You have about 350,000 C. C. C. boys to begin with. And yet coordination leaves a good deal to be desired. Sometimes the local people do not always cooperate, and it seems to me this bill provides a better administrative plan to coordinate these various activities. Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chase, you referred to the Central Valley project in California. Mr. CHASE. Yes, sir. Mr. CARTER. And stated some of the problems, including the problem of salt water and the lowering of the water level to the San Joaquin Valley. Of course you know the project that is under way there at the present time? Mr. CHASE. Yes. Mr. CARTER. Those problems you speak of are being solved, are they not? Mr. CHASE. They are being attacked in a splendid fashion, it seems to me. Mr. CARTER. Would they be attacked more intelligently after the enactment of this bill? Mr. CHASE. This bill would tend to bring in a good many collateral problems into the Central Valley situation. It is not only California that is affected. Mr. CARTER. That is true; but let us confine our attention to that. particular problem. I would like to find out whether it is your opinion that this particular problem would be solved better with the set-up provided for in this bill, or is it being solved sufficiently intelligently at the present time? Mr. CHASE. I do not know, naturally, enough about whether all of the collateral aspects are being solved at the present time. The plan looks like a very intelligent plan, and I think it will be a very helpful plan. I think this bill would probably aid. Mr. CARTER. I am not sure whether I understood you correctly about the centering of the whole thing in Washington. My impression is that you are opposed to centering the whole thing in Washington, but leaving greater discretion to the regional planning boards. Am I correct in my understanding? Mr. CHASE. Yes. Mr. CARTER. You speak of inventions and their effect upon mankind generally. In the provisions of this bill do you find anything that would give any one authority to take charge of the inventions? Mr. CHASE. No; it would not have anything to do with inventions. The authorities would be aware, through their research staff, that a new invention was about to be applied in a large way. Mr. CARTER. Of course, we are aware of that. You just told us about one change; we are aware of that now, are we not? We do not need to enact this bill to get that information. Mr. CHASE. No; but I think it is a good idea to have a clearing house through which this material goes, and according to the terms of the bill the regional authority renders a report on a certain date as to what should be done. Mr. CARTER. They render a report as to what they might like to have done, but according to you they could not do anything so far as the use of that invention in any particular way is concerned. Mr. CHASE. The American Bell Telephone laboratories cannot do anything; they just study it, and they make a proposition or a report to the executive vice president, who starts doing things. I think there are two aspects to it; there is a planning aspect and an administrative aspect. In title II I think we have to have some administrative powers with respect to the dams, and so forth, and title I contains mainly the planning functions and recommendations. Mr. CARTER. If I understood you correctly, you said you were not entirely familiar with the technical administrative features of the bill. Mr. CHASE. I am not. Mr. CARTER. You do not know whether you are in agreement with those features or not. Mr. CHASE. I have read them over, and I do not see anything that I violently object to. Mr. CARTER. You know that under the terms of this bill, before any recommendation of a regional board can be carried out, it would have to have the approval of the President of the United States, or somebody designated by him? Mr. CHASE. Yes. Mr. CARTER. Do you not think that is a concentration of authority and power here in Washington rather than letting the regional board have it, and is not that what you disagree with? Mr. CHASE. That is a matter of working them together; that is not altogether a local matter. There are certain aspects of the situation that ought to be centralized. There are others that need to be regional and there are others that are local. Let us find out what the functions are and how best to divide them. Mr. CARTER. As I understand this bill, every recommendation of a regional board of any kind must come to the President and be passed Do you agree or not with that procedure? on. Mr. CHASE. I would have to see how it worked out; I will agree to it; and let us see what happens. Mr. CARTER. You are willing to start on that basis? Mr. CHASE. Yes; and see what happens. I think in respect to the President we now have it would be all right because he is a man who loves the land. Mr. CULKIN. And the people, of course. Mr. CHASE. We are not talking about people. Mr. CARTER. Of course, you do not expect he will be President for many years more, do you? Mr. CHASE. No, indeed. Mr. CARTER. Of course, in enacting this bill we would have to keep in mind that Presidents come and Presidents go. Mr. CHASE. Certainly; you are much more wise than I on such matters. Mr. CULKIN. I have greatly enjoyed the gentleman's discussion. You referred to the Central Valley project. Did your examination into that tell you what it will cost? Mr. CHASE. One hundred and seventy million, or something like that, I believe. Mr. CULKIN. My information is that it is about one hundred and ninety million. In your investigation of this planning program did you figure out where we are going to get the money? Mr. CHASE. No. Mr. CULKIN. That is not in your present thought, is it? Mr. CHASE. It is; as an economist, I have thought over that matter quite a little, and I realize that we have got to get the money if we are going on living in this country. Mr. CULKIN. Do you know the present condition of the Treasury? The CHAIRMAN. Do you? Mr. CULKIN. I will say my information comes from Mr. Taber, of New York. Of course, he may be prejudiced. Is not that the real factor in these propositions? Mr. CHASE. Certainly. Mr. CULKIN. Let me ask you this: Do you believe in the locality sentiment—you know the theory of local improvements? Mr. CHASE. Yes. Mr. CULKIN. In other words, in laying pavement in front of my property, for instance, the general theory in municipal practice is to assess the abutting property for the benefit. You are familiar with that. Is that so? Mr. CHASE. Yes. Mr. CULKIN. Do you not think that these good people, who stand to make great gains from putting the sea in its place in the Central Valley project, ought