the Department of Commerce has to get into the act. Secretary SAWYER. We are in the act only, as I understand it, in an effort to furnish an outlet to which businessmen would be more likely to go for the information which the Department of Defense. has put out. In other words, the businessmen throughout the

country can go to the regional and district offices of the Department of Commerce and get information generally on such matters. This is an effort to give the businessman, in addition to that, information on procurement.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR BUREAU OF STANDARDS AND CIVIL AERONAUTICS

BOARD

Mr. ROONEY. What is your responsibility, as a practical matter, with regard to the National Bureau of Standards and the Civil Aeronautics Board?

Secretary SAWYER. The responsibility with reference to what?

Mr. ROONEY. To anything. To put it another way, what is the tie-in between both CAB and the National Bureau of Standards, and the Office of the Secretary?

Secretary SAWYER. I do not know what is the tie-in between the Bureau of Standards and the CAB.

Mr. ROONEY. Does the Office of the Secretary of Commerce take credit for the achievements of either one of these two agencies?

Secretary SAWYER. Not the CAB, certainly. We do not control their activities.

Mr. ROONEY. How about the Bureau of Standards?

Secretary SAWYER. I do not know that we take credit for what they do, but they are operating within the Department.

Mr. ROONEY. The next question is: Do you take responsibility for their actions?

Secretary SAWYER. We certainly do.

SITUATION AT THE BUREAU OF STANDARDS

Mr. ROONEY. Has the Office of the Secretary concerned itself with the present situation at the Bureau of Standards insofar as maintenance, administration, and so forth, are concerned?

Secretary SAWYER. We have been concerning ourselves there quite actively. Mr. Whitney has given quite a bit of time and thought to following up the activities of the Bureau of Standards as well as the other bureaus in the Department, including the Civil Aeronautics Administration.

Mr. ROONEY. I will say to you, Mr. Secretary, that if the House Appropriations staff investigative report which this committee has had submitted to it shows the true facts at the Bureau of Standards, I do not think you would want to have anything to do with the responsibility for running that establishment.

Secretary SAWYER. Of course, it is run by the head of the Bureau. I do not claim or assume any of the detailed responsibility, but, being in my Department, I assume technically that I am responsible and I will take the responsibility. I do not know what you refer to, Mr. Chairman, but if there are things out there that are not being run right, we do not know about it. I would be glad to have the information brought to my attention personally.

Mr. ROONEY. These things to which I allude have been going on for a number of years. There just is not any administration out there. Secretary SAWYER. You mean that it is not a well-handled operation from an administrative standpoint?

60785-50-pt. 5-2

Mr. ROONEY. To put it very mildly.

Secretary SAWYER. I will be very glad to investigate any particular thing that is wrong. Of course, you have there a group of researchers and scientists and it is conceivable that they do not operate as effectively or as smoothly as a business establishment. But if there are particular complaints we will certainly look into them.

Mr. GLADIEUX. Mr. Chairman, I might say that we are not totally unaware of what you are referring to. We have had a good many administrative problems

Mr. ROONEY. What do you know about it, Mr. Gladieux?

Mr. GLADIEUX. I do not believe we know as much about it as I gather your investigators discovered.

Mr. ROONEY. How much do you know about it?

Mr. GLADIEUX. I think we know the general situation.

Mr. ROONEY. What is the general situation?

Mr. GLADIEUX. The general situation there is that we know there are a good many administrative problems.

Mr. ROONEY. Such as what?

Mr. GLADIEUX. In the field of maintenance.

Mr. ROONEY. I mentioned that a while ago. What else do you know?

Mr. GLADIEUX. We have known that they had some problems in the fiscal field, budgeting and accounting, and auditing, and so on. We have known how difficult it is, as Mr. Sawyer has mentioned, to control an activity as far-flung and as technical as that which is under the supervision of scientists and technicians who are not administratively trained.

Mr. ROONEY. What would you say is wrong out there?

Mr. GLADIEUX. We also know there has been a major problem with the cafeteria that has been maintained by the Standards Welfare Organization and which has been a major problem.

Mr. ROONEY. I was not thinking about the cafeteria; that would only be incidental. I just wanted to find out what you know about

it.

Mr. GLADIEUX. We know that the situation out there is not as satisfactory as we would like. I think that is about as far as I can go

now.

Mr. ROONEY. We shall take up the matter of the Bureau of Standards in due course.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. GLADIEUX. We have known that your staff has been out there and we have been waiting for your report or recommendations in the hope that we could associate ourselves with any effort to improve the situation.

UNEMPLOYMENT SITUATION IN NORTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. FLOOD. Mr. Secretary, in the early part of last summer the President issued a statement in which he declared that there existed in various sectors of the country what were very properly and well described as distressed areas, meaning by that that there were certain sectors of our Nation where there existed unemployment pools-a very graphic phrase-and that your Department, in conjunction with other departments, but especially your Department-would

assume the leadership, since it dealt primarily with matter of the domestic economy, in mopping up-I think that was the phrasethese so-called unemployment pools.

