The next one is Philadelphia. Two or three years ago Philadelphia mortgaged the municipal gas works in order to meet the city pay roll and it imposed a 1-percent pay-roll tax on every bit of money earned by anybody who works in Philadelphia or works for a Philadelphia concern. It has had a rotten, crooked administration for years and there seems to be no way that the people can get the present machine out.

And Philadelphia has an elected city council.

Now let's go north to Jersey City. It is hardly necessary to talk about it. It took almost four decades to get rid of Mayor Hague and he is succeeded by one of his subordinates. Perhaps it won't be a change for the good after all.

And Jersey City has an elected city council.

New York is better governed today than it was when Tammany had a strangle hold on the place, but less than 2 or 3 years ago a judge was elected through the work of one of the country's biggest racketeers, an Italian who goes by the name of Costello and it is said by many in New York today that that city is not controlled by the Democratic Party but by Mr. Costello.

And New York has an elected city council, two of whom were Communists. Take Boston next. The taxes are so high in Boston that almost no building has taken place in the city within the last 10 or 12 years. So much property has been taken in by the city for unpaid taxes that it had to set up a special department, to try to unload the unwanted real estate.

And Boston has an elected city council with a convicted felon as its mayor.

Just take two more. One is Kansas City where more people voted in certain elections there recently than there were people in the precincts, where it was nothing uncommon for the Pendergast machine to have a 99-percent vote on their side in certain precincts.

And Kansas City not only has an elected city council but also a city manager. And just one more, Chicago.

A recent report by the Civic Association of Chicago boasted that during the last year the city had met its pay roll regularly. When did it ever happen in Washington that a pay roll was not met, except occasionally when Congress has not passed an appropriation bill by July 1 and then the delay was only a few days. It has repeatedly happened in Chicago that the pay rolls have not been met. During the last 25 years, over $636,000,000 in real-estate taxes have not been collected and a good part of them never will be collected. They have not been collected because the rates are confiscatory.

And Chicago has an elected city council.

During the last 80 years the total amount of real-estate taxes that we have not collected in the District of Columbia is less than three or four million dollars and most of that is for taxes that are less than 1 year past due. If we go back about 10 or 15 years, we will find that the District of Columbia has collected well over 99 percent of all the real-estate taxes that have been levied.

During all of this discussion of the desirability of electing a city council, the whole question has been begged. It has been assumed that the right to vote for a city council is a good thing. That is exactly the point which has to be proved. The proponents of an elected city council have begged the question from beginning to end. None of them, in all of the testimoney that has been given, and I have gone over it carefully, have even mentioned, much less attempted to show, that other cities have as good a government as we.

I challenge them to prove any such contention.

Either they should show that council-managed cities fare better than we or admit that at the very least we are taking a terrible risk in changing from a reasonably efficient, and 100-percent honest, administration, to a type that has produced rottenness, graft, and corruption all over America.

We believe that Washington has an excellent form of government. We believe that it can be bettered considerably by reorganization similar to that proposed in the bill before you. However, as I have stated previously, that does not require the right to vote. The proponents of the right to vote have never gone into the question of whether we will have a better government or whether it will be run more economically by an elected city council. They have studiously avoided that. The reason is that there is no evidence to prove such a contention.

The proponents of an elected city council refrain from comparing our government, both its efficiency and its honesty, and honesty is more important than efficiency, with the city governments of other cities. There is not a line about how well other municipalities are run in comparison to Washington in all of the testimony that I have read.

Our city government has worked well as can be expected of any government for almost 75 years. Let's improve it, but not junk it.

Mr. LUSK. First of all, Mr. Chairman, I want to apologize for making this little slip that seemed to upset Mr. Waldrop, so that it stirred him up and he called attention to it. Their campaign started in 1938 rather than 1940. That error was due to the fact that yesterday was such a hot day that my office cat, Jefferson Secundum, head of the research department, did not come to work, and so we slipped up on that one.

Mr. HARRIS. I am sure that error will be noted properly.

Mr. Lusk. Mr. Chairman, you said in the course of your questioning this morning that this matter of home rule in the District of Columbia was a practical one. That is absolutely the case and my whole statement is based on the practicability of the questions with which we are faced. I have studied the testimony of every witness who has appeared before the committee. I have studied every statement and I have read everything submitted for the record considered by the Auchincloss Committee and Kefauver Committee last year and this year; and in all that 600 or 700 pages of testimony, Mr. Chairman, there is not a line-I could not find a line in which the witnesses were trying to prove that a home rule government would be better; that it would be run more efficiently or that it would be run at less expense. They just assumed it would. They assumed that the granting of the right to elect a city council means that we will have a better government. That is the very point at issue. It is the point to be proved. In other words, every single, solitary witness who favors this legislation without an exception has begged the very question before you: Are we going to get a better city government or are we not?

Now may I request, as I stated to Congressman McMillan the other day, when you have further hearings and witnesses appearing in favor of this legislation, that you ask them definitely the question when they deqnitely appear in favor of this legislation? Ask them specifically why and how we will have a better-run government and perhaps a more economically run one. Some of the witnesses this morning, from their testimony I did not know which side they were on. If they say we are going to have a better government, I challenge them to prove any such contention.

