PUBLIC WORKS PROGRAMMING Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Now, under this item No. 3 on the same page, "Public Works Programming," you are asking for $100,000 for Federal projects as compared with $87,000, and you are asking $100,000 for "State and Local Programming" as compared with $44,500. What program of Federal work have you set up now, in terms of dollars and cents? Mr. ELIOT. I have not those figures here. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Roughly? Mr. ELIOT. It is in the next report, and I just do not happen to have the figures in my head. I will have to get those. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Well, is it not a fact that the public works reserve of W. P. A., or whatever agency it was that compiled it, ran up to well over a billion dollars of public works, and have not you been working on this job for some time and, if so, why do you need an increase of 35 percent, for that work in the year to come? Mr. ELIOT. Well, the work was set up, sir, on the basis of the public work reserve being a going concern. That was financed to the tune of $1,000,000. So, when that was stopped, we had to try to carry on a million dollars' worth of work with $44,000. So instead of being an increase, this is a very small pittance in trying to make up for the million which was lost. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. It depends on your objective. I do not know what total you are shooting at here, but if they turned over to you a tremendous portfolio of public works projects that can be turned to immediately the necessity arises after the war, then obviously the amount could be cut down currently? Mr. ELIOT. Our problem is not to have a mere list of things which might be done; it is rather to have the cities and States make programs of what they intend to finance themselves without Federal help. Then, if there is an emergency and if the Congress decides that it wishes to expand the public-works program, the work originally programmed for several years by the cities and States can be squeezed into 1 year. In that way, you would get a selection of projects in accordance with how worth while the locality and the State think they are rather than a judgment here in Washington, which necessarily is pretty far away from the situation. So our object has been to push this programming back into the hands and under the control of the States and localities just as much as possible. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. I think that is where it belongs; therefore I am not clear why we need $100,000 a year for Federal participation in that portion of the work. Mr. DENNISON. I suggest it is not merely the total dollars that would tell the story; it is the distribution of this listing of possible public works for a possible depression to come. It has to be distributed around. In some of your localities where you would have the hardest time to get under way, they have not this list showing how the work is to go around, and you probably have to show them how to do it and what other communities have done, and try to have a fair distribution over the country so that every community will have a chance to relieve unemployment if it shows up. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Take our own State of Massachusetts: Massachusetts has embarked on a State program of this kind. Now, why should it need somebody from the Federal Government to come up and tell them how to set it up? Mr. ELIOT. They asked for it, and Mr. Stanley Parker, whom I am sure you know, chairman of the city planning board of the city of Boston, has been working on this problem of how to get the States and cities to make their own programs for a great many years. He has been the consultant or the N. R. P. B. in New England, and the State Governor and the State planning board have asked us to make Mr. Parker available part time to help them get their 6-year program in the State of Massachusetts set up. And we have done that; we have made him available. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. What has he done, just as an example, to give us an idea of what you are doing? Does he go up there in person? Mr. ELIOT. He goes up there in person and shows them the techniques which have been used in other States and in other cities-how they have done it in the city of New York; how they have proceeded in the city of Cincinnati, and the kind of problem they ran into in Arkansas, so that Massachusetts can profit by the experience of States elsewhere. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. How long a job is that? Mr. ELIOT. He is not only serving the State but is serving a number of the communities over the State, and in other parts of New England, and he gives us about 15 days a month on this kind of work. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. You say "He gives us"; you mean he gives the State? Mr. ELIOT. He gives the Board, the N. R. P. B. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. In the State? Mr. ELIOT. No; in New England as a whole. I can find out for you just how much he goes into Massachusetts. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. In that job, as you see it, has he got to go into Massachusetts 15 days every month of the year? Mr. ELIOT. I would say we needed more than one man in Massachusetts. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. If he does, then he is running the show and not the Massachusetts officials, is he not? Mr. ELIOT. No. He is showing them the ways in which this kind of a job has been organized and set up. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Could not that be done by a letter from Washington? Mr. ELIOT. We have not only been writing letters but have published a big book on the subject, Long Range Programming of Municipal Public Works, 1941. But, even with that, it needs, apparently, to be interpreted, explained, and studied over by the local officials sitting down with a man who knows what it is all about. SECURITY AND SERVICES Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. In item No. 4, "Security and services," you want $60,000 for what you call "Security, health and nutrition; youth and education, and science, roster and miscellaneous." There are other agencies of this Government that are doing nothing else but working on those matters, are there not? Mr. ELIOT. Certainly. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Is not "health and nutrition" one of Mr Taft's functions for instance, and why does this agency have to come into those matters? Mr. ELIOT. For the reason I tried to explain in that short statement I read about duplication, that we are not duplicating the work of the Office of Health and Welfare or of the Public Health Service; we are trying to bring that together for you if, as, and when we are faced with the problem of expanding service activities in order to combat a depression, so that there will be an agreement as to the expansion by both agencies concerned as to what they are going to do and how they are going to do it. AREA STUDIES Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Under "Area studies," for which you ask an increase from $84,000 to $150,000, you say the Board has provided planning assistance to communities and areas disrupted by war activities by assigning consultants to local agencies. That is a similar function to what you described when you were speaking of public works, I take it? Mr. ELIOT. Yes, sir. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. And "Joint reports with the Taft organization"; that is a matter of coordination? Mr. ELIOT. Yes, sir. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. And advising F. W. A., N. H. A., and W. P. B. of community facilities: Do you actually pick out the community facilities for W. P. B.? Mr. ELIOT. No, sir. The F. W. A. asked the Board's advice on a number of waterworks, street and highway access facilities, and things of that kind, in various of these war communities, because they knew that we had people in the area whose judgment was completely apart from local pressure and whom they could rely on as another point of reference that would be impartial and technical. