The CHAIRMAN. Now what is it one of the greatest scientific institutions in the world, is it not, and spread all over a vast area and continuing to spread? General MARSHALL. And a great credit to the country. The CHAIRMAN. Now, do you think there is any danger of the administration of public works doing that? General MARSHALL. You can not deny the danger, but I think the effect should be the opposite: There should be contraction and not expansion governmentally. I abhor Government in industry, whether it be architecturally, engineering, contracting, or legal. I want to keep the Government out of industry, commerce, and the professions. It can be accomplished through the administration of public works-both can be accomplished. The CHAIRMAN. That is all right; but you spoke a minute ago in reference to inspection and supervision. General MARSHALL. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. Do you think the Government architects and engineers could do that? General MARSHALL. It depends upon the specific instance. Of course, your inspector must be competent for the specific thing he is inspecting. The CHAIRMAN. Do you think the Government of the United States should give up to outside architects entirely in connection with the Government buildings? General MARSHALL. No. The CHAIRMAN. If they hire the architect and give him the power to supervise the construction of the building, then he also does the inspection work to see that the plans and specifications are complied with, does he not? General MARSHALL. No, sir; he does not in ordinary practice. General MARSHALL. Not the way they are doing now; not generally speaking, they do not. For example, take the post office being built in Chicago, the inspectors are from the Supervising Architects Office. The architects are consultants for them. The CHAIRMAN. They way they are starting to make a lot of noise about the job in Chicago, they are liable to have a whole lot. more of Government inspectors out there before long. General MARSHALL. They are Government inspectors; not architects at all. The CHAIRMAN. I do not know about the Government inspectors, but I know a lot of people complained and they are complaining. They wanted me to start an investigation, and I refused to do it unless they would come in here with affidavits showing that something was wrong. I think I am justified in doing that. They have written me and they have been in to see me about that Chicago job. Now, about stock buildings, you are opposed to stock buildings? General MARSHALL. As a general practice, I am; and, again, I will assert nobody ever had built under his direction more stock buildings than I. The CHAIRMAN. Now, do you see any objection, taking a small town, say, over here in Maryland, of twenty-five or thirty thousand people, and the Government putting up a certain kind of post office there and then the Government also putting up a similar post of fice-identical, using the same plans and specifications-in a town of the same size, that required the same plans, specifications, in Colorado? General MARSHALL. Maybe. The CHAIRMAN. What objection? General MARSHALL. It may be that in Maryland you can get very different materials from what you can get in Colorado. The CHAIRMAN. That is the only reason, then, you see-the question of whether you can get the same materials? General MARSHALL. That may be so. I would hate to go into a thesis on that subject without giving that specific subject considerable consideration. It is a theme that the architects have continually before you and hold continually before you; it is their baby. They have brought it into being, put the swaddling clothes on it, and are trying to nurse it up into a full-grown individual and, if I began to combat the architects on that, why I might find I am wrong. The CHAIRMAN. Now, when you are looking at this thing from the standpoint of economy, this set-up, would not there be a tremendous saving if stock buildings were constructed in this country by the Government, using the same plans and specifications, which would eliminate the architect, and all that would be necessary is to have a Government inspector out there to see that the plans and specifications were followed out? General MARSHALL. As an abstract theory, your statement has logic in it. But as a concrete proposition, you have got to know your locality. For example, on the Texas border you might want to use adobe; whereas in Colorado you may use granite. Therefore I do not believe the proposition is universally applicable or sound. The CHAIRMAN. Is there any objection in the world to having a stock building providing for granite and another one providing for limestone, and another one providing for marble? General MARSHALL. There might not. The CHAIRMAN. Suppose you were going to construct a building right in the heart of a marble country, where you could get all the marble you want-from the standpoint of savings in transportation costs and everything else, you might be able to bring that cost down to ordinary stone? General MARSHALL. I think, Mr. Chairman, the answer to your question is that to generalize on a thing like that you can be logical and forceful; but the only answer to it is, when you have a $25,000 building to build, what is the best thing to do-to take a stock building or something else? The CHAIRMAN. If you were the head of great industrial corporation and had plants scattered all over the United States and you were going to build offices and you were also going to build homes for your employees, because there was no place in the locality where your employees could live, do you mean to tell me you would not construct stock buildings at the different places in the country where your industrial plant had branches? General MARSHALL. It depends upon the work. Now, as a matter of fact The CHAIRMAN. I am talking about it from the standpoint of spending your own money, not spending the Government's money. General MARSHALL. Using that exact illustration, the American Telephone & Telegraph Co. has architecture all over the country. The CHAIRMAN. Yes: but there is only one American Telephone & Telegraph Co. in the world. Let us take some one else. Drive along, coming to Washington from the West, and see what the corporations have done in the way of constructing stock buildings. Now, we are trying to save money for the Government; that is what we are trying to do. General MARSHALL. That is exactly my purpose. I am trying to save money for the Government and trying to fix a way that the Government will get out of industry and the professions just as much as it is practicable for it to do so. The CHAIRMAN. You say we can reduce the personnel from 20 to 25 per cent, say, in the Supervising Architect's Office, by letting the engineers handle this work; you said that a while ago, did you not? General MARSHALL. I did not say that. The CHAIRMAN. What did you say the reduction in personnel would be? General MARSHALL. I said there is much overlapping between the different departments and now if the departments were consolidated through the elimination of overlaps and through more efficiency in handling the inside work, that from 15 to 25 per cent of the employees could be eliminated. The CHAIRMAN. Now, part of that work is done by architects in the Treasury Department? General MARSHALL. