that were furnished to the 62,000. If that assumption is correct, how do you calculate it will cost $3,444,317.64 for 93,000 as against $1,967,000 for 62,000?

Col. FORBES. That is again a presumption of what might be called the expectancy of having a greater number of men.

The CHAIRMAN. But you can not justify that statement.

Col. FORBES. You can not with a statement that shows the number we expect; that is true.

The CHAIRMAN. You can not justify that statement in view of the statement you have already given. You have given us a definite maximum beyond which you are sure you will not go, and you can not justify any greater expectancy than that.

Col. FORBES. Well, personally I expect a greater population, although the figures must have been based on what was shown in the other expectancy.

ESTABLISHMENT OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS AT CAMPS.

(See pp. 337, 344, 361.)

Mr. KELLEY. Let me ask you this: Is it your policy to take boys out of institutions where the expense is now borne under the head of tuition, we will say, and put them into these camps where the expense will fall under the head of teachers and very many other expenses like those which the chairman now mentions, equipment, and all that sort of thing? Let me see whether you get my question. Suppose that at the present time you are sending students to the University of Illinois or the University of Michigan; that expense will come under the head of tuition; it will not come under the head of instructors, teachers, equipment, or anything of that kind. Now, if you take those boys out of institutions and put them in camps, then the expense would be divided up under the head of teachers, equipment, and all that sort of thing. Is that your policy?

Col. FORBES. No, sir; it is not. It is not my policy to take men from accredited schools, nor is it my policy to teach any of the sciences in these schools. There is a population of men floating around in so-called placement training whom the employer does not see fit to continue in training, and he tells a man, "If you will do janitor work or drive a truck, and do so and so, we will pay you $10 or $15 a week." Now, many men would rather do that, but when business is slack they are discharged, and many of them have been discharged, and they have been carried on a vocational status and receiving their pay. That is the class of men I am seeking to teach.

Mr. KELLEY. You intend to discontinue the training of men in the industries on the outside?

Col. FORBES. Only in objectionable shops and places.
Mr. KELLEY. And put those boys into these camps!

Col. FORBES. Yes, sir; and I would like to have the committee see the first one we will have ready, which will be in a few weeks. Mr. KELLEY. Without any information on the subject, I have been rather disposed to think that the camp idea is not a good one. Col. FORBES. It is not a camp idea, and I wish you would get that out of your minds. It is not a camp idea. We are taking all of the community buildings, and they are splendid buildings. Each man going into such a school will have his own room; he will have a fine bed and warm blankets; he will have a rug on the floor; he will

have a dresser; and there will be sufficient baths to take care of everybody. He will have his churches and his community centers. We are demolishing all of the so-called barrack buildings and taking the land and cultivating it. These men are going to be very happy there, and we have had a great many applications to go to these schools. We are going to give practical instruction and less of the theoretical instruction, and I believe that when we send a man from that school, whether he be a carpenter, a plumber, or a tinsmith, he is not only going to know the practical application of his trade, but he is going to understand the technique of the trade.

Mr. WooD. The law provides that these trainees shall receive $100 a month, and if they have dependents they receive an additional allowance. In addition to that you furnish them with their books and you furnish them with their tools for the purpose of receiving their training. Have you made any investigations to see how much more we are paying our boys for their expenses in this $100 a month than is being paid by an outsider for having his boy receive the same character of training?

Col. FORBES. In 90 per cent of the cases, Mr. Wood, we are paying

more.

Mr. WOOD. That has been brought forcibly to my knowledge by a number of men who are wealthy and who are sending their sons to school; they are advised by the heads of these institutions that it is an injustice to the boys to send them more money, because in that way they are encouraged to become spendthrifts. And while we ought to be generous with these boys we ought not to be prodigal, and it has occurred to me that in your investigations of this thing it would be a splendid idea, not only with reference to this item but with reference to many of these other provisions, to make a recommendation with reference to amendments of that law. It was passed at a time when everything was a good deal higher than it is now and the expense was a great deal higher, but the tendency now is for things to go down, and it occurs to me that it is indefensible that we should be paying this amount of money to these boys when other people are not paying that much and when it is not necessary for the purposes for which the law was passed.

