Bisbee daily review., 1920-11-10
CORRUPTION OF OFFICIALS |S
 ALLEGED BY Z
 INVESTIGATORS
Padding Payrolls and Whole sale Theft of Supplies and Equipment Are Included in
 Many Allegations in Report

WASHINGTON. Nov. 9-(By the Associated Press)-Corruption of em- ployes and officials of the shipping board emergency fleet corporation, graft in purchasing supplies for and in repairing government owned mer- chant ships. and the use of political or other influence in obtaining con- tracts for ship construction and the allocation of completde vessels to op- .erating companies are among a maze Of charges made in a report submitted to the house committee on shipping board operations by A. NJ. Fisher and J. F. Richardson, former employees of the board.
 Chairman Benson of the shipping board refused tonight to discuss the report.
 The report was made public 'o- night by the committee of whicl Rep- resentative Walsh, Republican. .assa- chusetts. is chairman. It covers more than 100 printed pages and deals ex- haustively with many phases of ship ping board operations as observed by the committees investigation over period of more than a year.
 Taking up in detail seven general phases of the boards activities. the report charges gross waste of govern ment sums and failure of the various divisions of the board to cooperate ef- fectively and the almost complete fail ure of some of the divisions to func- ton properly.
 Payroll Padding Charged
 Padding of payrolls by firms repair ing shipping board vessels. owner ship by companies operating govern ment vessels of stock in companies furnishing supplies to those craft at prices ranging anywhere from 40 to 30 per cent above wholesale costs. wholesale theft of supplies and equip ment from ships and the loss Of mil lions of dollars through improperly secured loans. made to contractors building government vessels also were charged.
 The investigators alleged that in some cases the fleet corporation loan ed money to contractors and accept ed. as security, bonds issued by com panies incorporated by the contrac. tors, which bonds have since been found to be worthless" The charge also was made that in many cases lshipbuilding plants which are going concerns are turned back to contrac- tors as salvage propositions and the contractors thus NIeap large profits at the expense of the fleet corporation"
 Another allegation in the report was that many of the firms holding lconstruction contracts inaugurated li- berty bond selling crusades in their plants and charged to ship construc- tion 10 per cent of the money thus se- cured as the cost for selling bonds. 1 It was charged that in some cases the fleet corporation authorized con- tractors to take from their appropria- ! ted funds" sums to purchase liberty bonds and that subsequently in some cases these bonds were sold or hypo- i thecated at a loss and the money thus realized, used for plant pur- poses"
 They. (the contractors) then put ' in a claim against the United States shipping board emergnecy fleet cor poration for the losses thus incurred" declared the report.
 Sales at Loss Alleged
 Going into the matter of salvage of hulls and materials and stores. the report alleged that it was asserted by persons in position to know" that the sale of the millions Of dollars worth Of materials" owned by the fleet corporation, had netted no more than 1872 cents on the dollar at time when the shipping board at points was purchasing the sa'Ge 'l.- terials in the open market at r ic as in advance of the original cos .ces of the materials sold.
 The, report said that the "Barde company" was trying to purchase un- der a blanket contract all supplies