The CHAIRMAN. And that is to remain available until the end of the fiscal year 1918 only, I believe?

Secretary BAKER. That is my understanding of it. Perhaps I ought to make one other comment about that sum. Many of the items which you can discover in the details which Maj. Pierce will give you are items which could not be expended perhaps in a year; those dealing with heavy ordnance and things of that sort. The United States has never been equipped for quantity production 'of various supplies that the Army needs. In order to get immediately the very large quantities of things we need or as immediately as they can be gotten, it will be necessary for us to divert factories from one industry to another to get men who are doing one kind of thing to tool up their factories for our kind of production. It is not possible to secure that to be done unless contracts be given that justify the doing of it financially. I have in mind particularly, for instance. the business of manufacturing aeroplanes. There are two or three factories in this country which, it is believed, are especially adapted to the manufacture of aeroplanes, but which at present are manufacturing motor cars. If a three-year program could be provided by which those motor-car companies

The CHAIRMAN (interposing). I would suggest, Mr. Secretary, that you can not do that under the Constitution.

Secretary BAKER. I realize that is true, and that no appropriation can be made available for more than two years for military purposes, but we could make the contract which would provide for payments to be made and deliveries to be accelerated so they would come within that period. I know the constitutional difficulty, but I am explaining now the large sums that can be expended in a single year and which are necessary to cause this diversion of factories into our kind of production.

The CHAIRMAN. Right in that connection, I notice that the estimate uses this language, "To be immediately available and to remain available until expended." I rather thought that would be against the Constitution, but the draft of the bill, section 10, provides that it is to remain available until June 30, 1918. That would be all night, of course.

Secretary BAKER. Whatever language you use will be restrained by the Constitution, so that the language in the appropriation would not be against the Constitution, because the Constitution would be superior to it and control it and make it mean within the two years. Mr. TILSON. The language could remain the same, and the construction of it would have to be that it could be expended until two years from the date of the passage of the bill.

Secretary BAKER. I think so; is not that true, Gen. Crowder?
Gen. CROWDER. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Then, as I understand, so far as the details of this estimate are concerned, Maj. Pierce will explain them?

Secretary BAKER. Yes; Maj. Pierce is here with me, and I would like to have you inquire of him about that.

The CHAIRMAN. Then we will leave that subject until we are ready to hear Maj. Pierce, unless there are some questions the members want to ask the Secretary about the amount. If not, suppose we take up the bill section by section.

Mr. KAHN. I would like to ask the Secretary a question about the cost. Were your estimates based on present-day costs?

Secretary BAKER. Yes; largely based on present-day costs.

Mr. KAHN. So they do not take into account at all the probability of an increase in the prices of various commodities?.

Secretary BAKER. I think not. I think they are based on presentday costs entirely; are they not, Maj. Pierce?

Maj. PIERCE. Some allowance has been made for expected increases in certain articles.

Mr. GREENE. I would like to follow that with one question before we take up the details of the bill. Mr. Secretary, will there be any suggestion to us with regard to a possible change in the Army pay tables? Is there anything in the bill that suggests that?

Secretary BAKER. No, sir.

Mr. GREENE. Has the department taken into consideration the experience of the mobilization on the Mexican border and the act of Congress which provided a sum for the support of dependent families of soldiers with regard to any possible action in connection with this emergency along similar lines?

Secretary BAKER. The estimates will be found to include a sum for taking care of dependents; but it is the present intention of the department, and this bill gives us power and discretion so to do, to eliminate persons having dependents either in their immediate families or mothers or brothers and sisters who are minor children.

Mr. KAHN. Will that apply alike to officers and enlisted men? Secretary BAKER. I had not thought of applying it to officers, because the compensation of officers is ordinarily large enough to take care of their families. It will apply wherever the burden would otherwise be thrown on the Government or the community.

Mr. GREENE. Then it is the contemplated or possible policy of the department to get around this by not taking the men likely to have dependents rather than provide means for the support of them? Secretary BAKER. By excusing those who have dependents.

The CHAIRMAN. Before we start on the bill are there any other questions?

