or ammunition, or the parts thereof, or any necessary supplies or equipment, as ordered by the Secretary of War, or who shall refuse to furnish such arms, ammunition, or parts of ammunition, or other supplies or equipment, at a reasonable price as determined by the Secretary of War, then, and in either such case, the President, through the head of any department of the Government, in addition to the present authorized methods of purchase or procurement herein provided for, is hereby authorized to take immediate possession of any such plant or plants, and through the Ordnance Department of the United States Army to manufacture therein in time of war, or when war shall be imminent, such product or material as may be required, and any individual, firm, company, association, or corporation, or organized manufacturing industry, or the responsible head or heads thereof, failing to comply with the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and upon conviction shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than 3 years and by a fine not exceeding $50,000. The compensation to be paid to any individual, firm, company, association, corporation, or organized manufacturing industry for its products or material, or as rental for use of any manufacturing plant while used by the United States, shall be fair and just. The Secretary of War shall also make, or cause to be made, a complete list of all privately owned plants in the United States equipped to manufacture arms or ammunition, or the component parts thereof. He shall obtain full and complete information regarding the kind of arms or ammunition, or the component parts thereof, manufactured or that can be manufactured by each such plant, the equipment in each plant, and the maximum capacity thereof. He shall also prepare, or cause to be prepared, a list of privately owned manufacturing plants in the United States capable of being readily transformed into ammunition factories, where the capacity of the plant is sufficient to warrant transforming such plant or plants into ammunition factories in time of war or when war shall be imminent; and as to all such plants the Secretary of War shall obtain full and complete information as to the equipment of each such plant, and he shall prepare comprehensive plans for transforming such plant into an ammunition factory, or a factory in which to manufacture such parts of ammunition as in the opinion of the Secretary of War such plant is best adapted. The President is hereby authorized, in his discretion, to appoint a Board on Mobilization of Industries Essential for Military Preparedness, nonpartisan in character; and to take all necessary steps to provide for such clerical assistance as he may deem necessary to organize and coordinate the work herein before described. COURT DECISIONS.-Under this section, the President, as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, has the constitutional power in wartime, in cases of immediate and pressing exigency, to appropriate private property to public uses, the Government being bound to make just compensation therefor. United States v. McFarland (C. C. A., 1926), 15 F. (2d) 823. This section imposes a duty on a manufacturer to comply with an order of the United States for war supplies, although such order may prevent him carrying out earlier contracts with private persons. Moore & Tierney (Inc.) v. Roxford Knitting Co. (D. C., 1918), 250 Fed. 278; certiorari denied (1919), 253 U. 8. 498. NECESSITY FOR LEGISLATION AT THIS TIME It is important that legislation on this subject be enacted at this time for two reasons: In the first place, the legislation can now be enacted much more calmly and thoughtfully than it could possibly be enacted during war time with all its hysteria and haste. In the second place, if we wait until war is declared to enact legislation and prices in the meantime begin to skyrocket and get all out of hand, economic conditions become distraught, and inflation begins, it will be much more difficult, if not impossible, to secure the ends sought by the legislation than if the legislation can be put into effect immediately upon declaration of war. BILL PROMOTES PEACE The bill is not a militaristic movement, but distinctly a peace measure. It serves notice on every citizen in the land that the full power of the Government will be used to prevent profiteering and that no citizen can expect to profit from any war in which we might be engaged. In this way the bill kills any incentive that anyone might have to do anything that might encourage, provoke or lead to war. We foresee only peace for our country and all that we ask is that our country shall live in peace, in friendship and in cooperation with all the other nations, but the passage of the bill would bring to the attention of other nations the fact that if we were again forced into war our whole economic, industrial and financial life would be effectively and efficiently mobilized for the protection of our country. We ask passage of this bill as one more important step to the great goal of peace. O INDIAN CLAIMS COMMISSION ACT MAY 13, 1937.