I immediately got in touch with your office indicating that I was delighted to see that you were going to do something about this problem, and to urge that you recognize that two situations existed. The first was the existence of unemployment pools that had developed recently for various reasons in various areas; but alongside of these new developments, these recently developed unemployment areas, there existed, I believe you might describe them as chronic unemployment problems in certain other areas.

Of course, I directed your attention specifically to the situation. existing in the anthracite coal fields of northeast Pennsylvania, centered in my district, which embraces the county of Lucerne in the State of Pennsylvania, and the adjacent and contiguous areas of Lackawanna County, Schuylkill County in the congressional districts of Congressman O'Neill, of Pennsylvania, Congressman Fenton, of Pennsylvania, and part of Congressman Walter's district.

At that time surveys were being made. I think you made several trips to different parts of the country concerning yourself personally largely with the so-called newer developments, the immediate emergencies in New England, or one or two other places, reflected in problems in the textile industry. Various of your assistants went to other places in the Middle West and a place or two in the border States, and I think a place or two in the South.

I had the immediate and full cooperation, especially of Mr. McCoy of your Department, who is, I believe, the Chief of the Office of Domestic Commerce, a man for whom I have the highest regard. He could not have offered more cooperation and no one could have done more than he was willing to do and did do. I have the impression that your Department recognizes what the problem is, but we seem to have arrived at a saturation point-at a dead end. I believe we have a full and complete analysis, a diagnosis, a library of research information, of facts and material-an abundance of that.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEM

In the past several months-by several I mean maybe five-nothing has happened. Our press has recognized this. Now, what are we going to do from here on in?

Secretary SAWYER. Do you refer to your district?

Mr. FLOOD. Well, I could not think of a better example. But I am referring to the area generally. I am referring to my district in particular, as any Congressman would refer to his district, but the area generally. You have a cancer up there. Can you do anything about cancer?

Secretary SAWYER. Cancer is a serious problem, whether it is industrial or biological.

Mr. FLOOD. That is, of course, an understatement.

Secretary SAWYER. Í recall your calling me on the telephone some months ago and I offered, as I think you will remember, to go personally to your area and you said you did not think it was necessary. I am glad to know now, from what you say, that Mr. McCoy and his associates have been cooperative.

Mr. FLOOD. Indeed, they have.

Secretary SAWYER. I am not sure I know what you mean by what we are going to do now. Do you have anything in mini in particular? Mr. FLOOD. Well, we have identified the problem; there it is. Is there anything more than merely identifying it that the Department of Commerce can do or that the Secretary of Commerce can do?

Mr. Steelman of the President's committee has given considerable time to this in the past several months and he has an assistant, a Colonel McGuire, who made practically a career out of it for 3 or 4 months. Copies of the President's statement and of everybody else's statements have all gone to the heads of the various departments concerned, military and civil. Everybody has been directed, everybody has been advised, and I have been told that they have been directed to give their attention to this area and to do everything they can to help the area, to channel any aid they can channel into the area. Everybody has said exactly the right thing, there is no question. about that. There has not been one word that could properly be said that has not been said. Practically nothing has happened.

Secretary SAWYER. My question was: Do you have anything in mind that we might do?

Mr. FLOOD. No; that is my question to you, sir.

Secretary SAWYER. Well, I asked the question. We do not need to get into any argument as to who asked the question. When you put the matter up to me or called me first about it, it was at a time, as you have suggested, when we were undertaking to survey many areas and were not confined to any activity in your district.

What may have been done about that particular district I happen, at the moment, not to know. I will be very glad to see. I think there are problems there which are not temporary and what may be the solution to those I do not know. Doubtless you, as the representative of the district, have a better idea than I as to what they might be. If we have done nothing or if the agencies of the Government have done nothing, as you say, it is probably because at the moment nothing can be done. I am not familiar enough with the details of your situation to comment intelligently, but as I recall it, it is due to a changing over in coal operations similar to the one which took place in New England with reference_to textiles. What the answer is I do not know at the moment, but I would be glad to take another look at it if there is anything I can do personally or the Department can do.

Mr. FLOOD. May I say this? You are the Secretary of Commerce. In your great, vast Department, under your secretaryship, are some of the bureaus that might have something to do with such a problem. At least it was indicated to us that we were in the proper shop when we were in your place.

SERIOUSNESS OF UNEMPLOYMENT

IN NORTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA

There was quite a to-do when this matter first arose. There were a number of stories in the papers and statements were issued by you and by a series of other bureau chiefs and Cabinet members that here was an evil existing in America.

For instance, it was put this way: Your people, who know, say that when you reach a percentage of 11 percent in unemployment, you are