have maintained the confidence of the investor in this type of property and many hundreds of thousands of units would have been constructed and would be available for public occupancy. If you had only had the foresight to leave the American people to their own devices they would be better off today.

The guardianship imposed by the Government on this industry has been 100 percent evil. We are definitely deteriorating the housing standards and we are creating slums at a far greater rate than we can ever rebuild them.

I have on previous occasions given you many examples of how the judiciary in combination with the Housing Expeditor's office is mistreating our citizens. I came across another glaring example of this when I visited the city of Peoria the other day and I found that a landlord in that city is in jeopardy of a $30,000 judgment and the Government is trying to deny him the right of a jury trial. I am enclosing in the records herewith an article published in Free Enterprise which gives in complete detail all of the relevant facts in connection with this case.

Again I would like to have your indulgence to print this in the record.

Mr. BROWN (presiding). It may be inserted. (The article referred to is as follows:)

[From Free Enterprise, Chicago, Ill., May 12, 1952]

PROPERTY OWNERS DENIED JURY TRIAL

Every day we get new evidence of the continuing encroachment of the power of the bureaucrats of the Federal Government upon the individual rights of our citizens.

Our Constitution provides that man cannot be deprived of his property without due process of law and if one citizen sues another one for an amount exceeding $20 the defendant is entitled to a jury trial. In spite of these restrictions in the Constitution, it seems that our judiciary and our bureaucrats, or the two of them in combination, have developed a civil procedure that effectively disposes of substantial rights guaranteed our citizens in the Constitution.

We came across this news the other day when we were visiting in Peoria, Ill. In that city, there is a case pending of the United States of America, plaintiff, v. Nelson Hewitt and Mrs. Mary Hewitt, defendants, Civil Action No. P 1253.

This particular suit is putting the defendants in jeopardy to the extent of a large share of their life savings, if not all of it. The amount of the indictment ran as high as $30,000. We understand that the indictment was drawn so sloppily that Mr. Hewitt was indicted for about half of that amount because he sold a group of individual houses on a contract for warranty deed. They tried to make an overcharge out of that and I think that part has been eflectively stopped by a preliminary consideration on the part of the court.

The amazing thing about this is that any official of the United States Governmént should ever make such indictment which is absolutely unfounded and unsupported by any law passed on the statute books. It is a disgrace that a property owner would have to spend large sums of money to defend himself against charges that should never have been brought against him in the first place. If some private citizen hires a shyster attorney and he brings what you might call a nuisance suit, that is not very nice but it is not punishable and there is little we can do to protect the citizens from such a thing.

However, an agency of the United States Government should be scrupulous and careful enough to not institute an indictment against a citizen when they do not have the slightest justification of it under law.

Now, when an official of the rent office makes a case against a property owner that has sold his property he is absolutely wrong because there has been no restriction placed upon the sale of property by any law.

That is, of course, as of yesterday-tomorrow, they may "monkey" with that and they have just recently placed credit restrictions on the statute books which,

in turn, are also an unconstitutional interference with the rights of our citizens. So, day by day this process continues and more and more a citizen finds himself unable to seek correction of this by going into the courts.

Until recently there was at least the safeguard of a jury trial. Now, they claim that this is just an outgrowth of the injunctive process and that there is no jury trial involved in an injunction and they are quoting all kinds of legal precedents in support of their claim.

In the above-mentioned case in Peoria a jury trial had already been agreed upon and a date had been set. Now, before this jury trial came around the Government went into court with a motion to dismiss the jury trial, stating that the defendant was not entitled to such protection under the law.

The Government presents the following argument:

"Refund of charges is sought under authority of the Housing and Rent Act of 1947, as amended, under section 206 (b) thereof, which is entirely injunctive proceedings.

Damages to the United States are sought under Section 205 of the Act as incidental to the equitable relief."

