here. Some of these people who are actually there now getting $60 per month were earning from $40,000 to $50,000 a year in their private business.

Mr. BYRNS. This estimate that is submitted here does not provide for anybody at the rate of $60 per month.

Secretary REDFIELD. We are inside of that, and that is the reason we are reducing the estimate. On the other hand, the work has increased so rapidly that we added a certain amount, because we could not foresee the future. But as a matter of fact our actual employments are inside of those figures. In practice we are behind this, although in other respects we may exceed it, because we can not say, for instance, that that building will be big enough. We have put in only $24,000 for rent, and I do not know whether that will be enough

or not.

The CHAIRMAN. Why do you not put all this force in the empty space you have up there in the department building?

Secretary REDFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I wish I had the space, and I would be glad to have an investigating committee come up there and find it.

The CHAIRMAN. What buildings of the Department of Justice have you?

Secretary REDFIELD. The middle one. They had the entire frontage on K Street, and we have taken the center building at $24,000. Mr. RICHARDS. Which includes service.

Mr. JOHANNES. That includes charwoman's service, watchmen, elevator conductors, etc.

The CHAIRMAN. What number is that building?

Secretary REDFIELD. That is No. 1435. That is a large building. Mr. RICHARDS. The rent was based on 50 cents per square foot. The CHAIRMAN. The Department of Justice paid $10,000 a year

for it.

Mr. JOHANNES. But they provided their own service. The owner has put in about $10,000 worth of repairs to start with.

The CHAIRMAN. He had to do that in order to rent it at all.

Mr. JOHANNES. It could not be rented for $10,000 a year. We are only taking it for six months.

The CHAIRMAN. The Department of Justice rented it for $10,000 a year, and the assessed value of the land and building is $70,000. Mr. JOHANNES. But they are furnishing the service.

Mr. SHERLEY. You can figure just what that amounts to.

Mr. JOHANNES. I do not know just how much it is. I know that the watchmen, charwomen, elevator conductors, and people of that kind are furnished.

Secretary REDFIELD. I can only say this, that we had infinite difficulty in getting it. There were three others who stood ready to take it if we did not take it, and there is not another single place in this

town

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). There is not another single person who would rent that building for that amount.

Secretary REDFIELD. There were others who would.

Mr. JOHANNES. A man offered him $6,000 for his bargain; that is, he told the owner that he would give $6,000 more than we are to pay. The CHAIRMAN. Was that somebody in the Government service? 4400-17--11

Mr. JOHANNES. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. That does not mean anything. I have an illustration right here. A man offered to make a lease for $40,000 a year, but when the department found out that they had the authority to make a lease for more they made it at $48,000 a year.

Secretary REDFIELD. We have a lease that you would say is a standard for leases of that kind. I do not believe that we could do any better.

The CHAIRMAN. They get 33 per cent on the assessed value of real estate on the theory of furnishing service.

Secretary REDFIELD. Heat and light are included in the service. Now, in the Commerce Building, where we pay 39 cents per square foot, we provide our own heat, our own light, and our own service. The CHAIRMAN. And you have a modern building?

Secretary REDFIELD. Yes, sir; but that is the lowest rent in Washington, as you have said. You have said that it was a standard or model lease. Now, in this case we have made just as good a bargain for the Justice building at 50 cents per square foot, with these things included, in view of the alterations that they had to make.

Mr. RICHARDS. There is a tremendous demand for office space in Washington now.

Secretary REDFIELD. I am ready to compare that lease with any other lease made in Washington at this time, or within the past

year.

Mr. BYRNS. I remember that when the Department of Justice was making its effort to secure a new building their statement was that that old building was one of the most unfit buildings in the city of Washington for office purposes.

Secretary REDFIELD. They had to spend $10,000 on it. Every partition had to be taken out, and the whole thing altered all over.

Mr. RICHARDS. Now it is a nice office building. They had it full of cubby-holes, but we have had large rooms made in it for the clerks.

Secretary REDFIELD. He will have to pay out six months' rent before he gets a single dollar back. We are in a position where we can move out at the end of six months. If anybody can tell us where we can do better, we will be ready to move quickly.

