TABLE 5.-Civil employment in the executive branch of the U. S. Government by departments and independent establishments outside the District of Columbia, May 1941 1

The footnotes on table 3 are also applicable to this table. ? Included in the figures for these agencies are employees paid from Civilian Conservation Corps funds as follows:

The CHAIRMAN. We have received two letters from the Bureau of the Budget. The first one is dated June 2 and the second one is dated July 31, 1941. The first one reads:

EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,

BUREAU OF THE BUDGET, Washington, D. C., June 2, 1941.

Hon. FRITZ G. LANHAM,

Chairman, Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds,

House of Representatives.

DEAR MR. LANHAM: Your letter of May 17, 1941, requesting my views on House Resolution No. 209 and House Concurrent Resolution No. 36, relating to the transfer of Government activities from the District of Columbia, has been received.

This entire subject is now being studied by the Bureau of the Budget at the request of the President. Among the points to be covered are: Estimated personnel and space requirements for the balance of this fiscal year and for the fiscal year 1942; office space which could be made available; the effect upon the operating efficiency of Government activities occasioned by their dispersion throughout the city of Washington; the relationships which such agencies may have with emergency-defense activities being conducted in Washington; and which agencies, or parts thereof, could be removed with the least disturbance both to operations and to personnel. In addition, cognizance will be taken of the effect on community facilities of continued concentration of governmental activities in Washington.

It is noted that the resolutions apparently would require the President to give special consideration to a specific city in any move toward decentralization of Government offices in Washington. The selection of locations outside of Washington and of the offices to be moved to such locations would entail careful consideration of a number of factors and would have to be worked out in close cooperation with the operating agencies. It is believed, therefore, that any designation of specific locations or offices to be moved should be omitted from legislation dealing with decentralization of Government activities. Insofar as the general objective of decentralization is concerned, I do not think that this objective would be in conflict with the program of the President.

Yours sincerely,

The letter of July 31, 1941, reads:

Hon. FRITZ G. LANHAM,

Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds,

JOHN B. BLANDFORD, Jr.,

Assistant Director.

JULY 31, 1941.

House of Representatives.

MY DEAR MR. LANHAM: I have your letter of July 28, 1941, in which you indicate your interest in a study which is being made by the Bureau of the Budget of the problem of transferring Government activities from Washington to the field, as a possible remedial step in meeting the office space and housing shortage in the District of Columbia.

At the President's request the Bureau has undertaken such a study and has endeavored to develop the problem from two angles. We have sought to determine immediate and projected need for office space, and have given some consideration to housing requirements to meet such needs. We have also been canvassing the views of the various departments and agencies with reference to what they feel might be done to ease the situation. The reports from the agencies are now being studied and all the issues weighed as the basis for a report to the President. You recognize, I know, that many administrative difficulties are encountered in moving all or part of an agency away from the seat of government.

As to the question of pending legislative proposals, I believe it would be unwise to enact any measures of a restrictive nature, as for example, the ordering of the transfer of particular agencies, the exclusion of any agencies from any possible decentralization program, or the selection of definite locations to which transfers would be made.

Pending the completion of our study and the submission of our findings to the President, I am sure you will appreciate that it would be premature for the Bureau to attempt to present conclusions at this time.

Yours sincerely,

HAROLD D. SMITH, Director.

STATEMENTS OF MILTON S. EISENHOWER, COORDINATOR, OFFICE OF LAND USE COORDINATION; W. A. JUMP, DIRECTOR OF BUDGET AND FINANCE, AND ARTHUR B. THATCHER, CHIEF, OFFICE PLANT AND OPERATIONS

The CHAIRMAN. We have asked representatives of the Department of Agriculture to appear this morning and I think it would be appropriate at this time to hear from these gentlemen. Do you wish to have just one of your group speak for you?

Mr. EISENHOWER. Mr. Chairman, I will try to bring the Department's views and data to you and to answer such questions as may be asked, but I have brought other gentlemen with me to help. My name is Milton S. Eisenhower. I am Land Use Coordinator of the Department. Mr. W. A. Jump is Director of Finance, and Mr. Arthur B. Thatcher is Chief of the Office of Plant and Operations, which among other things handles the leasing of all space.

Mr. Chairman, there may be some discrepancy in the figures that I shall give you and those contained in the letter of the Secretary, because the figures he has used are as of March 31, and I am giving figures as of June 30. This difference in dates makes a substantial difference in employment figures because in Agriculture employment fluctuates pretty drastically by seasons. Sometimes we have 60,000 employees and in another part of the year we may have 250,000, the change being made up largely of temporary employees.

The Department of Agriculture is glad of this opportunity to present to the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds a brief description of how we have attempted over a period of years to decentralize Federal agricultural activities.

The Department is essentially a field organization that leads from a central nerve center here in Washington. There are offices of the Department in practically every county seat town in the United States, from which the work with farmers is locally managed. There are offices in the important market and packing centers, where inspectors guard the food supply, and other employees gather facts about markets and carry out the provisions of the 50 or more regulatory laws administered by the Department. There are inspectors at the seaports, who protect the country from plant diseases and insects that might be introduced from abroad. There are, in addition, several hundred research stations where scientists breed and test new varieties of plants, develop new methods of disease and insect control, new methods of growing crops and feeding livestock; develop new uses for wood products, cotton, soybeans, corn, and other agricultural products; test and improve fertilizers, farm machinery, and the other goods used to produce our foods and fibers. In all, the Department is represented in more than 3,000 field locations all over the country.

