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We had a Congressional investiga' tion of that situation, and the investigating committee tore the whole set-up, out there in Hawaii, into a thousand pieces. The only result was that the Army officer in charge re' ceived a medal for his work in Hawaii and was moved on to bigger and better jobs. Congress forgot it and the public forgot it, and apparently ever>'body is happy, particularly those who gained from those Hawaiian contracts.
On the Canol project. General Somervell and his Army engineers spent 130 million dollars for the al' leged purpose of opening up a source of oil in northern Canada. They tied up thousands upon thousands of pieces of equipment that were vitally needed. They hired thousands of men during the most critical stage of our manpower shortage. They threw money right and left, and with that, plus their bungling, made American ingenuity the laughing stock of Canada. And to top it all off, the project is now closed down after producing much less oil than was burned up in building it.
We had a Congressional investigation of that project by one of the best investigating committees in Congress. The committee tore the project apart, and then Congress and the public promptly forgot the whole thing and permitted those who were responsible for it to move on, once agam, to bigger and better things.
At the present moment we have several more Congressional investigations in progress — this time in connection with charges of exorbitant
August, 1945
rental payments on equipment rented from private contractors by the Army Engineers. These investigations are just getting under way, but unless they produce more in the way of final results than some of the others have, we might as well save ourselves the time and trouble of making them and just let the loose practices in government contracting go on without adding to their cost the cost of investigating them.
After all, the only purpose in making an investigation is to correct whatever abuses that investigation uncovers. But when we uncover them and still do nothing about them, we might just as well forget all about the whole thing and let the plunderers continue to plunder.
The fact that there is public apathy to these wastes and extravagances is beyond question. But just who is responsible for that apathy is quite another matter.
You can't blame it on John Jones, the average American citizen. He probably is a farmer or a plumber, and he spends eight, or ten, or twelve hours a day making a living, and tries to keep tabs on his government in his spare time. He knows only what he is told, and in the case of these government contracts, he isn't told very much.
He has been told all the time that the government contractors were getting only small fixed fees for their work, and that the war millionaire was a relic of the past.
That's a good slogan, but it just isn't true. Our production line on war millionaires probably is working