Col. FORBES. I can speak quite feelingly on this matter myself, because I know what a boy is up against. I have personally gone through it; I shipped before the mast as a boy ten years of age at $6 a month; I have driven a wagon; I have worked here and there, wherever I could get work to do as a youngster and without very much encouragement. I went to night school; I educated myself, and I am one of the heads of a very large engineering concern, a concern that has employed as many as 25,000 men in its work. I did it all without any assistance whatsoever, and if we are not going to assist ourselves in getting along in this life we are not going to make our citizenship better, and so long as men are not properly encouraged and properly educated just so long is this chaotic condition going to exist in our so-called Federal training. I believe we ought to do everything possible, train these boys and as well make them understand their furure responsibilities; that they are looked upon as the coming American population, and that they will be called on to direct our affairs. If we teach them a little Ameri

canism in addition to the other work we are teaching them, but in Government schools, we will make better men out of them than we are making out of them to-day.

The CHAIRMAN. Let us get down to the travel allowance.

Mr. ROUTSONG. May I just insert a word here? Inasmuch as you are comparing exactly the 62,000 average for 1921 with the estimate for 1922, I want to show in going over these figures how they jumped up in the last few months of the board's existence and which embarrassed us very much in trying to get at true requirements. For instance, from the 1st of May until the 1st of August they increased their personnel by 1,100. Now, on the basis of their number of trainees it was unjustifiable. They paid out millions of dollars more per month between May 1 and August 1, which, on the basis of the number of trainees, seemed unjustifiable, and yet we had to take that into consideration in making up these figures.

The CHAIRMAN. No; you did not. The proper thing for you to take into consideration is this: Have we too many people to do the work?

Col. FORBES. I think there is no question about it.

The CHAIRMAN. Then the only thing to do is to discharge them; you do not have to take them into consideration and provide for them.

Mr. ROUTSONG. I do not say that we are providing for them, but we had to take those figures into consideration and could not take either the previous figures before that date, or the new inflated figures. We tried to choose a middle course; our judgment may have been wrong, but that is the way we tackled the thing.

The CHAIRMAN. Instead of taking into consideration the abnormal figures, which were unjustified, you should have taken into consideration how many actually needed it.

Mr. ROUTSONG. That is just exactly what we did.

The CHAIRMAN. You just admitted that you did not do that.

Mr. ROUTSONG. No: I say that we considered both factors, the early part of the year when, at least judging from the criticism that came from all over the country, they were inadequately cared for, and the latter part of the year

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). You are talking about the men being cared for?

Mr. ROUTSONG. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. But these fellows on the pay roll, were they inadequately cared for?

Mr. ROUTSONG. The men were inadequately cared for.

Mr. GALLIVAN. I rather hesitate to say what I am going to say, but I should like to say something once in a while. I do not know whether the departments have too many or too few. The colonel and his associates have said that from their information they have had too many. I can say that in the last few months my requests of the department in behalf of the service men of my district have not been attended to one-sixth as speedily as they used to be. Now, it would appear to me, not having an intensive knowledge of the department, that that might be due to the fact that the employees of the new organization have too much work to do. I want to be charitable when I say that.

The CHAIRMAN. We are dealing with the teachers and supplies furnished to trainees.

Col. FORBES. I said that we found that they had hired 1,100 between May and August.

The CHAIRMAN. We are talking about the vocational training; that has nothing to do with the service work.

Mr. GALLIVAN. I am referring to the requests made of the new Veterans' Bureau.

Mr. KELLEY. This new organization is just being put together and that might be the reason.

Mr. GALLIVAN. I am charitable in what I have said.