I have just received an exact statement concerning this building and rent that I am sure will make you feel differently about it, and I would like to put it in the record. The owner furnishes four watchmen, at $720, $2,280; eight charwomen, at $240, $1,920; two elevator conductors, at $720, $1,440; two laborers, at $660, $1.320: one engineer, at $1.000; and a fireman, at $720, a total of $9.280 He estimates, and we have checked it up as substantially correct, that the cost of fuel, light, and electricity will be $6,000, making a total of $15,280 furnished by the owner of the building, leaving a net rental of $8,720 to make up the total of $24.000 a year. Mr. BYRNS. I want to ask one other question in regard to these salaries, and that is whether or not it has been done or whether it is proposed to transfer employees to this roll from your regular roll at increased salaries?

Secretary REDFIELD. No, sir: I think not.

Mr. RICHARDS. Transfers have been made in only one or two exas in the case of a man in charge of correspondence,

stenographers, etc. I do not think any have been transferred at an advanced salary. There may have been one or two transfers, but I do not think any of them were transferred at a higher salary. Mr. GILLETT. Does not the law prohibit the transfer of employees to lump-sum rolls at an advanced salary?

Secretary REDFIELD. Yes, sir; when it is an advance over and above the salary for similar work. There have been no such cases as that at all. The only case was that of a chief clerk who had his office moved over there instead of being in the Commerce Building. His office was brought over there, but there was no change in the salary.

BUREAU OF LIGHTHOUSES.

ADDITIONAL COMPENSATION TO DRAFTSMEN-TRANSFERS FROM ONE DEPARTMENT TO ANOTHER.

(See pp. 61, 173.)

The CHAIRMAN. The first item is:

To enable the Commissioner of Lighthouses to pay additional compensation to draftsmen employed on marine engineering work in the Bureau of Lighthouses, the pay of such draftsmen in no case to exceed the rate of $2,000 per annum, fiscal year nineteen hundred and eighteen, $1,200.

We had that item before and gave it to you.

Mr. PUTNAM. That item was included by this committee in the urgent deficiency appropriation bill, but it was cut out in the Senate. I think it was cut out because that deficiency bill was to provide appropriations for military and naval purposes. I think it was not allowed on the ground that it was not a military or naval

matter.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you lost those men yet?

Mr. PUTNAM. We have not a single draftsman left in our marineengineering division, not one; and we have appropriations for four or five vessels.

Mr. SHERLEY. Where did they go?

Mr. PUTNAM. Some of them have gone and, in fact, most of them, into outside shopbuilding companies, and one of them, I think, has gone to the Navy Department.

Mr. SHERLEY. In the instance of the Navy Department, have you called the attention of that department to the fact that the transfer of that man would interfere with your work?

Mr. PUTNAM. We did not do that. I can not say definitely that one of these men went with the Navy Department, but I do know that one of them went to the Navy Department in December.

Mr. SHERLEY. That is just the point. What is happening here is that when a department gets crowded and some fellow in the department happens to know somebody else in another department he tips him off and says, "Here is a chance for you to get a raise in salary; you come over with us." The result is that the entire Government is run as if the departments were rival concerns, competing against each other and stealing men from each other. That is a serious. matter, very much more serious than the departments seem to realize. We get it here every hour of the day, and I think it is a matter for the Cabinet to take up with the men under them and forbid them taking men from other governmental employment.

Secretary REDFIELD. I so thoroughly agree with Mr. Sherley that those orders were given many months ago, and if any man in the Department of Commerce bids for the employee of another department in the way Mr. Sherley has described I consider it sufficient cause for his immediate dismissal. Mr. Sherley does not overstate the evil. I have brought it to the attention of the Cabinet myself and protested against it in the strongest possible way. It is a very real and a very serious difficulty. The fact is, as Mr. Putnam says, that in our Lighthouse Service, which, I want you to bear in mind, designs and oversees this work of vessel drafting not only for the Lighthouse Service, but for the Coast Survey, the Fisheries Service, and others, we are without a single man at this minute. I am going to show you a new vessel, Mr. Chairman, in a few days which it did not cost the Government a dollar of outside money for designing or supervision of any kind because it was done for one of our other services by Mr. Putnam's men. But those men have gone.

Mr. GILLETT. Do not the other members of the Cabinet sympathize with your view?