Secretary BAKER. It might be worth while, Mr. Dent, to point out that that policy was not possible to be adopted with regard to the militia or National Guard when it was called out before, because of the feeling in the guard in many places that it would be prejudicial to the guard, the guard having been formed on the other theory, and immediately to have discharged all the married men in it would have been to wreck the guard substantially. Therefore it was not possible to carry out that policy at that time; but now, as we are organizing substantially a new force and the draft power applies to supplement the guard, and we will have the guard at full strength, as a result of its operations the objection which originally obtained to excusing married men no longer exists.

Mr. MCKENZIE. Mr. Secretary, in view of what you have stated about conscription and your purpose to excuse those who claim to have dependents, will not that involve on the department a great deal of work in investigating whether or not a certain man is entitled to be excused on account of the fact that he claims to have dependents?

Secretary BAKER. Yes; it is a very large undertaking.

Mr. MCKENZIE. Have you thought of whether or not it, perhaps, would not be wisdom to take the other horn of the dilemma and pay something to the dependents rather than enter upon that field, where, undoubtedly, many men who object to conscription will endeavor in one way or another to escape service?

Secretary BAKER. I have thought of that very carefully, and if I felt we could pay for the sacrifice involved that might be the easier way of doing it, but I do not think you can pay either the social or personal loss which is involved in separating a father from his young children, or his wife and children, and unless the Government's need were paramount I would not want to do it.

Mr. NICHOLLS. Mr. Secretary, I should think you ought to have some limit as to when the man is married, so they will not marry in order to avoid service.

Secretary BAKER. Yes; you can be perfectly certain that this bill will not establish a Gretna Green.

The CHAIRMAN. The first section of the bill, in substance, authorizes the increase of the Regular Army up to full war strength. The first question I want to ask you about that, Mr. Secretary, is one which I will ask because we will be asked it on the floor. Why is that necessary? Is not that substantially the law as it is now found in the national-defense act? In other words, since the declaration of war by Congress, has not the President that power now?

Secretary BAKER. I think he has. This is declaratory rather than additional.

The CHAIRMAN. Then the sole purpose of this section is simply that Congress express its approval of the action of the President in taking advantage of that power?

Secretary BAKER. I think that is true.

Gen. CROWDER. There is one other thing to note: You will find associated with clause first some new legislation, and it was for the purpose of connecting up this new legislation with the authorization to raise all the increments that the authorization here was repeated. It enables you to put in some legislation about vacancies in the Regular Army and how they shall be filled and some new regulations respecting temporary and provisional appointments suggested by The Adjutant General of the Army.

The CHAIRMAN. In other words, you refer to the last sentence of that provision?

Gen. CROWDER. Commencing with "vacancies in the Regular Army created or caused by the addition of increments," etc., following the first sentence.

Mr. CALDWELL. That reads, "vacancies in the Regular Army created or caused by the addition of increments as herein authorized which can not be filled by promotion may be filled by temporary appointment for the period of the emergency."

Gen. CROWDER. Under the national-defense act they are filled by provisional appointments.

Mr. KAHN. Should not something be added there-vacancies among the officers or something of that kind? You say here, "Vacancies in the Regular Army.

Gen. CROWDER. It would not be misunderstood in this form, but that would give it greater explicitness. We do not fill vacancies among enlisted men by appointment, but by enlistment.

Secretary BAKER. It later says "that the officer has not the suitability," etc.

Gen. CROWDER. Yes; there is no mistaking the fact that the clause relates to officers.

Mr. CALDWELL. Where do you expect to get the men for these provisional appointments?

Secretary BAKER. From a list stipulated in the third paragraph of the same section, on page 3.

Mr. QUIN. Mr. Secretary, referring to the men who volunteer in the Regular Army, does that mean just for the emergency, and when this war is over they go back to private life again, with no strings on them for the Army?

Mr. BAKER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHALLENBERGER. I would like to ask you this general question: Mr. Caldwell asked you the other day as to where you got your ideas, etc., in drafting this bill. Have the members of this committee been consulted the chairman or any member of the committee before drafting this bill in order to get their ideas upon it? Secretary BAKER. I can not give a sweeping answer to that. I have talked from time to time with members of this committee, but I can not say I had any specific conversation with anyone of them as to what should go into the bill.

