FORTY-SIX BUSINESSMEN NEW OFFICE OF PRICE ADMINISTRATION EXECUTIVES.-TWO charts were now presented introducing the new businessmen brought in to key executive positions within the Office of Price Administration. See charts 38 and 39, appendix, pages 1521 and 1522.

There was a limit, as you remember, on our appropriation bill last year, appropriation act, requiring that businessmen be brought into top policy positions in the O. F. A. I believe that happened, that occurred before I got here, just before I got here.

Now, at that time we went to the Comptroller General and asked what that meant, discussed it with him, and it was decided that seven top men, top positions there in the organization as it existed at that time, came under that requirement. In addition our district directors and our regional administrators also came under it.

Now, regardless of the act, regardless of the requirement, we have obviously gone much further than that. There were a great many businessmen there before, but they were not in the top key responsible jobs. They were there; their experience was frequently very useful. We have brought in these men from business. There were 46 of them. We had difficulty getting them to come here. The agency was not the most beloved agency in the United States. People said they didn't want to come to Washington anyway in the middle of the summer. We had quite a job getting them to leave their businesses, give up their own responsibilities, and come down here and try to help us operate the agency which they had complained so about in the past. We did get a great many. We could use more, but I think that they have come in and they have contributed a great deal.

At the same time, just in parentheses here-it hasn't anything to. do really with this discussion-I have always felt in my heart that the requirement was unfair. I haven't liked it in theory. I think, to say that one man has assets another man doesn't have because he comes from one group of people, is-should be-foreign to our way of doing things. I like to feel I have gone way beyond any requirement that Congress laid down. I should like to feel that I had eliminated the complaint that necessitated that requirement, but as it stands today we have economists on our staff whom any business could hire tomorrow and put them in top administrative jobs and find them as good organizers as any people that they have seen. I also know some businessmen that It think are thoroughly bad executives. I do not think there is any one group that has any monopoly on executive ability or clear thinking.

I just want to say that in parentheses. Perhaps it doesn't belong here, but it is a subject I feel rather strongly about, and I like to make that statement, having, I feel, gone much further than any requirement Congress ever asked us to follow.

Senator DANAHER. From what date would you say O. P. A. has shown its greatest improvement, Mr. Bowles?

Mr. BOWLES I think the task in the last 6 months has been an easier I think that the job which was done fundamentally in the beginning was a much harder job than anything we have had to undertake. I do not know whether the group of people we have there today are competent to have done that basic job. I do know that, coming in on top of the basic difficult job being done, we have had a relatively easy time making obvious improvements in an agency which everyone should know is necessary, which it shouldn't be very hard to convince people you have got to have. I think we have had an easy time compared to the original job that I had nothing to do with.

Senator TOBEY. What date did you take over, sir?

Mr. BOWLES. I came down here to work with Prentiss Brown on July 27, 19-last summer.

Senator TOBEY. 1943.

Mr. BOWLES. Prentiss Brown resigned around November 1st, I believe. I think that was the date.

Is that a good answer? Does that answer you, Senator Danaher. Senator DANAHER. An excellent answer. [Laughter.]

Mr. BOWLES. Here [indicating a chart] are the people that have come in from business in the last 6 or 7 months. It is a long list, and you probably don't want to have me go through it. The division heads

are:

Here is Jean Carroll, in charge of the Food Division, formerly of the Kroger Baking Co.

Byers Gitchell today has charge of the so-called Consumer Goods Price Division, which includes everything except food. He was formerly president of the Golden Rule Department Store in St. Paul.

Mr. Jim Brownlee, Deputy Administrator in Charge of Price, corporation president, president of Frankfort Distilleries and before that with General Foods Corporation.

Clarence Slocum, in charge of Industrial and Manufacturing Pricing, formerly president of Beckwith Chandler Co. I believe it is up in Newark.

Col. Bryan Houston, Deputy Administrator in charge of rationing, of Young & Rubicam.

Walter Straub, Director of the Food Rationing Division; W. F. Straub Co., out in Chicago, a small business firm.