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. The plan is to take that work away from them and put it out in the field and let the private architects do the job? General MARSHALL. Not necessarily. I have not said all the work should be given to private architects and engineers. I have said the Government should reduce rather than expand the amount of work it does. The CHAIRMAN. In my opinion if that plan is followed-and that is what they are asking, they have legislation pending here, hearings have been held on it by the Public Buildings Committee-we would make a mistake. General MARSHALL. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. Of course, we could do away with the Architect of the Treasury Department and hire a man in place of him on the outside. Now, where would there be a reduction? That applies the same to the engineers, does it not? If you take work away from the man on the inside, you have to hire a man on the outside; there you have another man in his place. General MARSHALL. I tried to answer that question when Mr. Schafer asked it. I do not know whether I answered it completely. Do you want me to answer it now? The CHAIRMAN. No; I am trying to get you to show me where there would be a saving. I can not see it. Now, take the Engineer of the Army. What would be the result of taking work away from him? We can not discharge the Engineer in the Army; he is part of the national defense, and we are never going to discharge him; he is going to be in there and is one of the most important parts of our national defense. If we take that work away from the En gineers of the Army and then have to hire engineers outside to do the work the Engineers of the Army are doing, we are increasing expenditures, increasing personnel rather than reducing it. Now, is not that true? General MARSHALL. I think not. The CHAIRMAN. I wish you would show me where it is not. General MARSHALL. There are only about 150 members of the Engineer Corps assigned to public works at any given time, whereas there are employed by the corps approximately 1,000 civilian engineers most of the time. So the bulk of the work is done by engineers under civil-service status. These men would come under the administration of public works if the rivers and harbors work were transferred. Furthermore, under the provisions of the bill the same numbers of the corps might be regularly assigned to the administration of public works. Therefore as far as both the military and civilian engineers are concerned, the number may not be changed. There certainly would be no idleness necessary. The number of civilians might be decreased owing to reduction of overlap throughout the construction realm. Under present procedure, for example, assume there are 50 engineers on the pay roll. They are maintained and paid year in and year out, even though the volume of work drops. They are held in anticipation of the volume of work increasing. It is my belief that the personnel should be reduced to and maintained at a minimum and when the volume of work justifies, it be given to engineers and architects in private life. Through this means costs would be reduced &nd the Government would compete to a minimum degree with private business. I gave a number of other reasons in answer to a question by Mr. Whittington. The CHAIRMAN. What-the engineers of the Army? General MARSHALL. I am talking now about the general proposition of governmental control of its fiscal matters. The CHAIRMAN. That is part of it. General MARSHALL. Therefore, I believe that the engineering and the architectural forces should be reduced to the minimum of what is considered good judgment for the Government to have, and that as much of it as is practicable and can be economically let to those on the outside should be let, so that the force in the Government service is only sufficient to take care, as far as you can project in the future, of what is going to be the minimum. The CHAIRMAN. Do you apply that to the engineers of the Army also? General MARSHALL. I apply it to all the forces of construction in the Government service. The CHAIRMAN. Including the Engineer Corps of the Army? The CHAIRMAN. The Bureau of Yards and Docks? General MARSHALL. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. From your experience in the Quartermaster Corps you handled all of the cantonments, did you not; you let those contracts just like that [snapping fingers] all over the country; they were on the cost-plus basis. You do not believe in that; you said so? General MARSHALL. Except for emergency purposes. The CHAIRMAN. Do not you think we would be in a better condition and save more money for the Government in an emergency, if we had our set-up in the Bureau of Yards and Docks and in the Chief of Engineers office, as we have now, rather than to bring in men from the outside in the event of an emergency, and not go along and have to do as we did before? General MARSHALL. You are talking about war, now? The CHAIRMAN. Yes. General MARSHALL. Where do you think that the officers of the Engineer Corps go in time of war? The CHAIRMAN. They would go to war, and one of the most important functions that they must perform in time of war is the construction of roads and bridges; is not that true? General MARSHALL. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. Then why should not they have charge of the construction of our roads and bridges in this country? General MARSHALL. I have offered no objection to their doing it. I say they can get a better class of work and a more diversified class of work in the administration of public works, than they get now. The CHAIRMAN. Then you do not object now if we would also put the Bureau of Public Roads under the control of the Army engineers and let them go ahead and have that work for the training and experience that it would give them? General MARSHALL. I think that is the cart before the horse. The CHAIRMAN. Why? They are being trained in the work they must do in time of war. General MARSHALL. The principal work of the engineers should be military. The CHAIRMAN. What is the construction of roads for; it is in all of the road acts that it is for the purpose of national defense, is it not? That is in the first paragraph after the enacting clause, that the construction of our roads is to benefit the national defense? General MARSHALL. May I read you something which is taken from General Atterbury's testimony, speaking before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, on August 27, 1919, relative to the Army reorganization, General Atterbury said: Now, the Corps of Engineers: From the standpoint of the Army, it is a mistake to take the cream off of the jar of milk and put them in the Engineer Corps; then you send them off to school, from which the engineers are to go out into civil work. The result is that you have produced neither engineers nor soldiers. That is perhaps a little exaggerated, but I say they are not engineers, because, when they are out on engineering work, their work is done by civilians. The work ordinarily done by the Corps of Engineers and in the Treasury Department, the buildings and river and harbor work, should be done by a civil organization under a civilian department. The military engineer work should be, of course, under the Corps of Engineers. I do not think you ought to take the best men in the class, the men who stand highest in the class for that purpose. The best engineer is not always the highest standing engineer in the class. The CHAIRMAN. Who is this colonel? General MARSHALL. This is General Atterbury, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The CHAIRMAN. He was not a member of the Army. |