Secretary REDFIELD. I think they do, but I am not perfectly certain, Mr. Gillett, without intending in any way to criticize them, that they grasp the seriousness of it as I do, and that is because I was brought up in a factory, and I have been accustomed to having concerns go around the factory windows and tempt men away, and for 30 years it has been an evil I have fought against, and it has been a very bitter one to me. Of course you gentlemen must bear in mind—and I do, too, as well as I can-that the Army and Navy are under terrible stress at this time.

Mr. SHERLEY. It is a matter that can be stopped overnight. Every one of these men must get the permission of the Civil Service Commission to be transferred from one civil-service appointment to another.

The CHAIRMAN. But the difficulty is they resign.

Secretary REDFIELD. You can not help it; they resign, as the chair

man says.

The CHAIRMAN. Under the law they must be three years in a department, and I think we ought to fix it during this emergency that no man shall be transferred at a higher rate of salary.

Secretary REDFIELD. I have adopted this method, and I think it is a good one, as far as it goes: I have given instructions, and insisted upon them, that no man shall be transferred from any other department to our department until every service has had a chance, within the department, to offer a man the promotion, and that such a man shall only be taken on at the low grade. Probably I do not make it very clear, but let us suppose that an $1,800 man dies. I will not allow a transfer from another department to fill that post at all until every one of our other seven services has been combed to see if we have a man of our own who should be promoted, and that means that everybody shall be promoted, down to the $720 grade, and the new man taken on at the bottom. That is our regular rule, and it works like a charm, because it makes every clerk know that the department is looking after his rights if he does his work well, and it gives every fellow who comes in at the bottom the certitude that if he does his work well he is going to get every chance of promotion that there is. We have stopped that transfer business, and I do not

think we have had five cases in a year. I have told that to my colleagues, and that is just common factory treatment; that is all. That is the way a shop is run, and is really the proper method. As Mr. Putnam reminds me, there is only one case of a man going to another department and that an uncertain one of a man going to the Navy Department.

Mr. PUTNAM. Just now there is a very strong demand for this class of employees from shipbuilding companies outside the Government. That is our main difficulty, not a demand from other branches of the Government but the demand from the outside.

REPAIRS AT ARANSAS PASS LIGHT STATION, TEX.

The CHAIRMAN. You are asking $20,000 for repairing and rebuilding dwellings: outbuildings, and appurtenant structures damaged or destroyed in the hurricane of August 18, 1916?

Mr. PUTNAM. This light station was very seriously damaged, and the dwellings, wharves, and all the small buildings about the station were destroyed in that storm. An estimate was not submitted last fall for this amount because the complete amount of the damage had not been gone over at that time, and also for the reason that we thought that a part of this work could be done out of our general appropriation, but the comptroller has made a ruling that we can not repair those buildings out of our general appropriation.

The CHAIRMAN. Why?

Mr. PUTNAM. Because they are keepers' dwellings. The dwellings were completely destroyed, and he has ruled that to rebuild those. buildings would not be a repair but would be the building of new buildings, and hence we can not use our general appropriation, because Congress has made a special appropriation for dwellings for keepers.

The CHAIRMAN. What about the other items?

Mr. PUTNAM. The other items could be done, but the main item is for the dwellings. The other items are small and they could be done. out of our general appropriations.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there no dwelling there now?

Mr. PUTNAM. No, sir; the dwelling is entirely gone.

The CHAIRMAN. What kind of a building do you propose to erect? Mr. PUTNAM. We are going to put up a double dwelling on piles, a dwelling for two keepers and their families. It is at an out-of-theway place and the estimate here is based on actual bids for the work. We have gone as far as getting bids for this work and we did that before we made the estimate.

The CHAIRMAN. It seems to me that a keeper's dwelling ought to cost less than $17,000.

Mr. PUTNAM. It is equivalent to two dwellings.

The CHAIRMAN. I know; but a double dwelling for two men who receive $720 a year each ought not to cost $17,000, it seems to me. Mr. PUTNAM. This is a site that is close to the Gulf storms, and it is to stand on piles in the water, which is necessarily expensive construction. It is a higher amount than would be required in a less difficult place than that.

1

ven

Secretary REDFIELD. It is not on the land; it is built in the nment, The comptroller has made a ruling on this particular case.