Mr. JACKSON. Up to February 1, Mr. Chairman, the actual expenditures were $124,288 for salaries.

Mr. O'NEAL. Have you had much turn-over in your personnel during the fiscal year 1943?

Judge OLIVER. No, sir, not in turn-over.

of course, to the military services.

We have had some losses,

Mr. O'NEAL. You have asked for no deferments, have you, Judge? Judge OLIVER. No, sir; none at all.

Mr. JOHNSON of Indiana. I notice here that you have some withingrade promotions.

Judge OLIVER. Yes, sir.

Mr. JOHNSON of Indiana. How many of those?

Mr. JACKSON. Those are promotions authorized in accordance with the plan of the Ramspeck Act.

Mr. JOHNSON of Indiana. Do you come under the Classification Act for your employees?

Mr. JACKSON. Yes, sir; they are all civil service.

Mr. O'NEAL. Do you charge any fees or do you have any charges that are returned to the Treasury, of any kind?

Judge OLIVER. No, sir.

Mr. O'NEAL. This is entirely personal, and you are running right now, according to the figure you gave me, a little below the amount you are asking for 1943.

Judge OLIVER. We are indulging in every possible effort to economize, following the request made by the administrative office and also following what I know to be the desire of you gentlemen and Congress generally to economize.

Mr. O'NEAL. We appreciate that.

Mr. OLIVER. In fact, one of the methods by which we are endeavoring to economize is, where possible, to cut down some of our out-oftown circuits. This year, for example, instead of having three dockets on the Pacific coast, which means Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and sometimes San Diego in one circuit, we are only having two this year. That will save a great deal on certain traveling expenses.

EFFECT OF WAR ON WORK OF COURT

Mr. O'NEAL. Has the war decreased or increased your work load? Judge OLIVER. The war will decrease eventually, I suppose, our load; but at the present time, while you would naturally think in the forefront of your mind that because the importations are less, the amount of customs work is less, it does not follow that because of the war, importations have fallen off and, therefore, the work has fallen off. As a matter of fact, we have, as a rule, anywhere from 150,000 to 200,000 cases pending. Now, having heard the discussion of the district courts, that would probably sound out of all reason to you; but I will explain, as you probably have surmised, that the most of those cases are suspended under what we call test cases, the decisions in which will decide hundreds and sometimes several thousand cases. So that while that number pending sounds appalling, it is not what it seems. The court is up to date on its work.

Mr. O'NEAL. In what way has the character of your work changed during the war?

(The question was answered off the record.)
Mr. O'NEAL. Your work has not increased?
Judge OLIVER. Not correspondingly.
Mr. O'NEAL. Has it decreased slightly?
Judge OLIVER. It has decreased slightly.

Mr. O'NEAL. Has it decreased enough to affect your personnel in any way?

Judge OLIVER. No; for this reason: The personnel we have lost, for example, instead of putting on new men to take care of the places of those who have entered the armed services, we have reallocated the work so as to put a little heavier load here and a little heavier load there, so as not to put on new men where we can save doing that. In other words, where it would be customary for travel expenses to remain, as they did last year, at $10,000, by the method I have described, of trying to save on travel, we hope to turn something back at the end of the year out of that, and I feel sure we will. But we do not want to be in a position of having to come back to you for a deficiency appropriation if we can help it; because I am certain you realize, to cover the whole country, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, with our nine judges, that we cover a tremendous territory with a very small number of personnel.

CONTINGENT EXPENSES

Mr. O'NEAL. Your next item is "Contingent expenses." The appropriation for 1943 was $17,000 and your basis for 1944 is $16,500. You are asking for a restoration of the amount covered into the Treasury in accordance with Public Law 644, bringing it back to the same amount you had last year.

Judge OLIVER. Yes; and which was $2,000 less than we had the year before that.

Mr. O'NEAL. Did you get along all right without this $500?
Judge OLIVER. We did, sir.

Mr. O'NEAL. Could you do it again this year?

Judge OLIVER. We hope so, yes, sir; we hope to save that; but the amount is so small that I think it ought to go in there.

TRAVELING EXPENSES

Mr. O'NEAL. Now, what is the figure you have for traveling expenses?

Judge OLIVER. We have $10,000 there.

Mr. O'NEAL. How much of that has been spent to date, in the fiscal year 1943?

Mr. JACKSON. I have only the expenditure figure for the total appropriation, Mr. Chairman.

Judge OLIVER. In 1942, we actually spent $6,698.

Mr. O'NEAL. What is the last figure you have on that for 1943? Could you put that in the record as of the latest date you have? Judge OLIVER. Yes, sir.. (See p. 133.)

TRANSPORTATION OF THINGS

Mr. O'NEAL. Transportation of things is $1,800; what is that? Judge OLIVER. Whenever we have an out-of-town docket, we have to ship the records and exhibits out to that port. That is another

economy we are trying to make here. In other words, when we have a docket at San Francisco, there may be 4,000 cases in that docket, and we not only have to send out the jackets and all of the papers filed with the Court by the Treasury's and the Collector's office, but the whole file in each case, and all of the samples must go out there. One way we are trying to economize on that is to attempt to dispose of as much as possible in New York and by correspondence in advance with the attorneys and the collectors at the various ports; that is, we try to find out how many cases on the docket as prepared will be suspended or will be abandoned, or "continued" as we say. If we can do that, we can save the expense involved in sending all that out, and we are watching all those little things very closely.

Mr. O'NEAL. Do you think that could take a little cut?