To carry on its many lines of work-research, fact finding, education, regulation, various types of services, action with farmers-the Department had on its rolls 88,732 employees on June 1. Of these 75,956 were headquartered in the field and 12,776 were here in Washington. In terms of percentage, this is 86 percent located in the field and 14 percent in Washington.

66888-42-pt. 1-3

Throughout its history, the Department of Agriculture has been an advocate of decentralized administration. This position is due partly to the type of work the Department has been called upon by the Congress to do, and partly to a deliberate policy of taking the Department close to the people it is trying to serve.

The first major job the Department was called upon to do was research. The way the research program is handled illustrates the Department's policy of decentralization. This line of work early was made a participating enterprise of the Department in cooperation with the 48 State experiment stations and their 175 branches. The great bulk of the research work, therefore, is carried on outside of Washington. In addition to research carried on in cooperation with the States, the Department has been authorized to set up 9 Federal stations under the Bankhead-Jones Act. At these 9 field locations, problems of special regional interest are studied. The 4 regional laboratories established for the purpose of searching for new uses for the principal crops, such as cotton, and the Forest Products Laboratory at Madison, Wis., are further examples of research programs located outside of Washington.

The Agricultural Research Center at Beltsville is a fourth unit in the chain. At this station, 17 miles from downtown Washington, certain fundamental principles are developed which are essential to the work of all agricultural experiment stations, and the new developments and creations of one State are tested and made ready for introduction to other States.

The research staff located in Washington are the research planning and administrative heads who aid in and have a profound influence on all types of work administered by the Department, and a research group which to do its work requires access to central library facilities, specially constructed laboratories, the staff of the Bureau of Standards, and the world-wide scientific knowledge that is centered here.

Let's take for an example the Bureau of Plant Industry, which is a typical research bureau of the Department. Its investigations are conducted at some 200 experiment stations and testing fields in the important agricultural areas of the country. Of its total staff, 80 percent are located outside of Washington. The Department plans to move practically all of the Washington staff of this Bureau-the 20 percent now here in Washington-to Beltsville as soon as accommodations have been made ready. Located at Beltsville, the Bureau scientists will still have access to Washington facilities and also continue to exercise their influence and responsibilities in helping to formulate the Department's operating policies. At Beltsville, too, it will. be associated with the research staffs of seven other bureaus of the Department-some 1,200 scientists in all.

The Agricultural Marketing Service illustrates the decentralized character of the Department's organization for carrying on service and regulatory functions. Of approximately 3,100 employees of this Service, more than 2,300 are located in the field.

I have here a map showing the location of the permanent field offices of this Service. One of the important tasks of this field organization of 2,300 people is to provide grading and inspection services for a variety of commodities. Another is to prepare day-today reports on supply and demand conditions for more than 100 commodities at important markets the country over. This informa

tion is gathered by employees at terminal markets and shipping points and in producing sections. Close to 90 percent of all of these market news people are located in the field. For example, only 9 out of 138 employees in the Livestock, Meats, and Wool Division are located in Washington; only 2 of the 23 Dairy and Poultry Division employees are located here, and only 18 of the 130 people in the Fruit and Vegetable Division. For the Bureau as a whole, the ratio is 74 percent field employees and 26 percent Washington.

The so-called action programs of the Department-most of which have been undertaken within the last 8 years-illustrate most markedly the trend toward decentralized administration. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration in 1935 employed 6,136 employees, 89 percent of whom were at that time located in Washington. In the 6 years that have since elapsed, the number and proportion of Washington employees bave declined, until now 74 percent are located in the field and 26 percent in Washington. The decline in A. A. A. Washington personnel in these 6 years was from 5,479 to 1,821. This decline was brought about, I should say, in the face of an increased work load, with the addition of new programs, by placing on the State A. Á. A. offices a much larger share of the responsibility for program administration.

The figures I have cited for A. A. A. include only the full-time or permanent employees. They do not include the 90,000 or so community and county farmer committeemen who help the Department in peak periods and who, of course, work in the field.

The Soil Conservation Service, the Farm Security Administration, and the Forest Service all are organized so as to carry programs to the farms, range lands, and forests. The proportion of Washington to field employees in these agencies is very small. All are about equally decentralized. Only 6 percent of the Forest Service employees are headquartered in Washington; 6 percent of the Soil Conservation Service group; and 5 percent of the Farm Security Administration employees. If temporary or seasonal employees are taken into account, the Washington percentage is still less-about 3.5 percent for the Forest Service, for example.

These three bureaus are organized along similar lines. Each maintains a small force of policy-forming and facilitating officers and fiscal, personnel, and clerical staffs in Washington. Each maintains from 9 to 12 regional offices and 48 or more State or area offices which direct the work with the people on the land. The better to coordinate their activities, these three bureaus wherever possible have their State and regional headquarters in the same town when their individual work loads and programs permit. For example: All have regional headquarters at Lincoln, Nebr.; San Francisco, Calif.; and Milwaukee. Wis. The Forest Service is now preparing to move its northeastern regional office, now located here, to Philadelphia in order to relieve Washington congestion and to associate itself more closely with the Soil Conservation Service and Farm Security Administration regional offices located there.

I have here statistical information on all of the bureaus and offices of the Department showing the number and proportion of employees located in Washington and in the field, as of June 30. Rather than bore you with further recitation of figures, I would prefer to leave them with you for possible insertion in the record. The totals for