The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-11-24

til after the first of the year, It will take that long for the comnlat- tee counsel, Hugh A, Fulton and Charles Patrick Clark, and their in- veStigators to go over all the data from the defense agencies and pre- pare the case, But letters have al- ready gone out to all government departments and defense agencies, asking them to SueMit revised lists of all their conSNltNrtS, lawyers, Nc~ countants and assorted experts, to- gether with their past and present corporate connections and their government pay,
 There may be an inclination to conclude that this investigation preSageS . showdown between the New Dealers and the special fee men who are grouped under the broad classification of dollar-a- year boys, Men from big business have come in by the score and de- parted by the dozen. The number was nearly 300 once, but a recent register listed e6 dollar-a-ye0r men and & more who worked for noth- ing.
 If these dollar-a-year men were inclined to feel sore at being "in- veStigatetl" again, pack up their bags and 60 home for good, they might he juStlAed, Before one of these experts from business can be appointed, he Is investigated by the FBt to make sure he has no criIn- inal record, and then by the TreaS- ury to make certain Ae and his firm are on the Up-Nrd-up AS far as income and corporation tax rec ordS are concerned,
 HELP WANTED
 The question naturally arises as to where the government can get men with tho "know-how" if 1t doesn't pick them from private busi- ness, as Bernard Baruch has rec- commended 1t must, The New Deal answer is that the wrong kind of experts have been hired. Instead of getting engineers and general Su- peTintendentS like Knudsen, there have been too many chairmen of the board and dlrectorS-flnallcial men, not production men.
 Hugh Fulton of the Truman com. mittee stan insists, however, that this is no sense Q probe to "get" anybody. The Truman committee has functioned as an auditing com nlittee, making a study of the de- fenSe progress, preparing a critical record of how the defense program was carried out, With the conduct of the preparedness program under the closest scrutiny, the committee feels 1t has duty to look into every phase of the defense effort,
 In the case of the dollar-a-year advisers, this means Q study of the sub conscious background with which they approach the problem of national defense" as Fulton puts 1t. In other words, wou:d the nat ural conservatism of good bust. nessman make him reluctant to see the country expand its productive capacity, realizing that after the defense effort ended there would be surplus productive capacity of the same kind the country went through in the late, unlamented depres- sion? And would this reflect un- favorably on the speed with which all-out defense progressed?
 QUESTION ON SALARIES
 The question of the defense ad- viserg' connections with business has come up in the Truman commit tees public hearings only once. That was when Arthur H. Bunker, who since June has been chief of the aluminium and magnesium sec- tion of the materials branch of OPM, testified before the commit tee in September Bunker was for- merly vice-president of the Lehman Corporation of New York, which Is an investment trust affiliate of Leh- man Brothers, banking firm.
 It was brought out that Lehman Corporation owned stock in the Aluminium Company of America, and that Bunker's salary of $6O, 900 a year was still paid by the Lehman Corporation. The matter wasI dropped there, but that's what the committee evidently means hy "Sub- conscious background"
 Another case would be that of Ralph K. Davis, now deputy petro- leum co-ordinator on a government salary, but before that, vice-presi- dent of the Standard oil Company of California. And there are others.