The CHAIRMAN. Permit me to ask you a question right there. You have outlined the program under which you contemplate taking over six camps?

Col. FORBES. Not to exceed six.

COST TO CONDITION CAMP SHERMAN.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you be kind enough to tell us, if you know, what the anticipated cost of the rehabilitation of Camp Sherman will be and what the annual cost of maintenance of the camp will be after you rehabilitate it?

Col. FORBES. After we rehabilitate it?

The CHAIRMAN. First, give us the cost that would put it into condition, and when put into condition what the annual cost of maintenance will be. Surely you have not undertaken this without knowing the cost.

Col. FORBES. No.

The cost to take care of our first 500 trainees will not exceed $20,000.

The CHAIRMAN. You mean that it will cost that much to rehabilitate the camp so as to take care of 500 men?

Col. FORBES. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. How much will it cost to maintain the camp annually?

Col. FORBES. We hope to have this camp on practically a selfsupporting basis.

The CHAIRMAN. Please tell us how.

Col. FORBES. By our agricultural work and the raising of our own foodstuffs.

The CHAIRMAN. You will be able to do more than most farmers can do, will you not?

Col. FORBES. We have a board made up of farmers who are advising with us and who believe, as I believe, that it can be made not wholly at the outset, but ultimately self-supporting. We have in this place so many conveniences that will reduce the cost of maintenance. We have a cold storage plant that will take care of 180,000 pounds of beef; we have an ice plant that will make 40 tons of ice a day, and we have a laundry that can do the laundry work for 20,000 population.

Mr. KELLEY. Is it your idea to make one of these camps into a training school for agriculture?

Col. FORBES. Where the land is available.

Mr. KELLEY. And you have in mind Camp Sherman?

Col. FORBES. And the other camps as well.

Mr. KELLEY. Would it not be better to place the boys in the well established agricultural schools and normal schools throughout the country?

Col. FORBES. No, not the boys who lack the education to take up the science of agriculture in its theory, but the boys who must have the preliminary education to do that. We want to put into this school the boys who have not that preparation.

Mr. GALLIVAN. You are sure about the $20,000 figure for the physical rehabilitation of the camp?

Čol. FORBES. Reasonably sure, I would say.

Mr. GALLIVAN. There are 1,700 buildings at Camp Sherman?

Col. FORBES. One thousand nine hundred buildings.

Mr. GALLIVAN. And you propose to demolish those buildings and with the surplus material then build the bungalows?

Col. FORBES. The bungalows are all there; there are 1,200 of them. They are not up to date bungalows, but by a little reconstruction they can be brought up to date.

Mr. GALLIVAN. Are these 1,200 bungalows in addition to the 1,900 other buildings?

Col. FORBES. Yes, sir.

Mr. GALLIVAN. They had at Camp Sherman 2,900 buildings?

Col. FORBES. About 2,900 altogether. I did not mean the small buildings, because we did not purpose demolishing them.

Mr. BYRNS. Does the $20,000 include the cost of equipment that must be put in?

Col. FORBES. That is just for the buildings. The equipment is there. We have some splendid equipment, about $20,000,000 worth; $3,000,000 worth, approximately, is at Camp Sherman, and about $5,000,000 at Camp Grant.

Mr. WOOD. Agricultural tools?

Col. FORBES. Some agricultural tools. The only tools which it will be necessary to purchase will be the heavy agricultural tools, such as the mowers, etc. We have the tractors and I think the plows are at Camp Pike.

LOCATION OF CAMPS CONTEMPLATED.

The CHAIRMAN. Please give us the location of these other five cantonments which you contemplate.

Col. FORBES. They have not been selected as yet, but I will give you a list of those under investigation. Camp Grant, that was an army vocational school. Camp Pike

The CHAIRMAN (Interposing). Where is Camp Pike?

Col. FORBES. In Arkansas.

The CHAIRMAN. Camp Grant is in Illinois and Camp Sherman is in Ohio?

Col. FORBES. Yes, sir. We had Camp Devens in Massachusetts, but the Secretary of War thought it would be not best to establish one there. Camp Jackson

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). Where is Camp Jackson?
Col. FORBES. In South Carolina.

Mr. KELLEY. Have you ever thought of the idea, instead of gathering these boys altogether, of making some arrangements with the States whereby the States would handle them and we would pay for them?

Col. FORBES. We have had that up with the States. Some of the States are handling now all that they can take care of.

Mr. GALLIVAN. You have nothing in New York and New England? Col. FORBES. Yes, sir; but Camp Devens will not be the place. Mr. GALLIVAN. I understand.

Col. FORBES. There is a project 40 miles from Oakland, which has 106 modern bungalows and a 167-room hotel, with a thousand acres of land. That was owned by a shipbuilding corporation.

Mr. KELLEY. Where is that?

Col. FORBES. At Clyde, Calif. The Shipping Board has a mortgage on it for a sum of $450,000. I think that project can be turned over to us without cost.

The CHAIRMAN. You think that you have complete authority to do all of these things without securing legislation from Congress?

Col. FORBES. Where permanent construction is unnecessary; yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. What is permanent construction?

Col. FORBES. As held by the comptroller, permanent construction is anything that might be considered of a permanent nature in the way of concrete, steel, or brick construction.

CLASSIFICATION OF MEN BY TRADES AND VOCATIONS.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you be kind enough to classify the men by trades and vocations, the number in each, how many men are expected to graduate monthly or annually in each trade or vocation?

Col. FORBES. I can not tell you that nobody else can tell you how many we expect to graduate.

