clean water, or fire protection, or police. I defy you to show me any place where they are better than they are right here.

There is nothing wrong with the Commission form of government as I see it. I think we have advanced under the commission form of government. We will continue to do so with the appointment of proper men. That is all there is in any situation, whether they are elected or appointed, as to who are elected or appointed. It is a question of the quality of the men who are directing our interests.

I say, I am speaking not as the president of the Board of Education, as it would be very embarrassing for me to speak for them; or to read from this statement prepared by my conferees which they have written, of which I have no part. I do believe that the Board of Education, serving without pay, has served a good, frank purpose. I think all the autonomous boards that we have in the city-I know of no instance where the citizens have failed to realize the responsibilities and they have done good work for the advancement of the city. I have never been rejected; I have never been obstructed in any manner in regard to the freedom of thought by any Member of Congress or the Senate, when I have been expressing our ideas for the advancement of our city.

Are there any questions, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. HARRIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Sharpe, for the splendid statement. You agree with me in that I regard the right to vote for the President of the United States and the Members of the House, suffrage, participating in the election of the highest office of the land, that of President of the United States, as being the highest privilege. Mr. SHARPE. Exactly, sir; and my committee, and I are in complete agreement with you on that.

Mr. HARRIS. And that should be granted to the people of the District of Columbia?

Mr. SHARPE. We think so.

Mr. HARRIS. And then, if I have understood your statement, you recommend that the people of the District of Columbia should have representation in Congress?

Mr. SHARPE. That is true.

Mr. HARRIS. What kind of representation?

Mr. SHARPE. Well, that is a matter of determination, Mr. Chairman. I can say in fairness, I believe, with the previous speaker, that we are entitled to two Senators, but perhaps go beyond that; but I do think on the basis of true representation.

I am opposed to dual voting. I believe those people who are actual residents of the District of Columbia could vote for their Representative in Congress and do it with honor and with precision.

Mr. HARRIS. Do you mean a Delegate?

Mr. SHARPE. That is right.

Mr. HARRIS. Of course, you know I have advocated a Delegate for some time.

Mr. SHARPE. I know you have.

Mr. HARRIS. To do otherwise would require a constitutional amendment.

Mr. SHARPE. Right.

Mr. HARRIS. Now the third point that you have related here as the recommendation of your committee, as I understand it, is that the District of Columbia is the Federal city and should be retained as such.

Mr. SHARPE. That is exactly right and I can't emphasize it too strongly. I firmly believe the day the Federal Government relinquishes by any small item or measure, it will decline and decline badly. It is our sole hope for the maintenance; and please remember, as you well know, this is the only capital outside of Canberra that was actually formed as the capital of a country, that is a great country. All others were simply occupied, of major cities.

Mr. HARRIS. Thank you very much. We are very glad indeed to have your statement.

We will next hear from Mr. Rufus Lusk, president of the Washington Taxpayers Association.

STATEMENT OF RUFUS S. LUSK, PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON

TAXPAYERS ASSOCIATION

Mr. LUSK. My name is Rufus S. Lusk. I am the president of the Washington Taxpayers Association, for which I speak today. I am a native of Washington and I have conducted a real-estate and statistical publishing business here since 1930.

Mr. HARRIS. Mr. Lusk, I have been quite anxious to get to you this morning, because I understood that your statement had already been given out; not that I know what the contents are, but in order that it may be made official we want to have your statement. may be inserted in the record at this point. (The statement is as follows:)

STATEMENT OF RUFUS S. LUSK, PRESIDENT, WASHINGTON TAXPAYERS

ASSOCIATION

It

My name is Rufus S. Lusk. I am the president of the Washington Taxpayers Association for which I speak today. I am a native of Washington, I have conducted a real estate and statistical publishing business since 1930.

The Washington Taxpayers Association by a formal referendum taken about a year ago is opposed to the election of a City Council. At that time, 79 percent of the members who voted, voted no.

I have studied the testimony of every witness who appeared before the Auchincloss Committee in February, 1948, and the witnesses who testified before the Senate committee this year. Much of this testimony had to do with objections and suggestions to the proposed reorganization of the District Government.

There is not a paragraph, indeed I don't believe there is a single line which tends to prove that Washington will have a better city government than it has now if we have an elected city council. The assertion was made that the government will be better but this is almost always accompanied with the statement that it will be better because the government will be streamlined under the bill as passed by the Senate. Of course, this is true, but it is not necessary to have an elected City Council in order to reorganize the city government. One has nothing to do with the other.

This is a very practical question with which we are faced. Running a city is a housekeeping job. There is no Republican or Democratic way of sweeping a street. Since the operation of a city is such a practical matter, we should adopt a practical attitude toward the so-called right to vote here. Will a better governed city result? Will taxes be less? The answer is, based on the experience of other cities throughout the country, that neither will occur.

I respectfully suggest to the members of this committee, that every proponent of an elected City Council should be asked to explain specifically and in detail, why we may expect to have a better city government, and lower taxes if we elect a Council.