Judge OLIVER. I think traveling expenses might take a little cut. I am anticipating that; but, on contingent expenses, I do not think we can save that. It is only $1,800 there.

COMMUNICATION SERVICES

Mr. O'NEAL. What about communication services; is that figured pretty closely?

Judge OLIVER. We are holding that down. In 1942, we actually spent $1,548. We do not have the figures in 1943 to date on that. Mr. O'NEAL. Will you put that in the record?

Judge OLIVER. Yes.

(The matter referred to appears on p. 133.)

SUPPLIES AND MATERIALS

Mr. O'NEAL. Supplies and materials is $1,100. Is it running about that figure?

Mr. BAND. Yes; it is running a little bit higher, because of the increased costs when buying them. It is running a little above that.

EQUIPMENT

Mr. O'NEAL. What do you include in Equipment, $2,500?

Mr. BAND. That covers books and file cases, trunks and other things, numbering machines, shipping cases-things that we need to send out. Mr. O'NEAL. Have you any idea what you have spent to date under that?

Mr. BAND. We can get that for you. What we are trying to do is to buy some second-hand books so as to keep the cost down.

Mr. O'NEAL. And it will probably run under that this year, you think?

Mr. BAND. We are trying to keep within that.

Mr. O'NEAL. What did you spend on that in 1942?

Judge OLIVER. $1,349.

Mr. BAND. The reason for that was that we were unable to get certain books with that amount and, rather than to pay the high cost for them, we let it go until we can pick them up second-hand.

The following is an analysis of obligations under the appropriation Contingent expenses, United States Customs Court, for the first 8 months of the fiscal year 1943:

Contingent expenses, United States Customs Court, 1943

Mr. O'NEAL. Now, the item for printing and binding is $1,000 for 1944, the same as the amount appropriated for 1943.

Judge OLIVER. And $800 in 1942. I think we only used $765 actually in 1942. That is a rather flexible item.

Mr. O'NEAL. How are you running in 1943?

Mr. BAND. We held out of that certain library books which should have been rebound last year because if we had the work done then it would have exceeded the appropriation. We hope to complete that this year. They have to be rebound, and it would have exceeded the amount we had last year.

Mr. O'NEAL. You think you will use that entire amount in 1943? Mr. BAND. Yes, sir; to complete the rebinding, rather than get new books.

FRIDAY, MARCH 5, 1943.

UNITED STATES COURT OF CLAIMS

STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD S. WHALEY, CHIEF JUSTICE, ACCOMPANIED BY HERBERT STEREK, AUDITOR AND SPECIAL DISBURSING OFFICER; AND ROYAL E. JACKSON, BUDGET AND ACCOUNTING OFFICER, ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES COURTS

GENERAL STATEMENT ON WORK OF COURT

Mr. O'NEAL. We will take up next the items for the United States Court of Claims, and we have with us the Chief Justice of that court. Judge Whaley, we are very glad to have you with us this afternoon. If you have any preliminary statement you care to make before we examine the detailed items, we will be very glad to hear you.

Chief Justice WHALEY. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, before submitting to you a detailed statement of the work of the Court of Claims.

for the past fiscal year through March 4, 1943, I wish to state that the Court of Claims has disposed of 478 cases during the past fiscal year and 275 cases through March 4 of the present fiscal year, making a total of 753 cases disposed of during thee periods. There are now 984 cases pending on our docket. I will not burden you with reading the detailed reports of the work of the court but will submit these copies to you.

I wish to state that every effort is being made by the court to hasten the disposition of all old cases pending on its docket and I feel today the court is in a better condition than it has been for the past 20-odd years. Practically all old cases on our pending docket, that is cases filed prior to 1938, are patent and Indian cases. Both classes of cases necessitate taking testimony over long periods and their records are voluminous. We now have 40 Indian cases and 24 patent cases pending, having disposed of 19 Indian cases and 7 patent cases during the past fiscal year and up to March 4 of the present year.

I feel that the court is unusually well up on its docket despite the fact that hearings and trials are being delayed due to the war. Many witnesses are unavailable as well as many attorneys, due to having been called into the armed services or defense work.

The court has instructed its commisisoners to advance dates for hearings in all cases in which witnesses are available, in order that all possible cases may be disposed of during this period when some necessarily will be delayed. There are about 26 cases in which all action has been suspended for the duration.

Another reason I have been presisng early disposition of all possible cases is that I am informed there are now, in the course of preparation, in the neighborhood of 1,500 cases which will be filed in our court in the near future. About two-thirds of these cases are known as "valuation cases," wherein the Government has taken over private property and paid the owner an amount which he thinks is not the true value and which will be filed with the court for decision.

I understand that there have been over 3,000,000 contracts entered into by the Government during the present emergency, and, even if a very small percentage were brought to the Court of Claims, it would increase our work enormously.

Judging from the effects of the last war, I feel that I am not overstating when I say this war will bring a great number of contract cases to the court. Seven commissioners were appointed to the court after the last war in order to hasten the trial of the additional cases filed. I feel, as a result of this war, it will be necessary to increase the number to 21. I do not mean that it will be necessary to increase the number of commissioners at once, but from time to time as the number of new cases filed increases.

We are not asking for an appropriation for any additional employees now but when the work of the court increases to the extent it cannot be handled by the present number of commisisoners, I shall have to appeal to Congress for relief-but I do not intend to do so until then.

So far I have not found it necessary to ask for any increased appropriation in order to take care of the 10 percent overtime pay. I have used savings from the salaries of the Chief Clerk of the Court and one Commissioner, both of whom have been called into the armed