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed Mr. ROGERS of Oklahoma, from the Committee on Indian Affairs, submitted the following REPORT [To accompany S. 1902] The Committee on Indian Affairs, to whom was referred the bill (S. 1902) to create an Indian Claims Commission, to provide for the powers, duties, and functions thereof, and for other purposes, having considered the same, report thereon with a recommendation that it do pass with the following amendments: On page 1, line 6, after the word "Commissioners", insert immediately thereafter the following: "one of whom shall be an Indian”. On page 1, line 11, after the word "office", strike out the period and insert in lieu thereof a colon and add the following: Provided, That any Commissioner having reached the age of seventy years shall be automatically retired without pay. On page 2, line 10, strike out the figures "10,000" and insert in lieu thereof "7,500". On page 4, line 2, after the word "attorney", insert the following words: "or attorneys". On page 5, line 17, strike out the word "three" and insert in lieu thereof the word "five". On page 5, line 21, strike out the comma and the following words: "nor will such claim be entertained by Congress". On page 6, line 13, after the comma insert the following: "and to the superintendents of all Indian agencies who shall promulgate the same," Your committee considered a similar bill (H. R. 7837) during the Seventy-fourth Congress. After hearings were held at which representatives from the Interior and Justice Departments appeared in its behalf, the bill was reported to the House (H. Rept. 1268) recommending its passage, but failed of passage before the expiration of the Seventy-fourth Congress. 6-7-37 H. Repts., 75-1, vol. 2-25 This bill has the approval of the Department, as can be seen from the following letter from the Secretary of the Interior on the bill, H. R. 7837, which was reported by your committee during the Seventy-fourth Congress: Hon. WILL ROGERS, Chairman, Committee on Indian Affairs, INTERIOR DEPARTMENT, House of Representatives. MY DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: Further reference is made to your request for report on H. R. 6655, a bill to create an Indian Claims Commission to investigate and determine the facts and the merits of all existing claims by Indian tribes against the United States, and report its findings with appropriate recommendations to Congress. A series of conferences has been held since introduction of H. R. 6655, and as a result of these conferences text of the proposed legislation has been perfected and is now embodied in H. R. 7837 and S. 2731. Report is therefore being made on H. R. 7837. The proposed commission, to be composed of three commissioners appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, is authorized to make a thorough search for all evidence on the facts involved in such claims, but may make determinations only after notice and hearing to all the interested parties. It is contemplated that the commission shall receive claims for a period of 5 years and that its work shall be completed within 10 years after its creation It may report its recommendations to Congress as its determinations are made, and annual reports to Congress of the progress of its work are required. The bill does not itself provide for the adjudication of any Indian claim. Its purpose is to expedite the handling of such claims, to provide Congress with competent, impartial advice on the disposition of the numerous requests by Indian tribes for the passage of jurisdictional acts or the allowance of appropriations, and to relieve the Court of Claims of the burden of highly complicated and necessarily prolonged fact determination. Congress is now endlessly confronted with the challenge (a) to enact direct settlements with Indian tribes, and (b) to enact jurisdictional bills which more or less predetermine the ultimate settlement, in both cases without any adequate data upon which to reach a decision. Nor can this data be accumulated through legislative hearings in Washington. The immediate end, if necessary, sufficient justification of the pending bill lies in the above fact and in the way the bill would change that fact. As a result of inadequate data the jurisdictional acts, among other peculiarities, often are inconsistent with one another, sometimes in the direction of leniency, and sometimes in the opposite direction, and in few or none of them are the authorizations and limitations based upon the particular and local history of the tribe and of its relations with the Government. At present, after long preliminary negotiation and lobbying, eventuating in a jurisdictional act, a petition is filed in the Court of Claims, and the General Accounting Office goes through all records of expenditures, accumulating as certain or possible set-offs the detailed record of all the gratuitous expenditures for or in behalf of each tribe. The Indian Office, simultaneously or subsequently, prepares a lengthy history and discussion of the case. While the General Accounting Office is working on one case, many others are awaiting their