We have gone into two groups. We have gotten, I think, some experienced people. Now, that hasn't been without additional headaches also, because people coming in from business take time to learn the problems of government, the problems of economics, the impact of all the various things that we do. It is very easy for a man coming in from a narrow field, working on prices in a narrow field, to fail to see the impact of what he does in that field on many other parts of the

economy.

Senator RADCLIFFE. Mr. Bowles, you spoke just a moment ago about bringing in more businessmen, putting them in positions of executive responsibility. About what does that process mean in the way of percentages?

Mr. BOWLES. How many business people or businessmen there are in the O. P. A.?

Senator RADCLIFFE. Well, I mean the changes which you have made effect about what sort of a change in percentage? In other words, what percentage of new men have been brought in who are businessmen or men of business training, to replace those who had not had that particular kind of training?

Mr. BOWLES. Well, in your top positions all your top administration people in price are all out of business. Then you have your branch and section groups down below. I believe there are 70 or 80 sections also, Mr. Rogers?

Mr. JAMES G. ROGERS. Ninety-eight.

Mr. BOWLES. Ninety-eight different sections. Now, how many of those sections are headed by people out of business, I don't know. Obviously they can't all be headed by these new businessmen because there are 46 there altogether. I don't know what the proportion is. There are about a thousand people in the Price Department, including all those clerks and stenographers and everything.

Senator BANKHEAD. Mr. Bowles, from the beginning of this organization the biggest problem which has come to Members of Congress about its administration, as perhaps you well know, is the voluminous rules and regulation and reports that have been required. Now, what have you done to simplify that or reduce it?

Mr. BOWLES. I will get to that in a minute.

Senator BANKHEAD. Well, that is all right, if you are coming to it. Mr. BOWLES. All right.

Senator BANKHEAD. I don't want to disturb you, but it is a thing of paramount interest to most of us.

Mr. BOWLES. It certainly is, and should be.

Senator CAPPER. Mr. Bowles, you speak now of the great effort made to secure the right man for handling big business problems. How about getting the right man to handle the problem of the farm situation? Did you work that out?

Mr. BOWLES. Well, I have got that; I want to discuss it later, sir. I think we are very slow in that particular field. I think we are quite slow. I will discuss that a little later, if I may.

Senator CAPPER. You think you have men who actually know the farm situation?

Mr. BOWLES. Well, I think we are a lot better than we were. We Lave brought in-when I got here last summer we talked a lot then about establishing farm advisory committees all through the country, with a national farm advisory committee and various farm advisory committees at the regional and district offices. We worked on that trying to find the right people for some time and were late in getting started. I believe Mr. Howard Williamson, who came in to head up that group, came in about the 1st of December. Now, since then he has been out through the country setting up these regional and district office advisory farm groups, meeting with farmers, trying to get their problems, trying to give them to us, and trying to give them a conception of ours. It is a two-way operation.

I don't know how many district offices have farm advisory committees now. I would think all of them should have within the next 60 or 90 days. We have been slow on it. We have been far ahead in the business side. I think we have been slow on the farm side, but I am deeply conscious of it, and it has just been one of those things we haven't done as fast as we should. I think within 60 to 90 days you will have an advisory farm committee in every district or State office. Senator CAPPER. I think that is encouraging, because I have a great deal of complaint from the farm folks that the situation was not being handled in a way that protected their interests.

Mr. BOWLES. Well, they aren't allowed to participate enoughSenator CAPPER. Yes.

Mr. BOWLES. In seeing how the thing is thought out; and I feel that once they get that feeling of discussion, the feeling of knowing the story in its early stages, they will accept a whole lot of things they won't accept otherwise. Just so with any group. Naturally, with anything that grew as fast as this, you develop a lot of various little departments and people stuck over in corners, and not stuck over in corners, expensive ways of doing things. There comes a time when you would like to prune and should prune for the benefit of efficiency.

$4,000,000 FROM WASHINGTON-STRENGTHENING THE FIELD.- Mr. Bowles now introduced three charts indicating the manner in which decentralization was emphasized through adding to the responsibilities and authority of the field organization. See charts 40, 41, and 42, appendix, pages 1523, 1524, and 1525.

We cut about $4,000,000 out of the Washington offices and our eight regional offices and added the money on down to the district offices to give better service with your local boards.