Until a short time ago it was news to the attorney defending Mr. Hewitt that such a thing could be done but he was furnished with the following list of previous

cases:

"In an action for restitution, there is no right to a jury trial. The following cases are authority for this purpose:

1. McCoy v. Woods (177 F. 2d 354 (C. A. 4) 7-884)

2. Woods v. Stein (53 F. Supp. 911 (D. C. Wash.) 6-452)

3. United States v. Hart (86 F. Supp. 787 (E. D. Va.) 7-904) 4. Woods v. Deep Vein Connelsville Coal Co. (W. D. Pa.) January 10, 1950

No. 7518 Judge Maris,

5. Woods v. Alex Swanson (W. D. Pa.) No. 7560, Judge Maris, January 10, 1950 6. Woods v. Wilson (Civ. No. 7830 (E. D. Pa.) Judge Clary)

7. Woods v. Zellaes (Civ. No. 9314 (E. D. Pa.) Judge Clary 8-163)

8. United States v. Maine (N. D. Ohio E. D. No. 26379 May 15, 1950)

9. Woods v. Richman (174 F. (2) 614)

An action by

There is no right to a jury trial in an action for treble damages. the United States to recover statutory damages under section 205 of the Housing and Rent Act of 1947, as amended, is not in the nature of a suit at common law and was unknown to common law at the time of adoption of the seventh amendment to the Constitution in 1791.

It follows that the present action is not one in which there is a right to trial by jury.

1. Creedon v. Arieliy (11 F. R. Serv. 56c, 41, case 11: 8 F. R. D. 265 (W. D. N. Y.)) 2. Woods v. Endekay Realty Corp. (S. D. N. Y.)

3. United States v. Shaughnessy (Civil Action No. 8355, 86 F. Supp. 175 (D. C. Mass.))

4. United States v. Osipoff (Gibson (S. D. Cal.) No. 1105-SD)

5. United States v. Stein (M. D. Pa. No. 3412), decided Feb. 20, 1950, Judge Follmer 8-131

6. United States v. Cherice (M. D. Pa.) No. 7848, Judge Follmer

7. United States v. Estate of Cowen (D. C. Mass.) 18 U. S. L. W.

8. United States v. Friedman, Rule, Pitman (S. D. Iowa) 89 F. Supp. 957, 8-203 9. United States v. Kenter (N. D. Cal. S. D.) No. 29522

10. United States v. Caldwell (W. D. N. Y.) 8-67

11. Woods v. Polis (C. A. 3)

12. United States v. Siegel ((D. C. La.) No. 2532 (Judge Wright, Sept. 27, 1950)) 13. United States v. Winchester (W. D. Mich. No. 1432 J. Starr, July 25, 1950) 8-508

14. United States v. Barrett (E. D. Pa. 9749 June 21, 1950)

15. United States v. Hall (W. D. N. C. No. 998 Apr. 25, 1950)

16. See NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. (301 U. S., 1.48 9-34)

17. Tanimura v. United States ((C. A. 9) No. 13014)

18. United States v. Ullrich (D. C. Md. No. 5230 April, 1951)

19. Leimer v. United States ((C. A. 8) No. 14403 April, 1951)

Evidently it is already a well established practice to deny a property owner the right to a jury trial as indicated by these numerous references quoted above. We have no way of knowing how the Federal judge in Peoria, Ill., will decide this case. I hope that they will grant this defendant a jury trial.

We know that a jury trial is not always an unmitigated blessing and if the defendant is not allowed to show certain evidence to the jury he will have very little chance whether he is before the judge or a jury. However, that is for him to decide. He should not and cannot be deprived of his constitutional rights. If such civil procedures are being established it is about time that the Congress of the United States would look into the matter and remedy the situation. There are people on the other side that will probably say that that takes too much timethat it clogs the court, and they are perfectly willing to let the discretion of a bureaucrat take care of the matter and deprive a citizen of his life savings and his property.

We think that this is the greatest possible indictment against all of these control laws because they enter into a lot of petty little transactions and the sum total of these transactions is a tremendous quantity. It would be impossible for any staff of people to administer a law like that and administer it justly.

Now, as to the interests of the public, they will get very little protection out of this process if the property owners are not scared about violating the law because the number of cases that can be possibly tried in court, whether it is by jury or judge, are a very limited number of cases-they are only a drop in the bucket. The enforcement of this law, the same as any other law, depends upon the willing compliance of the vast majority of the people. Now, we even have difficulty to enforce such laws as "Thou Shalt Not Steal" and "Thou Shalt Not Kill" but there at least we have the vast majority of the people on the side of the law. When it comes to rent control or a price control law, especially when it is administered so ineptly and unjustly as in this case, the number of violations are bound to be so numerous that when a man is caught in the meshes of the law it is purely an accident. It is just as if you got in front of a truck and got run over, and it is on about the same level morally. There is no justification in prosecuting these landlords, for merely charging what the tenant is perfectly willing to pay. Most of the plaintiff tenants, if they were to be put on the stands and state under oath as to whether they thought the rental charge that they paid was reasonable, would admit that it was very reasonable, but they would say, "If the Government says I don't have to pay that much, why should I?"