turn, because much of the data is contained only in a single, unduplicated series of badly wornout records. After many years spent in preparation the Government and the tribe go into combat before the Court of Claims under a jurisdictional act which usually is believed and admitted by all the parties to be inequitable, and which does not and should not have the character of an act for final settlement. Largely because of the unsatisfactory character of the acts, recovery in the Court of Claims by Indian tribes has become very infrequent, with resulting justifiable dissatisfaction by the tribes and their return to Congress for further redress. The total operation is greatly influenced by elements of sheer accident, such as the possession by Indians of the wherewithal to hire attorneys for the initial lobbying of their case. The above unsatisfactory state of affairs would be completely changed through the work of the Commission under the pending bill. The Commission would dispose of real and alleged claims, tribe by tribe. Its recommendations, whether for direct settlement or for jurisdictional acts, would be merely recommendations so far as Congress and the Budget were concerned, but its findings of fact would be a permanent accomplishment. The Commission would be empowered and expected to take into account the particular historical circumstances of each tribe, its treaties and its land occupancy and its subsequent fate at the hands of the Government, and its present needs. In the ascertainment of set-offs, the Commission would prepare for submission to Congress a total of possible set-offs such as in the Commission's judgment may be fair in the light of the particular circumstances. In contrast to the present system, set-offs other than direct payments upon the claim need not be searched for except in the case of claims already determined to have merit, thus saving effort and expense. Furthermore, in ascertaining set-offs the Commission would be in a position to prevent inequality of treatment by applying standards for the direction of research. Through photostating some of the records in the General Accounting Office, the Commission would be able to dispose simultaneously of the set-off questions affecting numerous tribes. The Commission would draw into its total picture the information in the possession of the Office of Indian Affairs-information which ordinarily, at present, is not put together until after a jurisdictional act, with all its fatalities, has become law. Based upon the findings of fact and the recommendations of the commission, there undoubtedly will be many cases where Congress and the tribes can readily agree upon a direct final settlement, thus making unnecessary any litigation in the Court of Claims or the Supreme Court of the United States. Where such direct settlement may prove to be not feasible because of unsettled legal questions, the claim may be submitted to the Court of Claims under an act framed on the basis of the research of the Commission to present adequately all the issues requiring determination. As the findings of the commission are made prima facie evidence of the facts of the claim, further investigation of such facts is in most cases rendered unnecessary. There will be no need of paying to private attorneys amounts which have aggregated millions, and which, before the final settlement is achieved under the now existing arrangement, would total tens of millions. A somewhat increased cost to the Government (i. e., simply the expenses of the Commission itself) will be balanced by a permanent reduction of costs in the Indian Office, the General Accounting Office, the Department of Justice, and the courts. And finally, it will be possible for the Indians, Congress, and the country to know with a clear conscience, that at least the facts have been ascertained, and that the merits of the cases are set down in an adequate manner. It is believed that just, final settlement would follow as a matter of course. I recommend enactment of H. R. 7837. The Assistant Director of the Bureau of the Budget has advised that this bill "would not be in conflict with the financial program of the President, if section 3 were amended in accordance with the recommendation contained in the attached copy of the Attorney General's letter to me of May 24, 1935, and if section 9 were amended to provide that the employees of the Commission shall be subject to the provisions of the Classification Act of 1923, as amended." To comply with the suggestion of the Assistant Director of the Budget, the words "subject to the provisions of the Classification Act of 1923, as amended", set off by commas, could be inserted on page 7, line 24, after the word "employ". The amendment suggested by the Attorney General would be on page 4, line 25, to strike out the words "accorded prima facie weight" and to insert "admissible in evidence but may be reviewed by the Court either on the basis of evidence taken before the Commission or on additional evidence, or both." Sincerely yours, Representatives of the Indian Department committee urging favorable action on S. 1902. О HAROLD L. ICKES, |