Pin them down to brass tacks. Generalities simply will not do. Also, they should be asked to compare the government of the city of Washington with other city governments, as I shall do in a minute, such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, Jersey City, New York, Boston, or Chicago. Press them to explain in detail how

it happens that we have the lowest comparative tax rate in the United States when compared to any other city of similar size. Ask them to explain how it happens that in these council-managed cities, graft is rampant. That, in many a city, it's accepted by most as something that nothing can be done about.

The agitation for the vote of an elected City Council started about 1940 when the Washington Times-Herald began a campaign to put it across. There is little demand for it from among the older residents of Washington; those of us who were born here or have lived here for a good many years. There are exceptions, of course, to this, but, when we consider that such organizations as the Washington Board of Trade, the Junior Chamber of Commerce, the Federation of Businessmen's Association, the District of Columbia Department of the American Legion, and the Committee of 100 on the Federal City are opposed to home rule, it's time to stop and look and listen. Those five groups which I mentioned represent some 50,000 or 60,000 members and also they represent the thinking of a great many thousands more.

In addition to these organizations, which are formally opposed to the granting of suffrage to permit the election of a City Council, there are scores of other organizations which have remained silent. Indeed, there are so many of these prominent groups such as the Washington Real Estate Board, the Building Owners and Managers Association, the Homebuilders Association of Metropolitan Washington, the Washington Building Congress, that their silence is a shout.

In 1946 there was a plebecite, an informal plebecite, held here. The papers, the radio and even the moving pictures screamed that everybody should go to the polls and vote for the right to vote. They did not say, in all this propaganda, which exceeded any I have ever seen, the war bond drives or the community chest, that people should go to the polls and vote whether they wanted an elected city council. They were told to vote for the right to vote, which is the same as saying they should vote yes. But what happened? Barely 20 percent of all the people who were entitled to vote actually did, and the result was that only 70 percent of them voted for an elected city council. When this is broken down further, we find that 972 percent of those voting in the colored precincts voted for a city council. In 14 of the white precincts, the vote was adverse, that is 24 percent of the precincts in the white areas of our town voted against the election of a city council. If this right to elect a city council is such a sacred thing, how does it happen that anybody voted against it? Not only did a lot of people vote against it, but it barely squeaked through among a considerable part of our population. Had there been as much propaganda on the other side, the result might have been twisted.

Now let me talk a minute about the government of the District of Columbia. I think I am well qualified to speak on that phase of this question. I have had dealings with officials of the District Government ever since 1924 and for the last 15 years I have been in almost constant contact with them, not only in my capacity as president of the Washington Taxpayers Association, but also as a businessman, as much of my business emanates from the work that we do on District records. I know practically every official of our government. The officials of other cities simply cannot be compared to the caliber of ours. Most of them are career men and I have yet to hear of a single official of the District government being charged with dishonesty. The only case that I can recall of anyone being charged with graft was an elevator inspector who about 20 years ago accepted a $50 bribe to pass an elevator.

The members of an elected city council will not be of the same stature as the District Commissioners and the members of the Committees of Congress which are appointed to take care of the affairs of the District government. Over a period of a great many years in appearing before Congressional committees, I have found, with an occasional exception, that every member of the House and Senate who has anything to do with the District of Columbia always tries to act on the basis of what is the best for our city and that is one reason that we have easily the best governed large city in the United States and one of the most beautiful. Let us compare for a moment the governments of other cities and that of the District of Columbia. And in making these comparisons I am not speaking simply by hearsay. I am familiar with most of these towns. I am familiar with them not only because I have visited them frequently, but in most cases, I have been in the city halls and discussed various things with different officials.

Let's start with Baltimore. Baltimore has a much higher tax rate than we have, and they still use gas lamps and some of the streets are still paved with cobblestones, something that wouldn't be put up with in Washington.

And Baltimore has an elected city council.

The next one is Philadelphia. Two or three years ago Philadelphia mortgaged the municipal gas works in order to meet the city pay roll and it imposed a 1-percent pay-roll tax on every bit of money earned by anybody who works in Philadelphia or works for a Philadelphia concern. It has had a rotten, crooked administration for years and there seems to be no way that the people can get the present machine out.

And Philadelphia has an elected city council.

Now let's go north to Jersey City. It is hardly necessary to talk about it. It took almost four decades to get rid of Mayor Hague and he is succeeded by one of his subordinates. Perhaps it won't be a change for the good after all.

And Jersey City has an elected city council.

New York is better governed today than it was when Tammany had a strangle hold on the place, but less than 2 or 3 years ago a judge was elected through the work of one of the country's biggest racketeers, an Italian who goes by the name of Costello and it is said by many in New York today that that city is not controlled by the Democratic Party but by Mr. Costello.

And New York has an elected city council, two of whom were Communists. Take Boston next. The taxes are so high in Boston that almost no building has taken place in the city within the last 10 or 12 years. So much property has been taken in by the city for unpaid taxes that it had to set up a special department, to try to unload the unwanted real estate.

