APPROPRIATIONS, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 1923 HEARING BEFORE SUBCOMMITTEE OF HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS CONSISTING OF MESSRS. JAMES W. HUSTED (CHAIRMAN), APPROPRIATIONS, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 1923. HEARINGS CONDUCTED BY THE SUBCOMMITTEE (MESSRS. JAMES W. HUSTED (CHAIRMAN), GEORGE HOLDEN TINKHAM, ROBERT E. EVANS, BEN JOHNSON, AND GORDON LEE) OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, IN CHARGE OF THE DEPARTMENTS OF STATE AND JUSTICE APPROPRIATION BILL FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 1923, ON THE DAYS FOLLOWING, NAMELY: MONDAY, MARCH 6, 1922. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE. STATEMENTS OF HON. HARRY M. DAUGHERTY, ATTORNEY GENERAL, ACCOMPANIED BY MR. RUSH L. HOLLAND, ASSISTANT, AND MR. JOHN D. HARRIS, CHIEF OF THE DIVISION OF ACCOUNTS. GENERAL STATEMENT. Mr. HUSTED. General, I thought there might be some special matters you wanted to bring to the attention of the committee in a general statement and emphasize. Mr. DAUGHERTY. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, there is nobody connected with this administration more anxious than I am to reduce the running expenses of the Government. I am thoroughly in sympathy with the desire of the President that the expenses of Government be reduced, and it has been my effort from the date I became Attorney General to study conditions of the Department of Justice and to see where it was possible (and to insist wherever it was possible) to reduce the cost of operating the department, and in that connection, having a general interest in the administration, wherever possible to lend advice or service in reducing expenses and increasing efficiency. The Department of Justice naturally, as you know, rode into great demands and expensive requirements to assist the departments in straightening out the business affairs of the Government. You take a private concern that has gone through a period of depression, where credit has been strained, money is scarce, although it does not go through the hands of a receiver or is not pitched into bankruptcy, necessarily the services of experts and lawyers are required to straighten out its affairs, and this is always a very expensive experience to a private business concern of any considerable magnitude. But you take a government where not only the business affairs of the Government itself, but its relations with foreign countries are involved, and you will have some conception of the picture of what 3 is now required of the Department of Justice. I have had an oppor tunity to read the statement of Mr. Palmer, my immediate prede cessor, before a committee when he appeared as I am appearing be fore you, and he was rather accurate and conservative in his statements that we might expect the Department of Justice to be required to perform greater service and a greater amount of business for the Government now than at any time in its history. During the current year we had an insufficient amount of money to pay necessary special assistants to the Attorney General, and the Government's business may suffer accordingly. The more expeditiously you transact business the more economically you can transact it. We had a great many cases during the past year which, due to the lack of sufficient help, were delayed and continued and which ought to have been further along than they are now, and would have been further along if we had had the money necessary to employ a sufficient number of assistants and experts. The Government is at a disadvantage in the postponement of these cases, because testimony is lost, witnesses are scattered, and they become old stories. It is more expensive and more difficult to tell an old story to the court in the way of testimony, presentation, and trial than it is a new story. Now, I have no disposition to reflect upon anybody who has ever been connected with the Department of Justice and I am not going to do so. I do not think district attorneys in the last few years have transacted as much civil business for the Government as they did formerly. I began instructing district attorneys, immediately upon assuming the office of Attorney General, that they would be expected to do a greater share of the Government's legal business in their localities than they had been doing and I think I have accomplished through them a greater percentage of work done by district attorneys, the United States over, than has been the custom for a great many years. I have the conception that a district attorney ought to be a man who is capable not only of prosecuting the criminal cases, but of giving good assistance to the Government in the discharge and trial of civil business. Of course, that being so and getting from them the best there is in them, requires a vast amount of special assistance to aid them in the trial of important and complicated cases. I have kept down as low as possible the compensation being paid to special attorneys. The Government is not a very liberal paymaster. If I had my way about it, with the experience of a man who has practiced law for 40 years and who has organized and been responsible for several law firms and who has been, for 20 years, more or less in touch with each of these departments down here and now having had a year's experience, devoting my entire time to the business of the Government-if I had the authority to organize a law firm to take charge of the Government's business, I would not expect to pay any man, as Assistant Attorney General, less than $12,000 a year, and I say to you gentlemen that I have not an assistant who is not capable and who has not the opportunity of making many times more than he is now receiving. The Attorney General himself might increase his earnings if he saw fit to retire. I know very well that the compensation we are paying is very much less than attorneys connected with the department would receive if they were engaged in practice with private concerns. Some times they complain. I want to be as liberal with them as the Government permits me to be, but none of them is being paid enough. If I was organizing a law firm to take care of the business of a client with the requirements of the Government, I would pay better compensation to attorneys on the average, and reduce the number of employees and increase their compensation, and thus transact the business more expeditiously and more economically. INEFFICIENCY OF CIVIL SERVICE. It is probably a gratuitous suggestion, but I believe the civil service is an interference to some extent in the discharge of public business. I suppose I have been voting in party platforms and local elections for the civil-service proposition for a great many years. About one-half of the employees in the Department of Justice are under civil service. While I am Attorney General and while the civil service law is in the Federal statutes I will enforce it and observe it as I expect to enforce and observe all laws. I believe if it were not for the civil service we could get along with less than twothirds of the number of employees under civil service and probably get twice as much work out of them. Mr. TINKHAM. Will you explain just how that might be done? Mr. DAUGHERTY. I suppose the Department of Justice has as good employees, and as faithful, who are under civil service, as those who are under the civil service in any other departments, but they are not as anxious, generally, to be in place to commence work on the dot as they are to quit work before the dot. I do not speak for the administration, but I am giving you the benefit of my observation and judgment, about which I have no doubt, and I am thoroughly convinced that the civil service is a hindrance to the Government. I would rather take the recommendation of a political committee, either Democrat or Republican, a self-respecting committee, for the appointment of a man or a woman, than to be compelled to go through the requirements of the civil service to secure an employee. They are hardly as ambitious, hardly as energetic, under the civil service as are those not under civil service. discovered, both before I came here as Attorney General and since, that civil-service employees spend too much time in trying to work out plans to make themselves secure in their positions. While this situation can not be remedied at the present time, still it is worthy of careful study. I In connection with the work of the department and as showing the increase and the importance of the work, I desire to state that there are now in the department more than 1,250,000,000 claims against the Government. There is one claim of over $120,000,000. Should the Government lose this case, it would lose a great deal more in dollars and cents than it would cost the Government to run the Department of Justice for several years. It is a very important case, as are practically all of them. Mr. TINKHAM. What case is that, may I ask? Mr. DAUGHERTY. That is a patent case called the Lee-Wright case. Now, the attorneys that the Government attorneys are expected to meet, in preparation, in negotiation, and in court, are the best men, the ablest men, that the bar affords. We are compelled to send, in |