Now, the regional offices were set up originally as supervisory offices. We used to send our budget money more or less out to them, and they were to pass it on down to districts. Well, unfortunately some of that money had a bad habit of resting in the regional offices, and they began to build up the regional offices I think beyond where they should have been. We took a lot of that money and pushed it on down-asked them to do it, and they did it, and today their regions are operating as supervisory groups.

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Then your district offices, of course, are your operating offices. feel the closer you can get, as a matter of fact, down to where your people are, to where your business groups and other groups are who are asking the questions and trying to get the decisions, the better it will be.

CHANGES IN THE LEGAL DEPARTMENT. - Mr. Bowles' next chart presented changes made in the organizational position of the Legal Department. See chart 54, appendix, page 1537.

The Legal Department operating as a separate unit was abolished. The position of general counsel was kept with a staff of lawyers there, but the lawyers themselves were put on the pay rolls of the administrative departments.

Now, previously-and all these things grew up rapidly and quickly overnight, and it is always easy to look back and say it would have been better to have done it another way-but your whole legal department, really, running down through the organization was a completely separate department, and your administrative people and your legal people frequently had a conflict there of interest, or at least ideas, in trying to get regulations out. There was a great deal of criticism of this arrangement. We solved it I think reasonably well by putting the lawyers on the administrative staffs as legal counsel to the various deputy administrators. For instance, the Price Department has its own lawyers, the Rent Department has its own lawyers, and so has rationing, and they naturally get together for conferences and meetings, and so on. All the lawyers, however, in price are responsible to Mr. Hart as associate general counsel for price, who in turn is responsible to Mr. Brownlee as deputy administrator for price.

Also we had what we called a special services division there, Professional Service Division, on which were all the accountants and economists. They were in a separate group under a separate boss. We took all those people and split them off onto the various operating departments; so price had its own economists and its own accountants, and rent had its own people, because before that it just hadn't worked very well.

ENFORCEMENT DEPARTMENT ESTABLISHED. -Mr. Bowles' next chart depicted the establishment of an independent enforcement department. See chart 44, appendix, page 1527.

We also established a separate enforcement department under a deputy administrator.

COOPERATION WITH OTHER AGENCIES. -The next chart called attention to the efforts which were made to improve relations with other agencies of the Government. See chart 53, appendix, page 1536.

We have tried very hard, and it has not been particularly difficult, to work much closer with other agencies. It is very easy to talk about there being too many war agencies. Everyone says, "Well, you have got just too many different agencies." The thing to remember, I feel, is that administratively you can handle only just about so much; and if you get anything in these agencies much bigger than they are, or handling any more responsibilities, you are going to be obviously in difficulties because it just couldn't be controlled. Therefore you need several different agencies which more or less must necessarily intertwine and slightly overlap.

The problem is not how it looks on an organization chart, because I think you can make a lot of mistakes looking at organization charts. Lots of times people forget that human beings have to fit into those squares and that some human beings differ a great deal from others. Some have different abilities than others, and you can't just say the man in this square is supposed to have all these assets. You just normally do not find them all in that man. So you are always going to have to do some figuring here. The result, therefore, is either good or bad depending on how closely, how congenially, how effectively, how efficiently that work is carried out.

Now, I feel, and I think that the other agencies would agree with me on this, the War Production Board and O. P. A., War Food and O. P. A., and the Petroleum Administrator's Office and O. P. А. today are working on a very close and thoroughly congenial basis. The old days of irritations and arguments behind the scene, or sometimes not behind the scenes, I think are well over. We have had very little or none of it, and since I have been here I have never seen a period when I felt more that not only our agency but all agencies had more or less come of age. They have been through their growing pains and they are operating a lot better together than they ever have. Now, we have established with other agencies some joint boards. These are a few:

Petroleum Rationing Policy Committee.
Food Rationing Policy Committee.

In other words, with the Petroleum Administration we have set up a joint committee, so that we get any ideas they may have on rationing. Theoretically rationing is entirely our problem. You could say, "Give us the quota. It is our job to distribute it." But they are in the business of gasoline and fuel oil. They have ideas on it. We have ideas on distribution. It is a healthy thing to get those together in a committee that meets regularly and discusses those problems. We do that in many other areas there of the various phases of our work with other agencies.

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