Mr. SHALLENBERGER. Have you had any consultations with the chairman of the committee of the Senate about it?

Secretary BAKER. I had, perhaps, 15 minutes' talk with Mr. Dent on the subject, and 16 or 14 with Mr. Chamberlain.

Mr. SHALLENBERGER. Was your conversation with Mr. Dent before you drafted the bill or afterwards?

Secretary BAKER. I think the bill was in progress of being drafted when I talked with Mr. Dent, and the same is true of my talk with Mr. Chamberlain.

The CHAIRMAN. It had not been put in complete form?

Secretary BAKER. It had not been put in complete form, and I told you what the main ideas were.

Mr. SHALLENBERGER. We had a good deal of discussion before you came in about newspaper articles, and the newspapers have carried a good many stories about the Chairman of the Senate committee being constantly consulted about this military program, but I have not seen any place in the newspapers where the chairman of our committee has been consulted, and I wondered if that was an actual fact or merely a newspaper story.

Secretary BAKER. I will be very happy to set myself right about that. I have not spoken to any newspaper man on the subject further than to say that a disclosure of the details of the bill could only be made from the committee to which it has been sent. A copy of the bill was sent simultaneously to Mr. Dent and to Mr. Chamberlain. I have not disclosed any of the contents of the bill to anybody, nor have I spoken to any newspaper man on the subject.

Mr. SHALLENBERGER. I say that in part because I think it is fair to be stated that you have given your time and thought very earnestly to this matter, of course, since you first took up the matter, but I am also aware that several men on this committee have been here many, many years. I think perhaps Mr. Kahn has been on this committee for 18 years.

Mr. KAHN. No; not on this committee. I have been on this committee 12 years.

Mr. SHALLENBERGER. Well, there are many who have served a long while on this committee and perhaps longer than those on the committee of the Senate, and I was anxious to have it go in the record whether or not the Senate Committee has had any special preference over this committee.

Secretary BAKER. Quite the contrary. I have not spoken to any member of the Senate committee except Mr. Chamberlain, and my conversation with him was almost identical in terms with my conversation with Mr. Dent, and when this bill was being formulated you gentlemen were not in session and were not in Washington.

Mr. SHALLEN BERGER. And furthermore, the reason I was anxious to get this information was the fact that while of course it is only fair that you should have consulted the Army officers to give you the military side of it, I think it is also fair to say that this committee has the proposition of putting this matter through Congress and the principal issue, as you know, is going to be in regard to the manner in which we shall raise these men for the Army, and as to that side of it, if the Senate committee was being consulted, we who have to put it through the House and will perhaps have the bigger task, are entitled to the same consideration.

Secretary BAKER. I do not think Senator Chamberlain will object to my telling you what he told me. When I told him what my idea was he asked me could I not take out the provision here for raising the additional forces and insert the so-called Chamberlain bill as a permanent policy of training, and I told him I had not seen his bill in the last form in which he had introduced it, and he gave me a copy of it and I agreed to look it over, and I later read it and told him I did not think that it was wise or possible to do that now. is practically the extent of my conversation with him.

That

Mr. SHALLENBERGER. Furthermore, I think it is a matter of record that somebody gave out a statement that the present bill passed through the House was not to be considered fully in the House, but that in the Senate the legislation which the War Department would require would be inserted over there.

Secretary BAKER. That is a very natural misunderstanding. I wrote a letter to the chairman of this committee and asked him in the interest of speed to introduce and ask the House to pass the regular appropriation bill for this year in the form in which it did pass the House, and I told him I thought we could ask the Senate or the conference committee to consider any amendment that might be needed, and I did that not at all because I supposed this committee would fail in any attention to our request, but in the interest of speed seeking to have these changes considered in conference. That applied solely to the annual appropriation bill and had nothing whatever to do with this legislation.

The CHAIRMAN. If you will permit me, Gov. Shallenberger, it is only fair to the Secretary for me to state in that connection, and I believe I am correct in it, and if not the Secretary will correct me, that that was not the Secretary's first impression. The Secretary's first impression was to ask me to put increases on the bill, and I made the suggestion that I thought that by passing it in this way it could be expedited and you finally agreed with me, Mr. Secretary.