Incidentally that was exactly the attitude that a tenant took in a court case some years ago. He felt that the property owner was definitely entitled to a certain $5 per month over which they had a dispute but the law gave him an advantage and he took what he could get.

There is nothing more reprehensible than this type of law and all well-meaning citizens, regardless of their economic status, should combine to throw out and make forever impossible the continuation of such tyranny.

Mr. SCHMIDT. It is remarkable how many political superstitions we have in this country-for instance, there is this old saying "Well, you have rent control because there are so many more tenants than landlords." Let us look at the records-what are the facts? The tenants are in a minority in every city in this country as compared with the home owners, except in the city of Chicago and the city of New York. Even in these cities the number of tenants is consistently decreasing and more and more of them are becoming either owners of individual homes or of cooperative apartments. The tenants are a vanishing species and yet so many people think that they can gain political support by voting for an unjust law like this.

I would like to call your attention to an opinion poll that Mr. McVey from the fourth district from Illinois conducted in the city of Chicago. He asked the question "do you favor rent control" and the answers were "Yes" 103, "No" 430, "No opinion" 15. Mr. McVey asked his constituents many other opinions but the results thereof do not affect this particular piece of legislation.

I notice that formerly there used to be several members on this committee that were favoring rent control and now they are politically extinct. I am thinking particularly of former Representative Barrett O'Hara, who was very enthusiastically in favor of rent control and it

evidently was the cause for his elimination from the Congress of the United States.

Gentlemen, I ask you how could it be otherwise property in the United States is so widely distributed that there are over eight million owners of rental property. The administration in power has for a period of 10 years now consistently deprived these people of their just due. They have put them through emotional and financial stress that is almost beyond endurance. How any political party could enter upon a program of mistreating such a large sector of the population and mistreat them year after year in the manner that has been done by these administrative officials is just too hard to believe. Any party that will do this sort of thing will find itself finally eliminated. To illustrate my point I would like to have your permission to enclose in the record another diagram from our official publication Free Enterprise. This diagram shows a percentage of the party votes for the last 50 years.

Mr. BROWN. (Presiding) It may be inserted in the record. (The information referred to is as follows:)

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

Votes Are Shown in Percentages of Total Votes Cast

Mr. SCHMIDT. It is not our custom to make any recommendations for amending the present law because it is 100 percent bad. We would like to point out, however, several possible improvements:

First. Restrict the power of the administration to recontrol so that it cannot be done over the protest of the local governing body.

Second. Give a defendant in a suit for overcharges the same legal privileges that a defendant would have in any other lawsuit for monetary damages between two private citizens.

Third. Before a judgment for overcharges shall be rendered give the defendant an opportunity to show in the court that the rental allowed by the Housing Expediter is inequitable.

Fourth. Put in a limitation on the powers of the judges to use contempt charges for the collection of judgments.

While this Democratic Party has been continuously in power since 1932 it has maintained its position by a constantly declining percentage in the popular vote beginning in 1936. At the last election, Mr. Truman was elected with only 49.3 percent of the popular vote and he is, therefore, going down into history as one of the few Presidents elected by a minority of the popular vote.

Gentlemen, we have recently been treated to the spectacle of the President seizing the steel industry. Evidently he feels that the powers of his office are unlimited and that for all practical purposes he is an absolute monarch. I would like to suggest to every Member of the House of Congress that he should search his own soul, and consider whether he has at all times thought of the limitations that our Constitution places upon the power of Congress. Congress, likewise, does not have the power of an absolute monarch and many Congressmen have recently taken the attitude that they could pass a law to take the property of citizen A and give it to citizen B entirely, capriciously, and willfully as they please.

If you have any respect for the Constitution of the United States please let this law expire.

The American people have been very patient with those who have whittled away at their constitutional freedoms but I think that in the coming election they are going to awaken completely; and I suggest that you should not be caught with having voted to destroy the freedom of the American people.

If you want to survive the coming upheaval do not vote the freedoms of the American people away.

I thank you.

Mr. BROWN (presiding). Does any member desire to interrogate the witness?

If not, you may be excused. We are very glad to have your statement.

Mr. SCHMIDT. Thank you.

Mr. BROWN. We have two other witnesses, so we will recess to reconvene at 2:30 p. m.

(Whereupon, at 12:25 p. m., the committee was recessed, to reconvene at 2:30 p. m., the same day.)