And Boston has an elected city council with a convicted felon as its mayor. Just take two more. One is Kansas City where more people voted in certain elections there recently than there were people in the precincts, where it was nothing uncommon for the Pendergast machine to have a 99-percent vote on their side in certain precincts.

And Kansas City not only has an elected city council but also a city manager. And just one more, Chicago.

A recent report by the Civic Association of Chicago boasted that during the last year the city had met its pay roll regularly. When did it ever happen in Washington that a pay roll was not met, except occasionally when Congress has not passed an appropriation bill by July 1 and then the delay was only a few days. It has repeatedly happened in Chicago that the pay rolls have not been met. During the last 25 years, over $636,000,000 in real-estate taxes have not been collected and a good part of them never will be collected. They have not been collected because the rates are confiscatory.

And Chicago has an elected city council.

During the last 80 years the total amount of real-estate taxes that we have not collected in the District of Columbia is less than three or four million dollars and most of that is for taxes that are less than 1 year past due. If we go back about 10 or 15 years, we will find that the District of Columbia has collected well over 99 percent of all the real-estate taxes that have been levied.

During all of this discussion of the desirability of electing a city council, the whole question has been begged. It has been assumed that the right to vote for a city council is a good thing. That is exactly the point which has to be proved. The proponents of an elected city council have begged the question from beginning to end. None of them, in all of the testimoney that has been given, and I have gone over it carefully, have even mentioned, much less attempted to show, that other cities have as good a government as we.

I challenge them to prove any such contention.

Either they should show that council-managed cities fare better than we or admit that at the very least we are taking a terrible risk in changing from a reasonably efficient, and 100-percent honest, administration, to a type that has produced rottenness, graft, and corruption all over America.

We believe that Washington has an excellent form of government. We believe that it can be bettered considerably by reorganization similar to that proposed in the bill before you. However, as I have stated previously, that does not require the right to vote. The proponents of the right to vote have never gone into the question of whether we will have a better government or whether it will be run more economically by an elected city council. They have studiously avoided that. The reason is that there is no evidence to prove such a contention.

The proponents of an elected city council refrain from comparing our government, both its efficiency and its honesty, and honesty is more important than efficiency, with the city governments of other cities. There is not a line about how well other municipalities are run in comparison to Washington in all of the testimony that I have read.

Our city government has worked well as can be expected of any government for almost 75 years. Let's improve it, but not junk it.

Mr. Lusk. First of all, Mr. Chairman, I want to apologize for making this little slip that seemed to upset Mr. Waldrop, so that it stirred him up and he called attention to it. Their campaign started in 1938 rather than 1940. That error was due to the fact that yesterday was such a hot day that my office cat, Jefferson Secundum, head of the research department, did not come to work, and so we slipped up on that one.

Mr. HARRIS. I am sure that error will be noted properly.

Mr. LUSK. Mr. Chairman, you said in the course of your questioning this morning that this matter of home rule in the District of Columbia was a practical one. That is absolutely the case and my whole statement is based on the practicability of the questions with which we are faced. I have studied the testimony of every witness who has appeared before the committee. I have studied every statement and I have read everything submitted for the record considered by the Auchincloss Committee and Kefauver Committee last year and this year; and in all that 600 or 700 pages of testimony, Mr. Chairman, there is not a line-I could not find a line in which the witnesses were trying to prove that a home rule government would be better; that it would be run more efficiently or that it would be run at less expense. They just assumed it would. They assumed that the granting of the right to elect a city council means that we will have a better government. That is the very point at issue. It is the point to be proved. In other words, every single, solitary witness who favors this legislation without an exception has begged the very question before you: Are we going to get a better city government or are we not?

Now may I request, as I stated to Congressman McMillan the other day, when you have further hearings and witnesses appearing in favor of this legislation, that you ask them definitely the question when they deqnitely appear in favor of this legislation? Ask them specifically why and how we will have a better-run government and perhaps a more economically run one. Some of the witnessesthis morning, from their testimony I did not know which side they were on. If they say we are going to have a better government, I challenge them to prove any such contention.

I am quite familiar with the District Government. I have been associated with it and done business with it, and I think its officials for almost 25 years that I have known them have been an extremely high type of men. Officials in other cities with which I am familiar simply cannot compare with the type that we have here.

In just a minute I will make a comparison between some other city governments and our own.

I want to recount an incident, Mr. Chairman, which I think is quite interesting. About 15 years ago we had a meeting of the Washington Taxpayers' Association with the Board of Commissioners on the subject of the tax rate. There were about 12 city officials and 12 citizens. I took with me my brother as a guest. He is from Oregon. After we got through some matters and reduced the tax rate, my brother said to me: "I am amazed at the type of officials you have in the city government." I said, "They are all like that, high class, honest men." I think his opinion is worth considerable because he is the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Oregon.