Part 45

Seventh Session Friday, January 20, 1922.

GENERAL SAWYER: Fellows of the conference, as I told you yesterday we had expected this morning to be here with the Chiefs of the Bureaus. I explained to you why that program was changed. I told you also that you would not be disappointed in today’s program, and now I am going to prove it.

America produces many things. It is wonderful in agriculture, in industry, in commerce, but one of the greatest products of America is its men, and, strange as it may seem if you will stop to study it from that aspect, you will find that each State of the Union has its record for producing certain kinds of men. For instance, from Wyoming we get our stock men; from Iowa, our farmers; from Indiana, our authors, particularly our fiction writers; from Ohio, of course, we get our presidents; from Illinois, a thousand miles from Wall Street, we get the greatest of financiers. It is true that Illinois has produced more financiers than any other State, and men who have been at the head of the greatest banking institutions of the United States have come from this great corn-raising, middle-western State.

I should like to remind you, before I introduce this speaker, that this Federal Board of Hospitalization represented last year an expenditure, in all of their various lines of work, of $750,000,000.00. We have in our employ this morning something like 42,000 individuals, for which it is costing us something like $42,000,000. Today we are providing 132,000 meals for the people in the government hospitals and the employees that are necessary to take care of them. Tonight, if this northern blizzard continues, it will require 132,000 blankets to cover them; and in the most economical way in which we can provide for the needs of these sick men it will cost us—it does cost us—in round numbers, a hundred thousand dollars each day, with institutions operated as economically as they can be.

I only relate this that all of you may know and may carry this message to the country—that Uncle Sam is certainly not stingy; that Uncle Sam is really putting forth every energy he possibly can to carry out the idea of the best treatment of the World War Veteran.

This is my story in brief.

I have pleasure now in introducing to you Congressman Madden, Chairman of the Appropriations Committee of the House.

CONGRESSMAN MADDEN:—

“Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:

The most sacred obligation we have today imposed upon the Government is the proper care of the men who came back from the War less physically fit than they were when they went away. Provision is being made for their care to the extent that it is possible to make it. I think it may be safe to say that no country in all the world has been so generous in its care of its wounded soldiers, as America.

Hospitalization is one thing that we must provide, and we must provide every necessary comfort for those who gave to the country in its hour of direct need. We must not be foolish, however, in what we do. We must have a care as weal of other things as of the men themselves. I think the American people would be willing to make any sacrifice for the comfort of the men who served the nation either in the late war or any other war; and the best evidence of their willingness to do that and of the willingness of the Congress to cooperate is the fact that we are spending out of the public treasury for the allotments, allowances, hospitalization, vocational training, insurance, and other things for the comfort of these men, 489 million dollars a year; and it is growing and, as far as I can see, it will continue to grow.

Now we may be doing some things in connection with this expenditure that are not for the best interests of the men, and I sometimes have doubt as to whether we are wise or unwise. I sometimes have doubt as to whether we are managing this expenditure as it ought to be managed,—whether we are giving the proper care to the moral situation surrounding the hospitals where these men are being treated. We have evidence before my committee in the record testified to by those in charge of hospitals in which these men are being cared for, to show the most demoralizing situation as the result of the extravagance and expenditure of money by the men being hospitalized at the expense of the Government.

I have a suggestion to make in this connection. I have no desire whatsoever to take away from any man anything that ought to be given to him in the way of service or care by the Government. On the contrary, no man will go as far as I will to see that proper care and proper attention is given to every man that served the nation; but I believe that in the payments we make to these men who are being hospitalized, we ought to have some control over where that money goes, while they are in the hospital. (APPLAUSE).

I would suggest two thoughts, either the thought that while they are in the hospital they must deposit their money with those in charge, and be allowed to expend only a limited sum, and thereby prevent the assemblage in the neighborhood of the institution which the Government of the United States is maintaining for the care of its patriotic men, from becoming the nest of demoralization or prostitution. You can’t make it too strong. The facts disclose the situation. Now, we have an obligation greater than the obligation to care for the man, and that is to see that while we are caring for them we do not destroy them. (APPLAUSE). We have got to have the courage to adopt a plan.

Up to the present moment most men connected with the government service have been afraid to express an opinion in connection with the ex-service men, lest somebody might become offended at his attitude. (APPLAUSE) Now I am not one of these men. I believe the time has come when the man in public office has got to have the courage of his convictions; there is nobody in the world that people hate so much as the man in high public place who has not the courage of his convictions. The man in high public place has got to have sufficient courage to protect the rank and file of those who are being protected by the Government from the folly of their own deeds; and that applies as well to the Legion and all other organizations connected with the ex-service men, as well as anybody else, for it can.

Now we have a two-fold obligation,—I may say three-fold. We have the obligation to the men, to give them proper care. We have the obligation to the Treasury to see that that care is not conducted at an outrageous expense; and we have the obligation to the Nation to see that the moral standpoint of the communities in which these men are being cared for, is not degraded as a result of our attempt to help the men; and the only way you can stop that is to prevent the men while in the care of the Government, from having unlimited right to spend the money allotted to them out of the Treasury of the United States. It would be far better for them, far better for the community, for the nation, far better for the future of all if we could arbitrarily take the money away from them while they are in our control; place it on deposit, and see that it is applied for some useful purpose for their families after they leave our care. We can do it. We have the power. Have we the courage? I think we have, and if you will join me, we will do it! (APPLAUSE)

I think the men themselves will be happier. Their organizations will be more pleased. You will have some grumbling, but you will have it anyhow. Far better to have the grumbling when the men are sober than otherwise. Far better to have the grumbling when men are likely to be contented than when they are discontented; and I don’t know of any individual more happy than he who knows that when we get through with the treatment we are giving him he can look forward to having a bank account somewhere.