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Do not they have their own people in the area, also? Mr. ELIOT. Yes; in many cases they have. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. And bringing people together for an initial meeting on some of these questions: Is that a large element in the picture? Mr. ELIOT. I do not quite understand what you mean. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. I do not have the exact wording, but I lay some stress on the function of this agency in getting various groups together and perhaps conducting the first initial meeting for them. Mr. ELIOT. Well, we have gone on the theory that part of the job of planning was to try, as Mr. Yantis said, to get all of the people concerned to do their own planning. If you are going to do that, you have at various times to bring them together to agree on common directions. If the plan is a coordinated proposal submitted to the elected representatives of the people for action, then obviously the people making such proposals have to be brought together from time to time, do they not? Mr. YANTIS. I recall, Congressman, in a discussion before a Senate committee on another matter, a comment of one of the Senators when we were speaking of the job we were attempting to perform. He said "If you can get the local communities to plan their affairs and to assume their part of the responsibility in dealing with the problems we have been facing and will continue to face, you are worth your weight in gold." And we feel it is most important to do that. We feel we have a directive and it is part of our duty to see that every effort should be made to stimulate, guide, and assist the local people to budget their works, to deal intelligently with their problems, and to take on part of the responsibility which they criticized the Federal Government for carrying. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. I think "suggestion" is one thing and I think actually setting up the force that is going into a State to direct, guide, and operate is quite a different thing. Mr. YANTIS. I quite agree with you, and I might say we carefully avoid operating; but we find mere suggestion alone is not sufficient. They require stimulation, a certain amount of leadership and a certain amount of assistance, if they are to be effective. You find, also, that many of the leaders are gone, or are occupied otherwise, and it is hard to find men who are capable of doing some of the things that have to be done now. Again, there is impartiality, and so forth. WARTIME PLANNING Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Under "Wartime planning" you plan to study the effects on the national economy of decisions made in the war emergency. Are you doing that extensively? Mr. ELIOT. Through this current-trend report, of. which I distributed copies earlier in the hearing. We do keep that record. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Did the Resources Planning Board go into the matter of fuel oil, rubber, or food, or any of those things which have become of such immediate importance? Mr. ELIOT. At one time or another, I think we have been in all of them to some degree, because of specific requests from the people who have those problems in charge or have the need for material we had on this or that problem. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Have you made any recommendations to the President or to the agencies more primarily concerned, for dealing with any one of those three problems? Mr. ELIOT. Would you mind repeating the three again? Mr. ELIOT. The recommendations which have been made on fuel oil and rubber, at the request in each case of the responsible agency, have been in terms of material which was in our files, or in the knowledge of the expert who was handling it, or the knowledge of the consulting planner, and they were made available not as recommendations of the Board but as material in the knowledge of the Board's staff. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. But you would not include items of the character I have just mentioned, or have not included, those particular items in the field of the planning that you think is important? Mr. ELIOT. You may remember, Mr. Wigglesworth, that before the defense emergency became acute, the Board did put out a report on the need for expansion of steel capacity and we were laughed at by the whole steel industry. They said it was not necessary and was inopportune. We were certainly later justified in that. We did the same kind of thing in trying to call attention, ahead of time, to the need for expansion of the transportation facilities. Again, we got very little attention. We got some. It helped to bring those critical points to the attention of the people concerned. Likewise, we made a special report on defense planning in the energy resource field-oil, coal, gas, and electric power in the summer of 1940, which report was submitted to the old Defense Commission and also to the Subcommittee on Petroleum Investigation of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. We are continuing that kind of service where the service is requested. We do not butt in. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. You include also under planning the importance of making clear the things for which we are fighting, sustaining the American concept of living, and "giving assurance not only to our people but to other peoples that the four freedoms will be made realities everywhere in the world." How much time or money is it contemplated to devote to those objectives? Mr. ELIOT. Do you want to answer that, Dr. Merriam? Mr. MERRIAM. The amount of time and money for that purpose is very limited. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. You refer also to the matter of the importance of combating propaganda. Is not that something that Colonel Donovan and Elmer Davis, between them, are pretty well equipped to deal with? Mr. ELIOT. I do not quite know what you are driving at; but certainly we are not engaged in propaganda and do not want to be. What I thought was meant by that statement of "making our objectives clear" was directly in line with the function of the Board under the Stabilization Act. As I told you, we are responsible for warning the country and the President of the possible approach of another depression and now certainly is the time to be warning the country, that if we do not do something about it we may face a depression at the end of the war. And we want to make clear the kinds of things we can do to avoid that depression. Mr. FITZPATRICK. You realize if plans should not be provided and we were not prepared for the future, it could be made a great political issue in campaigns that "the administration had failed to plan for the future." So you can readily see why there may be objections to planning, so that it could be used politically? The justification recites specifically that it is necessary to combat Axis propaganda to the effect they can provide a better world than we can. Mr. YANTIS. Might I drop a comment here which might be of some value to you as a part answer to your question? There are some things which we do which are general in their nature. It would be unwise to plan a huge mass of public works, to relieve unemployment, and fail to indicate policies in various fields that would tend to, if done, maintain a high level of business operation and thereby reduce unemployment. I recall two men who are high in responsibility for the war effort who sat with us one night in one of our series of conferences where we were trying to get assistance in the sort of work we do, and I remember one of the gentlemen who occupies certainly a key position in our whole |