Askov American. [volume] (Askov, Pine County, Minn.) 1914-current, 1942-03-05
Still Serving (D

Following the comprehensive
report of the Senator Truman
committee an article was pub
lished in this column in January
dealing with the dollar-a-year
men at Washington. It stands to
reason that men who are work.
ing for the government for moth
ing or for a dollar year have
other interests or they would not
and could not serve the public
without pay. Their interests are
largely with the private concerns
by whom they are paid and it is
not a wholesome condition. Rep
resentative John NJ Coffee from
the state of Washington, gave
speech in the House of Repre-
sentatives on Feb. 4th, on this
questionable practice The speech
follows:
Mr. COFFEE of Washington. Mr.
Speaker, early in August of 1941 I
read into the Congressional Record
an article from the August Peoples
Lobby Bulletin, dealing with the sub
ject of dollar-a-year men and Civ
ing their corporate connections. This
article revealed the amount of con-
tracts received by or awarded to
the great industrial organizations with
which such dollar-a-year men were
affiliated. The article attracted great
attention throughout the country,
provoking much discussion and evoll-
ing editorials pro and con in the
metropolitan press of the United
States. l was abused and wrathfuliy
condemned, in journalistic jeremiads
directed at me, for having had the
temerity to invade the sacrosanct pre-
cincts of big business and point out
the amazing coincidence of great cor
porations getting the juiciest por-
tons of war business and their execu-
tives being dollar-a-year men work.
ing for the o. P. M. and similar
Federal agencies.
l introduced House Resolution 1913
in November 1941, the purpose of
which was to secure the creation of
a special House committee of seven
members given the directive of max
ing full investigation as to the iden-
tity, compensation and corporate af-
filiations of dollar-a-year men, and
the duties and responsibilities vouch-
safed them by our Government, and
providing funds for such investiga-
ton. This resolution was referred
to the Committee on Rules, which up
to the date hereof has not seen fit to
hold hearings thereon
The Associated Press carried to its
member newspapers in the fall of
1941 an interview I had given as
chairman of the liberal bloc of the
House of Representatives, calling at
tention to the ineptitude of dollar-a-
year men and the breakdown of the
war program due to their unwilling
ness to distribute war production on
a wide and diversified scale through
out the country, asserting they in
sisted upon concentrating war pro-
duction in the hands of few large
concerns-56 corporations and sub
salaries received rs per cent of the
primary contracts in the whole war
program as of November Is, 1941.
On January /, 1912, the United
Press published an interview with
me, and gave it to its member news
papers throughout the country, in
which I drew attention to the neg
of in,
eral, pointing out that with some
few exceptions the dollar-a-year
men had failed to convert the auto
mobile industry to war production;
had refused to support drastic limita-
ton of nonwar goods; had created
chaos and confusion in the war pro-
gram. This precipitated widespread
discussion, with editorial condemna-
ton in few cases, and commentator
in fewer cases, and eliminated in a
flood of lengthy analyses of the war
program and observations by radio
commentators and nationally known
newspaper columnists.
The country was getting disguised
with delays and the lack of organiza-
ton characterizing o. P. M. opera
tons. 1t was becoming apparent that
dollar-a-year men were chosen in
many cases from among financial
and political dilettantes, in the words
of the Cleveland industrialist, Cyrus
Eaton. Had the dollar-a-year men
selected been chosen from actual pro-
duction experts such as master me-
chanics, general foremen, efficiency
experts, and so forth, the picture
might very well have been different.
But in most cases the men selected
were executives of great corporations