You know we are liable to destroy the usefulness of this man. The citizenship of the future may depend upon our actions, and we must be careful. The obligation is ours today; it must be somebody else’s tomorrow; but the transfer of obligation from one man to another ought not to make any difference. Any man afraid of the obligation to do this work ought to be transferred, because he is not fit for his job. Public office is just an opportunity to serve; that is all. The man who is in public office, who trims his sails to meet every passing wind is not fit for the job. He must have courage, integrity, purpose in life; and the man who cannot do the things that are dictated by conscience and right in a great public office ought not to be returned to it. The man that cannot feel the consciousness of his own rectitude, but rather the political bee buzzing, is not fit for a public office; and the men who are in the great service in which you men are employed have obligations, wonderful obligations, wonderful opportunities.

We depend upon you for the outline of the plan that we must follow in our treatment of this great army of patriotic men that have come back, eyeless, legless, armless, and sick in many other ways; but we must also depend upon you to cooperate with us in an effort to prevent the looting of the public Treasury and the reduction of the moral standpoint of the nation.

You need not be afraid to suggest. We should like to have your suggestions. We invite them; we welcome then. You need not be afraid to criticize; we are glad to have that. But we want you not only to remember that money is a factor as well as a help, but we want you to learn how to spend money. Most doctors do not know how, especially Army doctors. I have discovered that. I don’t blame them. Their minds run along other lines, but somebody has to watch this side of the case.

Now one thing we ought to remember is that the estimates for the expenses of the Government of the United States for the fiscal year, 1923, sent to the Congress amount to 167 million dollars more than we have got; and since these estimates came, 50, 60, 70 million dollars more have come, adding that much more to that which we have not got. I just want to say to you, gentlemen, right here that it does not make any difference how many estimates come, there won’t be a bit appropriated beyond the revenue, and I don’t care from whom the estimates come.

Our job is to represent the tax-payers. Somebody must visualize the nation. You men visualize the thing before you; you see the local picture. We see more than that; we see the whole picture; and our job is not only to see that the rights of those under our care are protected and preserved, but that the rights of the people who are not under our care and under whose care we are, are protected. We represent the tax-payers of the nation. They have been mighty patriotic; they have been liberal; they have not grumbled; they have paid the price; they have paid it with courage; and they have shown their patriotism. They have shown their unselfish devotion to liberty. They are willing to meet any expense that may be imposed for the proper care of those who fell before the bullets of the enemy; but they want and will insist upon proper supervision of the expenditures.

They have a right to that. They have a right to relief from the burdens of taxation to the extent that we can help to give them that relief; and it is your job and mine and that of every other man in the government service,—whether he be a dollar-a-year man or whether he be given fifty thousand dollars a year for the privilege of service,—to do everything in his power to make the people of America feel that they are not misrepresented in anything we may do.

The expenses of the Government for 1919 were nineteen billions; for 1920, seven billion, five hundred; for 1921, six billion, five hundred; for 1922, four billion, thirty-four millions; but a billion, eight hundred and forty-five millions of that are in three fixed charges, i.e., nine hundred and seventy-five million dollars a year for interest on the public debt, which did not exist before the war; three hundred and eighty-one million dollars a year for the sinking-fund, which did not exist before the war; four hundred and eighty-nine million dollars a year for the care of the men that you are here to represent, for their hospitalization, allotments, allowances, insurance, and so on; so that we have that fixed charge in these three items that never existed before. Our Government in the future is bound to cost twice what it ever cost before, and so we have everybody in the United States watching every dollar of expenditure.

We have seven million tax-payers now that pay out of their incomes,—seven million people watching what we do. Before the war we did not have any of these people. They did not care what you did; how much money you spent, or where you got it. They did not have to pay it; it was not being paid directly. Now it is paid direct, and the more tax-payers you have got paying into the Treasury, the more account you have got to have of what you do with the government funds.

I am just here today to say to you, gentlemen, that I know you can help a lot both in effecting economy of expenditure and in creating a better condition, from the moral standpoint, in all of the surroundings where our men are being treated and cared for. You can cooperate by suggesting to our Committee on Appropriations how we can best meet the situation that will prevent extravagant waste of money by the men who are being cared for, while they are in the institutions, and how we can preserve the funds for them and their families; also, how we can preserve the moral standards of the institutions.

Why, the statements that come to me are appalling about the low moral standards around some of these institutions. I heard a good deal about the Army camps during the war, but it was not any worse than now. It is for you men to say what we shall do to prevent it, and we want you to cooperate fairly, loyally, actively, unitedly and promptly, because we must at any hazard and at any cost prevent any condition that will bring stench to the institution that we are trying to preserve.

We must not under any circumstances allow the fund that is being used to preserve the health to the limit and build up the men who served us during the war, to be used for any purpose that will create scandal in the nation; and it is bound to create scandal if we do not watch out for the moral standard in every community.