question was whether they were entitled to have them replaced, or whether their endorsement in blank deprived them of their property, after they were stolen.

So I found that the law said that the Secretary may restore stolen bonds, under regulations to be prescribed by him, and naturally I looked for the regulations. I hunted high and low through the Department of Justice. There simply was not a trace of any such regulations. I called up the Treasury Department and got hold of the Bond Division, and they said, "Why, yes; there is such a regulation, but it has been out of print for years. If you will come over here, we will be glad to let you see it." I went over and saw that copy of it, the relevant part, and I said, "Is this the latest thing?" And they said, "No; there have been three or four amendments. We have them in the drawer here." They never had been printed and that was the thing that controlled the question whether the ladies out in Illinois were entitled to $2,000, which were their life savings.

Because of that, I became much interested in the question and began talking about it among my various young colleagues and various subordinates in the Government, both in the old administration and the new one, because I was here for more than a year and a half in the new administration. Mr. Leland and some of us began talking about it, and we took it up with Mr. Dickinson, who was then Assistant Secretary of Commerce, and he thought that something ought to be done. A committee was formed, but as you probably remember, everybody was busy in 1933 and it did not move fast. I left the Government in September 1934 and went to the Harvard Law School. I was then more free to see what was in my mind, and I wrote the article to which Mr. Celler has referred which, incidentally, was entitled, "Government in Ignorance of the Law", and the basis for that title was a quotation from Bentham, who is the greatest authority on legislation the world has ever known, who said:

We hear of tyrants, and those cruel ones; but, whatever we may have felt, we have never heard of any tyrant in such thought cruel, as to punish men for disobedience of laws or orders which he has kept them from the knowledge of.

That quotation seems to apply to the situation that then existed. Immediately upon the publication of the article, not because of the article's merit, but because the Supreme Court had, at the exact time, said there was the greatest public need for these things. There were a great many editorials strongly in favor of it, of which two were in the St. Louis newspapers. If I had realized Mr. Cochran came from St. Louis, I would have brought them along to put them in the record. Mr. COCHRAN. I read them both, but I am not guided solely by St. Louis newspapers. They were excellent editorials supporting your view. I did not agree, however.

Professor GRISWOLD. No; but they do indicate some interest on the part of the people in St. Louis.

The difficulty with the situation, or with the remedy which Mr. Cochran suggests, seems to me is the fact that for some of the regulations, it is not so hard to find them as it is awfully hard to be sure you have got the latest thing. The dangers are from the regulations you do not know about, and as the situation now stands, it is almost hopeless to find out whether that is the regulation on any certain particular matter.

Since we do have the Federal Register, we can look at one place, the index, and find out if that is the regulation on this point.

Now, I hold in my hand a ponderous volume, all of the statutes of the United States of America. I dare say it cost a lot of money to print it, but it is edited and printed and published by the Congress; and the Secretary of State elected this department in the Department of State which employed some people, who have made the annotations and put the marginal notes, and so on.

It seems to me that is wholly consistent with the present bill. It is consistent with the present bill to say that that function ought to be abolished, or the law ought to be repealed as to wherever the authority rests for publishing the statutes, because people could write in to their Congressmen, and say, "I understand there was a statute passed last year; please send me a copy of it." Similarly, it seems to me that exactly the same thing could be done with the Supreme Court reports. We could all write to the clerk and by paying a price of 25 cents a page, we could undoubtedly get a typewritten copy of all the opinions, and it would certainly be possible to get them. We would know where to write to get them.

Now, finally, with respect to libraries, I just happened to see in the paper the other night a notice of the meeting of the American Library Association, which is to be held in Richmond in April. The chief topic for discussion is the chaos in Government documents, and the first of the remedies suggested is the Federal Register Act and where it offers to help us out.