to pay something on that as a matter of discipline? Mr. CHASE. I do. Mr. CULKIN. And as a matter of right to the rest of the taxpaying public? Mr. CHASE. Yes; there should be an allocation. Mr. CULKIN. You made a statement a moment ago in regard to the oil waste in 15 years. Mr. CHASE. I am following engineers of the Chemical Foundation, who have made the most careful study I have seen, and who have worked it out on the present consumption, the rate at which new fields are being found, the possibilities of extending that curve. They have allowed for new fields, divided one into the other, and it gives around 15 years. Mr. CULKIN. We have been told here by eminent authorities that the exhaustion of that supply is nowhere near in sight, and in the discussion of that they have mentioned these vast areas of rockbearing shale that will furnish a practically inexhaustible supply of oil to America. Are you familiar with that? Mr. CHASE. Yes. If we go on to the shale basis we can continue indefinitely, but the question is whether it will pay to get petroleum out of shale. They are working shale in Scotland and you get your gasoline as a result at 25 or 30 cents a gallon. Of course, that can be brought down when you go at it in a big way, but the engineering advice seems to be that while we could go on to shale, it would be a costly proposition and it might be better to go on to getting gasoline out of coal. Mr. CARTER. You say you have made some study of the Central Valley project. Mr. CHASE. I have read the reports covering that project. I have talked to some of the men who were on the project, but I cannot claim to be an expert on it. Mr. CARTER. Do you know anything about the Boulder Dam project? Mr. CHASE. A little. Mr. CARTER. You, perhaps, know that before the work was begun there, contracts for the sale of power and other products of the dam were entered into in a sum sufficient to amortize that dam? Mr. CHASE. I did not know that. Mr. CARTER. My friend from New York did not know it? Mr. CULKIN. Yes; I knew that. I never complained of Boulder Dam. I think it is a sound-planned economy. I want to be straight on that. Mr. CARTER. Let me say that while Central Valley project was being constructed, it provides for repayment of every cent that will be invested in there for the benefit of the local people. There is some charge for navigation that does not provide repayment. Mr. CULKIN. I am very familiar with that. Mr. CARTER. What amount is charged for that? Mr. CULKIN. A thousand times as much. Mr. CARTER. $12,000,000 out of $170,000,000; $12,000,000 for navigation out of $170,000,000. Mr. CHASE. I will make a point on that. The CHAIRMAN. $25,000,000 for flood control at Boulder Dam. Mr. CHASE. You asked me if I had worked out a financial method for paying those planning improvements. Take the Central Valley. If nothing is done there and the water table goes down and salt water from the Pacific keeps coming in, the Central Valley is going to become a desert and all these hundreds of thousands of hardworking people that live there are through. It seems to me that whatever it may cost in reason, that is a sound human investment. Mr. CARTER. I am very familiar with that region. Some of it has gone back to desert. I have seen wells pumping salt water at the present time. Mr. BATES. You come from Connecticut? Mr. CHASE. Yes. Mr. BATES. What is your objective up in Connecticut, on the Merrimack River? Is it more power? I come from New England myself. Mr. CHASE. No: flood control. Mr. BATES. And along with that, power? Mr. CHASE. I do not know.. Mr. BATES. You are not interested in power? Mr. CHASE. I am not from the regional planning New England group. I have followed some of their reports. I have not heard power mentioned prominently at all. If they are going to have a big head of water in their reservoirs, over what they may need for flood control, they will get some power out of it. Mr. BATES. I was leading up to the question of how the New England Rivers like the Merrimack and the Connecticut, lend themselves to power development in any flood control proposition that will take care of our conditions up there. Mr. CHASE. I am not competent to discuss that particular engineering point of view. I suspect if there is good flood control a series of reservoirs there would give some power. There is quite a little flow down both the Merrimack and the Connecticut throughout the year. There are questions of pollution and flood control. Pollution is, perhaps, even as great a danger as floods in those rivers. They are open sewers. Mr. BATES. Is not that after all quite a local matter? Mr. BATES. Why is it regional? Mr. CHASE. The Connecticut River rises in Canada, and flows through New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Mr. BATES. Why cannot the States up there get together and settle that question themselves without coming to Washington? Mr. CHASE. State compacts are pretty tough things to get through. Mr. BATES. They got them through up there on flood control. They have been tough to get through here. That is one place we have met real difficulty-that is here. I was leading up to this question: The power tie-up in this bill seems to be an objective, and I was coming to the question of whether or not there is need of more power in New England. Mr. CHASE. I think there is need of more power everywhere in this country. Mr. BATES. Is there lack of power today in New England for the needs of the people up there? Mr. CHASE. I would say not more than half of the farm houses are electrified in New England today. That is true in Vermont and Maine. Mr. BATES. There are facilities for providing the power if there is the desire to get it and the ability financially to pay for it. Mr. CHASE. In due time it would be worked out. Mr. BATES. If there were enough appliances today available in New England, is there the power necessary for the residents of that vicinity? Mr. CHASE. Not enough generative capacity there; I doubt it. Mr. BATES. You do not base that on the permanence of the need that you have? You Mr. CHASE. NO. I just know that power is like Ford cars. can expand them indefinitely and it gets cheaper the more you use it and open it up. Mr. BATES. Do you know whether or not there has actually been a number of power plants shut down in New England recently or within a short time? Mr. CHASE. I do not know. Mr. BATES. I do. Mr. CHASE. I presume you are right. The CHAIRMAN. In the mills and other industries of Connecticut, and throughout the New England States, what proportion of the power utilized there is now obtained from water? Mr. CHASE. I could not answer that. The CHAIRMAN. Is it a large proportion? |