Mr. ENGLE. I commend action. I would rather see you doing somehing, and making a mistake, than not doing anything. Mr. GUMBEL. Gentlemen, we do not take quite that long. I would ust like to mention one Friday morning in December we were intructed by the Defense Production Administration to become the xclusive purchasers of rubber. By noon that day-the same FriRay-we had an agreement with the rubber companies to buy the -ubber for us. We were in business, and by that night we had ssued the regulation prohibiting anybody from buying rubber. In connection with the machine-tool program, we received the program and the orders from the National Production Administration, and the next day we had put out approximately $75 million worth of orders. CONTRACTS AND ACTIONS THROUGH DMA TO DPA AND TO GSA (MAY 11, 1951) Mr. ENGLE. What I am interested in getting from GSA is a list of the contracts now signed and in existence and which have been executed. Mr. GUMBEL. I beg your pardon? Mr. ENGLE. The contracts now signed and in execution. What I mean by that is the contracts that have actually been signed and are now actually in execution. Mr. GUMBEL. Yes, sir. Mr. ENGLE. Which will be a different list than the one Dr. Boyd just submitted. He has his list here, but what I am trying to find out is to see some production stacked up here. Now, some of these contracts have been shifted over from DMA to procedural matter, at the present time, into Public 520, because of the shortage of funds, but it is intended in those instances to pick those up with DPA funds when and if DPA funds are available. Now, those should be listed as DPA production, so when you make your list, when you list those that come through and only for convenient purposes are now being handled temporarily under stockpiling as DPA production, but indicate where they are. Can you do that? Mr. GUMBEL. Yes, sir, we can do that. I propose to get up for the committee a list of all the contracts that have come over to us, and their present status, whether they have been signed, whether they have not been signed, and if they have not been signed why they have not been signed. Mr. ENGLE. We would like to have that. (The information referred to is as follows:) This is something else I would like to have. This is a third one: A statement of the materials actually produced by the defense minerals program now, and that anticipated by January 1. In other words, these programs are not operating unless they are putting minerals and metals on top of the ground, and you can't judge the effectiveness of a program unless you can see some copper, lead, zinc, manganese, or whatever else it is. All this paper shuffling is wonderful, but in the end we have to get some copper, lead, zinc, manganese, and all of those things, so what I want to find out, if I can, in terms of actual production, is what this program has done since it was first enacted on September 7, 1950, as of now, and what you anticipate say by the first of the year. Dr. Morgan, is that in your bailiwick? Dr. BOYD. We would have to do that. DISCUSSION OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS UNDER THE DEFENSE PRODUCTION ACT Dr. MORGAN. I think DMA will have to do that. They will have a difficult time. For example: in the case of the tungsten program, suppose a miner is producing tungsten and selling it at the present ceiling price of $65 a unit. The fact that the DPA and the DMA played a large part in setting that ceiling price of $65 a unit and bringing out additional production is recognized, but how can we quantitatively estimate the amount of tungsten that came in in that time? Mr. ENGLE. It is going to be very difficult, especially under the tungsten program, because as of now it is just nil, I would say. As far as this program is concerned, it has not produced anything. Dr. BOYD. That would not be a fair statement. Nobody can get into production in most of these things in less than a year, and it is just like Mr. Searles said this morning, you are building your house. but you do not move into it until it is finished. I wanted to state one more point, too. Under the Defense Production Act regulations we must try to get them to do it on their own, first, and a lot of this is being done under tax amortization certificates, which we have completed now. I cannot give you the exact figure, but I think there are 71 that have been approved. That means those mines are going ahead with their work without any direct action on the DPA, except the tax amortization comes under the revenue act. We have 300 of those tax amortization certificates. They take the same kind of work. We have to study them, investigate them, and recommend a figure, and that takes a vast amount of work. That is going along very rapidly. Mr. ENGLE. I do not want to tie you up with a lot of statistics. I assume you already presented the first item, which is the summary of the programs now announced, and what you are doing on the others. You have given us a list of the contracts which you have at your shop, Dr. Boyd, and you have a list of those now assigned and in execution through GSA, including those which have been sent over and for convenience put into stockpiling. Now, this statement of materials actually produced from the defense-minerals program now and by January 1 is going to be a little harder to do, but if you run a production line you look at what comes out of the end of it, and Ford may be hammering things, and melting iron, and paying salaries, and doing all sorts of things, but if no Fords are coming out of the end of that production line he is a pretty sorry fellow, and his production manager would probably get fired. So what we want to be able to do is to measure this program in terms of its actual accomplishments from time to time. Now, if you say it is unfair to put it January 1, what do you anticipate after these programs have been in a year? Dr. BOYD. We keep very close track of the individual projects, whether they have had assistance of one kind or another, and we watch the production month by month. We get the reports from the companies on the production of materials. We can possibly provide you with that information. Mr. ENGLE. Without putting half your staff doing statistics instead of processing contracts? You can do that after work. Dr. BOYD. They have to do that anyway. Mr. ENGLE. I do not want a single man taken away from a contract, when he starts putting it out, but sometime when you are resting while those things are up in Wolf's office floating around Dr. BOYD. Mr. Engle, the Bureau of Mines Mr. ENGLE. Or over in Dr. Morgan's office, I wish you would get me that information. Dr. MORGAN. Sir, in waiting for us to get the money, maybe DMA will have a breathing spell. AGENCIES OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CONCERNED WITH MINERAL AND METALS PROGRAMS AND POLICIES UNDER THE DEFENSE PRODUCTION ACT Mr. ENGLE. That brings me to the next thing I would like to ask for, and I don't think it will require much work; I think Dr. Morgan is the gentleman who can supply this information. I believe that a fellow like Dr. Morgan, who has written a book on this business, can't have anything but nightmares practically every night when he comes home from the office after reviewing this bureaucratic labyrinth. I just suspect if in all candor he could speak to me, he would say, "I wish we could straighten this out." What I wish you would do, Doctor, is give me a list of all the agencies, by alphabetical designation if you care to, and I will try to figure it out, that you have to deal with. What I mean by that is: You have DMA. You have GSA. I suspect you also have the State Department in lining up your procurement objectives. You have the Munitions Board. You have Budget. You probably have the Army and the Navy. Mr. D'EWART. If the gentleman will yield. We counted them up after one of our first meetings and there were actually 13. Dr. MORGAN. Mr. Congressman, before this emergency started we, at the National Security Resources Board, once made such a list and had about 40. It wouldn't be too much work to add the new agencies to that list as well as some of the major committees that we are working with, and I will be glad to supply that. |