The Mena weekly star., 1921-07-21
CLAIM SHIP BOARD AN AWFUL WRECK
Huge New Losses Barred and Chair man Lasker Declares Congress ana County Were Deceived as to
 Financial Condition.

Washington, July 19.-The United States shipping board is a financial wreck.
 Congress and the country have been deceived as to it's true condition.
 Only at stupendous and undreamed- of cost can the American merchant marine be saIvaged to place on the seas.
 These were assertions today of A. D. Lasker of Chicago, chairman of the new shipping board, when, following a conference with President Harding, Mir. Lasker gave what he said was the first accurate detailed statement for fiscal year of the cost of operation of the board.
 Congress and the country were ha- grantly deceived as to the actual cost of operating last year. Chairman Lasker charged in announcing that he must go before Congress tomorrow and ask for an appropriation so large "it may disrupt the administrators whole fiscal program"
 The books of the board, Mir. Lasker declared, were not in a commercial sense books at all, and he said that if a purposeful effort had been made to keep the books so as to cheat and de- fraud Congress and the country, they could have been kept in no different manner.
 The chairman said the disclosures, which he later gave out publicly, had amazed and distressed President Harding when he laid before him at the White House, but that the presi- dent had laid down the policy that in his administration the public must be given all the facts, not "doctored picture"
 Mir. Lasker stated that whereas con gress had understood that 99 million dollars which it appropriated for the old shipping board in the last fiscal year tending June 30,) was the cost of the boards operations for that year, as a matter of fact the cost was 380 mill lion dollars.
 The board used, in addition to the appropriation, he said, 80 million dol lars that it had to it's credit in the treasury, and 200 million dollars which it received from the sale of ships and turned back into the enter prise instead of into the treasury.
 The chairman revealed that he would inform Congress that the shipping board for the current fiscal year, end ing June 30, 1929, would need possi- bly 300 million dollars, which, in the language of Mir. Lasker will "put lot of sand in the gear box of tax revi- sion.v
 Of the estimated 300 million dollars, the board expects to use one-half to settle, at an average of 50 cents on the dollar, approximately 300 million dol lars of claims pending against the oard, and the other 150 million dollars is the estimated loss in operation for this year. Congress already has ap- propriated 25 million dollars to finish construction of ships.
 MT. Lasker emphasized that the books of the board were in so choatic condition that he could not even now guarantee the figures given in this preliminary statement of the cost of operations for last year, and that be- caues of the methods of bookkeeping and operations, it was impossible to tell whether that 300 million dollars to be asked for next year would prove to be more or less than enough. He said he had almost physically exhaust ed himself and his force trying to fol- low the financial maze presented by the books of the board, and that he had found it necessary to call in out side auditors to arrive at the figures already in possession. ~