Now, finally, Mr. Cochran says there has not been any advance orders. It seems to me that is not any test of the probable response to this thing. I happened to publish a small book of my own in January. That has not anything to do with this and obviously is not important, is not as important as the Federal Register, and undoubtedly not much more readable than the Federal Digest will be, but there were three advance orders. Since that time, after the book appeared, it had done nicely. People just do not sit down and pay out their money until the thing is actually available. When the Superintendent of Documents gets this going and sends out subscription blanks to his libraries and mailing lists, it seems to me extremely likely that most of them will sign on the dotted line and send those blanks back.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CELLER. We are very grateful to you, Professor Griswold, indeed. Now, Dr. Connor is here. Dr. Connor is the head of The National Archives, and I am sure he would like to say a few words. STATEMENT OF R. D. w. Connor, ARCHIVIST OF THE UNITED

STATES

Dr. CONNOR. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, the utility and advisability of this publication has been so thoroughly covered by those who can speak with greater knowledge of it than I, since I am not a lawyer, that I think there is no necessity for me to add anything on that point.

I shall only say that The National Archives comes into the picture as the agency designated by the statute to administer this Federal Register Act, and we are trying to do it to the best of our ability and

as economically as possible, and shall, of course, continue to try to do so.

If there are any facts or data that the committee would like to have, as to the result of our work and investigation, I shall have to refer you to Major Kennedy, who is in immediate charge of that division of the National Archives.

Mr. MICHENER. How large is the personnel?

Mr. KENNEDY. We have about 12 now and will eventually have 15. Mr. MICHENER. Are they under civil service?

Mr. KENNEDY. Nobody in the Archives is under the civil service. Mr. MICHENER. Who selects these people?

Mr. KENNEDY. The personnel of that division?

Mr. MICHENER. Yes.

Mr. KENNEDY. It is selected by Dr. Connor.

Mr. MICHENER. If you think this is such important work and scientific work, do you think that it should be under civil service, and that the Archivist should be under civil service as well?

Mr. KENNEDY. I was in the Federal Government, the Board of Tax Appeals, for 8 years and the Securities Commission for about 6 months. I was not under civil service at any time, because, in general, throughout the Government, the attorneys are not subject to civil service.

Mr. MICHENER. I appreciate that.

Mr. KENNEDY. But most of the employees-not most of them, but six of the employees of the Register will be attorneys. The director is an attorney and the editor is an attorney. That would only leave seven people, all in clerical capacities, who could, in accordance with the general scheme of things be placed under civil service.

Mr. MICHENER. It seems to me we can arrange the scheme so that being attorneys will be no handicap to the men.

Mr. KENNEDY. Yes, sir.

Mr. MICHENER. And will give him permanency in his life work. It seems to me that, when we are setting up these archives and when we are setting up the Federal Register, we should eliminate politics entirely, and these men should be trained to do a particular work and should be kept there. His tenure of office should not depend entirely upon politics.

Mr. KENNEDY. I can say that every effort has been made in picking the personnel, to pick the men with experience. The editor, for instance, was 10 years in the State Department, handling the Executive orders. We hope to have an assistant editor who will also come from the State Department, where he has been doing similar work. I was assistant reporter for the United States Board of Tax Appeals and reporter for the Securities Commission. I think we are getting a qualified and capable personnel.

Mr. HANCOCK of New York. When will you be ready to start publication?

Mr. KENNEDY. On the 14th of March the first issue will appear, in accordance with the supplemental appropriation bill recently passed; the filing beginning on the 12th and the publishing beginning on the 14th.

I may say to you that the President signed, on the 18th of February the Executive order which transfers the custody of all of the Executive orders to the Federal Register Division. That Executive order takes effect on the 12th of March.

Dr. CONNOR. I think it ought to be said that the personnel of the division is larger just now than we anticipate that it will be as a permanent matter, because, section 11 provides that there be compiled a supplementary edition of the Register, in which must be published the rules and regulations and so on heretofore issued. When that is out of the way, it will take a smaller staff to run the daily issue of the Federal Register than it will take to make that compilation. Mr. MICHENER. If you are going to do away with these other departments or boards, eventually, your organization could do all of that work in one central point. For instance, if the Commissioner of Customs makes a regulation or order, he could send it over to your place, and there it could be puslished just as well as in the other department?

Dr. CONNOR. Under the terms of the act, as I understand it, if that order has legal effect, he has to send it to us for publication." Mr. CELLER. He must send it within a designated period of time? Dr. CONNOR. Yes.

