Norwich bulletin., 1920-05-14

pany to enable it to complete it's con tract after it had exhausted the money already received, was touched upon again today. ConressInan Patrick H. Kelly, of Michigan, asked the witness if he did not think that the governments attitude was forced in making this advance"
 unfinished ships would have been worthless" Mir. Conlin replied,
 Tt was no justification of the com pany that the government is obliged to put up money to protect itself" Kelley retorted.
 MT. Conlin told of a river passenger boat (the Adirondack which was being used at the plant for lodging purposes and as cafeteria. He did not know to whom it belonged. but the company had expended S7000 in repairing it. He thought the craft might have belonged to the United States Steamship Co. He said the receiver abolished the cafeteria as too costly.
 Asked if he knew whether any of the ship funds went into the plant MT Con lin said the records were so confused it made it difficult to distinguish He said | the government has a mortgage on the plant for s600,0 900. but the marketable value of the plant which he character | zed as being very good at present, was 1 $3.000, ,000. He said however, there
 is second mortgage of the receivers | for the so per cent. unpaid claims or 1 creditors.
 William C. White of New London. | former accountant for the Groton Iron i Works and now comptroller for the re-
 stricted receivers, attending to the pay ment of insta1lments to creditors, was the next witness.
 ] He told the committee that, although
 there was no evidence of padded pay 1 rolls or mistakes intentionally made he l had never seen payrolls so badly kept He said mistakes involving as much as | 5000 had been found in the books but i added they were sometimes in favor of the government.
 He testified further that about s50O,- o00 of shipbuilding funds had been spent
 in the plant for labor, overhead and ma terials
 I Mir White stated that prior to the
 time the recievers took over the plant 1 a fund of s10,000 to S15 900 representing Liberty bonds subscriptions taken from employees pay which he said had been diverted to the plants petty cash fund
 was adjusted through a personal checl, from either E. A. Morse or the New Lon- don Lighterage Co. The witness added that E. A. Morse was the only one in- ], terested in the lighterage company.
 Representative Tom Connally of Texas asked the witness if he found any traces in the books of money being diverted tc dummy employees. White replied that ' he had found none, adding that just , the names of a few employees could not ! be checked up.
 At Wednesdays hearing, E. E. Nc ], Nary, comptroller for the New York district for the Emergency Fleet cor poration, read a letter written by W . Wansley, resident auditor for the Flee corporation at the Groton Iron Works to c. H. Cornell, comptroller for the
 Boston district explaining that the req.
 son he had been late in completing hi:
 audit of the plant was that the book: were inaccurate.
 The letter stated there were from
 1000 to 5000 errors in the company's books relating to names, rates, orders and classifcations of employees. Questioned by Representative Kelly O
 Michigan, MT. McNary said he was un
 able to say whether the payrolls wer ; padded or net.