Evening star., 1943-07-11


tary appropriations bill for the hscal
year 1884 Congress have tongue 10
despairing outcries against waste ana
extravaganza" in the national arnla-
ment program. Members steeled TO
handed profusion gasped help
lessly at the War Departments demand
for $50, ,034, ,899, ,673 of new money plus
s12 500 900 900 in holdover balances.
During the next II months alone the
Army was empowered to spend single
handed q. treasure which Minority
Leader McNary of Oregon described as
hardly conceivable in its magnitude"
This record and astronomical fund totals
ST. 500 100000.
Senator Harry S. Truman OF Missouri,
chairman of the War Investigation Com
mittee, told his colleagues on the Senate
floor that the Army and Navy know
how to waste money better than any
other organization have ever had any
thing to do with"
"I have almost become pessimist in
the Job which has been given to me- he
continued TT seems that when public
funds are to be expended no one has
any interest in what happens to them.
I could stand here all afternoon and give
example after example showing that
tremendous sums of money are simply
being thrown away with scoop shovel"
Fears $500, ,000, ,OO0, 900 Debt
Senator Byrd of Virginia declared that
the war production program has been
unnecessarily wasteful and eXtrava-
CANT" and that, while there was reason
for such conditions at the start of the
defense effort, increased efficiency should
be possible after So months.
Unless greater care is taken in the
expenditure of public funds" he pro-
tested, at is not difficult to visualize
debt far in excess of $500 ,00o, 600 .0oO''
Representative Albert j. Engel, Repub-
lican, of Michigan, who has constituted
himself one-man investigating COM
sonally visited At production plants in
an effort ito learn just why Bottom
medium tank costs 0,000; why a 105-
nm. gun on two wheels costs s21 900,
but $685. on a self-propelled mount,
and why Springfield rifle costs $50,
when commercial rife costs much less /"
The factor more responsible than any
other for exorbitant costs he pronounced
to be the administrations habit of meas
uring progress by amounts of money
spent. This policy, he asserted, mot
only discourages economy but actually
encourages waste. The more a depart
ment or service can spend, the more
credit it is given for success in war pro-
duction."
$3.50 a Week Mending Shoes.
Next in order he listed excessive wage
scales in war factories. He found a few
machine gun assemblers who were being
paid So, TAO year, or s240 more than the
the Army Service Forces. He inter-
viewed girls who had worked at ribbon
counters at sl8 a week, and who after
two to six weeks of instruction, became
welders at S65 a week. At Fort Devens
Mass, he found other girls who were
being paid $3.50 a week while learning
to mend shoes.
Vocal cords we're set pealing in both
chambers by instances of comparative
armament costs to taxpayers in the
United States and Great Britain. Two
such cases were alleged as follows:
When 26 Flying Fortresses failed tc
return from the June 13 raid on KieI
and Bremen, an outlay of some s13,-
100000 in money alone was knocked out
of the sky during one brief operation
But the loss would have been only one
fourth as much, or approximately $3,-
100000, if the victims had been English
four-motored Short Strings
Destruction of the Prince of Wales of
Malaga on December 10, 1941 plunged
beneath the sea British investment oi
S40,000000. If the dreadnaught hac
been an American battleship of the
same class, the price of few minutes
of aerial bombardment would have beer
S85 100000 at least-that Is to say, one
and one-half times the expense of erect
ing the Empire State Building, or four
ffths of the construction cost of New
York's Radio City.
Comparison of Spending,
There was recalled a chart made public
simultaneously with President Roose.
velt's budget message of last January II
1t presented estimates of overall wal
costs to the principal belligerents fol
the current fiscal year. The figures ir
billions Of dollars were these: Japan, z
Italy. 8; the Soviet Union, Is; the United
Kingdom, 81; Germany, 35, and the
United States, 100. 1t was noted that
Uncle Sam, prize spendthrift of the war
had thus far got the least for his money
in terms of military profit; while the
penurious Mikado had gained by far the
most.
In view of the problems titanic area
1t is not surprising that there has beer
no overall Congressional investigation
of war costs as such. Various commit.
tees have probed into one sector or an
other. At hearings on appropriations
claimant establishments have been re.
quired in general way to substantiate
their prospective budgets 1t would prove