The CHAIRMAN. Please take the first question first. You are answering the last question first. Classify the men by trades and vocations in training, how many in each, so that we will know how many there are in each vocational trade. For example, you have 25 men taking the barber trade, you have so many men taking the bricklayer's trade, you have so many men taking the blacksmith trade, you have so many men taking the tinsmith trade, you have so many men taking the plumbing trade, you have so many men training for lawyers, and you have so many men training for farmers. Col. FORBES. We have that information.

Mr. KELLEY. There are in the Navy a lot of places, one near Chicago, where you can take care of all of these boys.

Col. FORBES. Which one?

Mr. KELLEY. The Great Lakes station.

Col. FORBES. We took over one portion of Camp Ross for the neuropsychiatric patients. While those buildings are not very permanent they are very habitable and very comfortable. I was out to the Great Lakes. The American Legion is well satisfied with our taking that tract.

Mr. KELLEY. Last year they wanted a million dollars for coal to heat it?

Col. FORBES. It has to be heated anyway. We have only taken a small portion.

Mr. KELLEY. It ought to be closed down and disposed of.

Mr. ANTHONY. Do you have to maintain a central heating plant? Col. FORBES. Yes, sir. Unfortunately at several of these camps they have individual heating plants.

Mr. ANTHONY. Of course, those heating plants were put in to heat a station with 20,000 to 40,000 populaton.

Col. FORBES. Of course, the. cost of heating and lighting, where purchased from the city, is very high, and where you have a central heating plant you can generate your own electricity.

Mr. KELLEY. We have a camp in New England that was built for the Navy and my recollection is that they wanted $75,000 to take care of it, standing idle, just for fire protection and that sort of thing. Will you not run into an enormous expense for fire protection?

Col. FORBES. The fire protection is all there. The fire-fighting apparatus is there. The water system is there. They have a 100-foot head of fine pressure. During my visits there I frequently tried out the fire department. They respond very promptly and render very efficient service. The equipment is up to date. That is why I think it will be a cheaper means and a better means of educating these men by taking advantage of what the Government has to offer now.

REPLACEMENT OF TRAINEES.

The CHAIRMAN. Are you going to dispense with all other forms of education?

Col. FORBES. No, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. To what extent will you utilize the colleges and other institutions throughout the country, the agricultural training institutions?

Col. FORBES. It is not going to affect the accredited schools of any character. My idea is to replace trainees who are misfits in placement training; 41 per cent of our entire vocational personnel or trainees are taking placement. I should say that 50 per cent of the 41 per cent are wrongfully placed. There is another thing, Mr. Chairman, that I think I would like to have you consider, and that is the follow-up of these men. If we are going to attempt the rehabilitation of a man, do you not believe that we should keep in close contact with him during his period of education?

The CHAIRMAN. You ought to see that he is being educated, of

course.

Col. FORBES. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And that he is not simply being taken care of at the expense of the Government.

Col. FORBES. That is what we are doing. Where we can keep in close contact with a man we can not only observe his educational progress, but as we are also responsible for his physical being, we can observe that as well

The CHAIRMAN. It seems to me that is a very essential part of the training obligation that we assumed, and, I supposed, of course, you were doing that.

Col. FORBES. A boy frequently, for fear that he may return to a compensation status, being ill, may go to a doctor, because there is a difference between vocational pay and compensation, and so he goes

on in his attempt to educate himself or get his training, paying no attention to his physical being. Consequently he breaks down and then goes into a hospital more of a wreck than he was when he first applied for relief from the Government. I think if we had a small hospital, only 45 or 50 beds, at the camp-in the Elks Building we have a fine little hospital-if we find a man who is incapacitated to the extent that he can not pursue his training they can transfer him to one of the regular hospitals and put him on a compensation status where he rightfully belongs, and after he has become rehabilitated physically we can send him back to his school, which is not done to-day.

TOTAL NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES OF VETERANS' BUREAU.

The CHAIRMAN. Colonel, I should like to ask you to tell us how many people you have employed in your home office here. Col. FORBES. In the home office?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes, sir.

Col. FORBES. Including the Federal board?

The CHAIRMAN. Under vocational training-please tell us the total number and then how many in each class.

Col. FORBES. Would you not like to have them segregated?
The CHAIRMAN. Yes; I should like to have them segregated..

Mr. ROUTSONG. You understand that when these bureaus were consolidated, for instance, the disbursing division of the old Federal board was combined with the disbursing division of the War Risk Insurance. That is one very good illustration. The medical section of the vocational board was combined with the medical division of the old War Risk Insurance into one division. The files-they had their separate files for each trainee-are now being amalgamated, and there will be one filing or claims section--we call it a claims divisionwhere there were two before. ·

The CHAIRMAN. Please give us the total number of people employed in the home office, and then you can distinguish between those employed for other purposes and those employed in connection with Vocational training.

Col. FORBES. We have that right here, the number of employees in the bureau.

The CHAIRMAN. Please give it to us by divisions.

Mr. ROUTSONG. The total number employed in the central office at Washington, as of October 1, was 5,546. Those who are paid out of the rehabilitation appropriation, because they were continued to be paid out of that appropriation

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). Rehabilitation is vocational training?

Mr. ROUTSONG. Yes, sir; 907. Then we have 112 located at the central office who are paid out of medical and hospital services, because of the fact that they spend part of the time in Washington and part of the time helping to organize the district offices, and 4,527 who are paid out of the salaries and expenses, War Risk Insurance, making 5,546.

The CHAIRMAN. Please tell us the aggregate amount paid these people?