Col. FORBES. It took some time to bring these units over into this building and it took some time to consolidate the files. Please bear in mind that we have some 9,500,000 files in the bureau, which represent about 30,000,000 pieces of mail; that is, in the way of affidavits, statements, etc. We are now making a consolidation of all these files, with a view to sending them into the field to complete our decentralization.

The CHAIRMAN. We are talking about teachers in the training schools. Please do not let us get diverted away from that. We can talk about the other things afterward. For the record and for the orderly conduct of this investigation, if you care to call it that, please keep to the record and do not wander away from it too far afield.

Do you add all of this additional amount to training supplies, from $1.987,000 to $3,444,000?

Col. FORBES. It might be best to itemize that with the contracts that have been made for supplies.

TRAVEL.

The CHAIRMAN. Travel, $754,147.98. what that means?

Be kind enough to tell us

Mr. KELLEY. Is that increase in the cost of travel due to the new system of decentralized schools?

Col. FORBES. It will be in part, yes, sir. It is the travel of the

trainees.

The CHAIRMAN. Of course, that would be out of proportion, compared to the teachers.

Col. FORBES. The proportion would seem fair. The average number of trainees will increase 50 per cent over the number in 1921. The amount disbursed in 1921, was $530,000. Increased by 50 per cent, it would be $795,000 for 1922. We have asked for $754,148.

TUITION.

The CHAIRMAN. Tuition-it seems that tuition for the trainees last year was $7,895,229.59 and this year $11,379,765.34. Please tell us what this tuition consists of.

Col. FORBES. The tuition consists of money paid to universities, schools, other business colleges, and other places of education.

The CHAIRMAN. Please tell us how many institutions you have to which you pay, the kind of institution, the rate of pay, what we get for the pay, and all other details which would be pertinent.

Col. FORBES. The statement which I made when we were discussing tuition answers this question. I will also file a statement showing the tuition paid to each school during the last fiscal year.

ESTABLISHMENT OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS AT CAMPS.

(See pp. 337, 340.)

The CHAIRMAN. I think you said something about establishing a new school program of your own?

Col. FORBES. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. That would involve the elimination of the program that has been in existence. Please tell us what the new school program is to be.

Col. FORBES. What the new school program is to be: We will take the Government schools that will be established in cantonments. The program is to select four or five, not to exceed six, of these cantonments and to make use of such equipment as is in the cantonments and such buildings as can be useful for shops and for domiciles. As an illustration, Camp Sherman has 1,900 buildings. Of these 1,900 buildings we will demolish practically 70 per cent of them and with the salvage we propose to erect for our trainees 800 bungalows. The CHAIRMAN. Are you entering upon a building program in connection with this?

Col. FORBES. We will make these small houses there.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you the authority to do that? Does the law give you the right to do that?

Col. FORBES. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Please point to it,

Col. FORBES. It is temporary construction.

The CHAIRMAN. I think it is worth while to look into that to see whether you have the right.

Col. FORBES. The small buildings are already there. All that is needed is to put porches on those buildings and put the partitions into them. They will make ideal bungalows. Moreover, that class of work will be of a training nature for the men. The men taking carpentry will do the carpenter work and the men taking plumbing will do the plumbing work in these cottages. There is left There is left approximately 4,000 acres of land that can be used for agriculture and horticulture instruction. The community group of buildings will be buildings given by different organizations and by cities within the State to be used for entertainment purposes and for hotels. At Camp Sherman they have a Masonic building, a K. of C. building, a Y. M. C. A. building, a Cincinnati building, a Columbus building, and an Ohio building. These buildings are very well constructed. Most of them are divided into rooms, small rooms, that can be allocated to each trainee for his housing while he is a student there. In addition, the churches are well built and established there. That is true of many of the camps. In Illinois, at Camp Grant, there are many advantages offered, although the buildings are not as good as those at Camp Sherman. Where a construction program may be necessary --on reference to the law I have not decided on any of these cantonments where a large construction program would be necessary, because that would require legislation, but the cantonments offering advantages that would keep us within the law, that we may go ahead with this vocational development, we are attempting to do that.