Mr. KENNEDY. You see, the Register is limited to publishing only those things of general applicability and legal effect.

Mr. MICHENER. I am sure that Mr. Cochran, when he understands all of this, will want to eliminate these other bureaus and let these 15 men do all of this work.

Mr. COCHRAN. Will you let me make this observation?

Mr. CELLER. Yes.

Mr. COCHRAN. I would like to say that you are going to find a large number of Congressmen and a large number of Senators interested in the Archives and in the Federal Register. They are not so much interested from the standpoint of creating The National Archives or the Federal Register as they are in getting the 250 jobs that are not subject to civil service; and I hope, if you report a bill you will take care of that, which is most important from the standpoint of the merit system. Put these employees under civil service and require them to prove that they are qualified to hold the jobs. You need experienced men in the Archives if it is to function properly.

Mr. MICHENER. I will be there and help you on that. I have done that on every one of these things.

Mr. RAMSAY. Why not put them all under civil service?

Mr. COCHRAN. I am for that 100 percent. I know my people will get more jobs through civil service than through political appoint

ments.

(Here followed discussion off the record.)

Mr. CELLER. Mr. Kennedy, will you suspend a minute?

Mr. KENNEDY. Yes.

Mr. CELLER. Our colleague, Congressman Driscoll wants to say a few words.

STATEMENT OF HON. D. J. DRISCOLL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM PENNSYLVANIA

Mr. DRISCOLL. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, I came over here this morning to be informed, because I was interested in this legislation at the time it was passed.

I am, as you all know, a new Congressman. This is my first session. I came here at a patriarchal age, I might say, from looking over my

colleagues who are younger by several years, and I had some trouble, of course, in acquainting myself with the multitude of duties.

I am inclined to very much favor this Federal Register and very much oppose the repeal of the act creating it.

There are some matters in my own district that I may refer to. I live in the place where the petroleum industry was born, the Twentieth District of Pennsylvania. In that district are Oil City and Franklin and other places where the industry has developed, and ever since 1859 my district has been considered the center of the petroleum industry of the world. I get a great many inquiries about petroleum regulations.

Two or three of the counties of my district are coal-mining counties, and I get a great many requests about the regulations of the Bituminout Coal Commission, and things of that kind.

My interest in it is very largely sefish, because it is going to make my work in Congress very much easier. I am without the experience that some of you gentlemen have had; I hardly know where to turn to get some of this information, and like most country lawyers I like to know everything that is going on in my office.

For that reason, I feel that it is going to help every Congressman, at least it is going to help me, if this work is carried out.

We

Professor Griswold has said something about the difficulty of finding these regulations. We have tacked up in our law library at home this framed motto: "The difficulty is not knowing the law, but knowing where to find it." Here we have the answer to that. are not like the Roman Emperor whose name has slipped me-and I have asked each of the school teachers, one on each side of me, what his name was and they have forgotten-but we will call him Caligula, who tacked his edicts so high on the walls of the Forum that nobody could read them and then punished the people for violations of the edicts.

I have not any personal interest in what is going on down at the Archives Department, because I never saw any of these gentlemen in my life until last week, excepting Mr. Brauner, and I never saw him till after the passage of the bill.

Now, I have made those rather incoherent remarks, and I thank you for your permission to speak.

Mr. MICHENER. I take it that you will get in and help me try to get these appointees under civil service when it comes up on the floor? You think, of course, that a man should be competent and that he should be secure in his tenure, and that it should not be political?

Mr. DRISCOLL. If you blanket in the present employees I will consider going along with you. If the rest of the employees are like the ones I have contacted I will be glad to see it done.

Mr. CELLER. Professor Griswold would like to make an observation. Professor GRISWOLD. I simply want to make one remark, which would be of interest to Mr. Cochran: I think this is a situation where it is very easy, in the name of economy, to do something that will turn out to be very expensive, and I think particularly about just one case, which could be one case out of many, in which I had charge of preparing the Government's brief before the Supreme Court of the United States. The question involved some insurance in favor of an enlisted man in the Navy. He had enlisted at one place and had been discharged and reenlisted again within 3 months after that, and the