I am quite familiar with the District Government. I have been associated with it and done business with it, and I think its officials for almost 25 years that I have known them have been an extremely high type of men. Officials in other cities with which I am familiar simply cannot compare with the type that we have here.

In just a minute I will make a comparison between some other city governments and our own.

I want to recount an incident, Mr. Chairman, which I think is quite interesting. About 15 years ago we had a meeting of the Washington Taxpayers' Association with the Board of Commissioners on the subject of the tax rate. There were about 12 city officials and 12 citizens. I took with me my brother as a guest. He is from Oregon. After we got through some matters and reduced the tax rate, my brother said to me: "I am amazed at the type of officials you have in the city government." I said, "They are all like that, high class, honest men." I think his opinion is worth considerable because he is the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Oregon.

While it has been said that this is the only city in which the citizens do not have any voice in its government, I do not agree with that; but if you use that word "voice" in the sense of "vote," it is true. When you use the word "voice" in the sense of the influence that we exert, it is anything but true.

As you said, Mr. Chairman, there is no city which I have been in which has so many organizations constantly coming to Congress and to the Commissioners. Every citizen here can be heard and heard promptly. The Commissioners do the best job they can, and the same thing applies to Members of Congress.

In my experience with the gentlemen here on the Hill, extending back as it does to 1916 when I was a boy in college, I have never seen, when it came to District matters, a Senator or a Representative doing other than what they thought was the very best for the city itself.

Now to make a short comparison, because time is getting short, between our government and a few others, I will cite a few examples. Let us take Baltimore, for instance. Baltimore still has gas lamps and cobblestone streets; Philadelphia was so broke a few years ago and still is, it had to mortgage the Municipal Gas Works and hasn't been able to get rid of that for the last 25 years, no matter what the people want to do; you don't need to talk about Jersey City.

Boston has a tax rate of almost $5 compared to ours of $2.15, and the city itself was forced to take in so much property on which taxes were not paid that a special city department had to be set up to try to unload that property. There has been practically no building in the city since the depression and it has an elected city council, of course, with a convicted felon as a mayor.

Now just one more example, if we are so anxious to get the vote. I wish some of these witnesses would explain why we want to take the chance and the risk of getting the kind of government so many other cities have.

Now Chicago is notorious. In the last 25 years, Mr. Chairman, Chicago has failed to collect $636,000,000 in real estate taxes. In comparison, during the last 80 years the District of Columbia has failed to collect only $2,000,000 to $3,000,000, and almost all of that is just a year or two overdue. All during the depression we collected 99 percent of the real estate taxes. We paid our people regularly and paid the policemen and firemen pensions, which they lost in many cities.

So, Mr. Chairman, to conclude: Until these advocates get away from theory and so-called rights and come right down to brass tacks, they should be able to show the committee clearly that we will get a better city government and a more economically run city government; and until they can do that, let us keep what we have, which has worked for 75 years. Let us not junk what has worked satisfactorily all these years.

Mr. HARRIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Lusk. I am very glad to have your statement.

The next witness will be Mr. Jerome B. McKee, chairman, department legislative officer, the American Legion, Department of the District of Columbia.

We are glad to hear you, Mr. McKee, and to have you make any statement you wish.

STATEMENT OF JEROME B. MCKEE, CHAIRMAN, DEPARTMENT LEGISLATIVE OFFICER, AMERICAN LEGION, DEPARTMENT OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Mr. McKEE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, the American Legion, Department of the District of Columbia, is composed of 59 posts, and its membership at the close of 1948 was 19,929 paid-up members, yet statements have been made that no large representative group has been or is opposed to home rule in and for the District of Columbia:

When H. R. 4902 was introduced in the Eightieth Congress I was designated to appear in opposition to that bill, and submitted nine pages of arguments against it, a copy of which is submitted herewith for the record.

I also was directed to appear before the House District Committee this year in opposition to H. R. 28 of the present Congress, and I was directed to appear before the Senate District Committee in opposition to S. 1365, which bill has since been changed to S. 1527.

Nothing in the proposed bill by Senator Kefauver changes the opinion of the American Legion, which, by mandate of its last department convention in August of 1948, opposed home rule because:

1. It does not truly create home rule, because Webster's Dictionary defines "home rule" as "government of a district, colony, territory, and so forth, by the inhabitants themselves, particularly with regard to local matters."

2. The insertion of section 404 of S. 1527 clearly upholds our contention that home rule is not being offered the citizens of Washington, D. C., when it states: "The Congress of the United States reserve the right at any time to exercise its constitutional authority as legislature for the District of Columbia, by enacting legislation for the District of Columbia on any subject, whether within or without the scope of legislative power granted to the District Council by this act, including without limitation legislation to amend or repeal any law in force in the District of Columbia prior to or after the enactment of this act or any provision of this act.

3. Section 301 creates an 11-member Council, 9 of whom shall be elected and 2 of whom shall be appointed without regard to political affiliation by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, yet section 404 is inserted to protect the interests of the United States.

4. Section 303 now fixes the compensation of the Council members at $5,000, whereas former bills fixed the compensation at $3,000. Under the new set-up the total annual outlay for the Council is $60,000, whereas former bills created a cost of only $32,000.

5. Section 327 can lead to excessive overhead on the taxpayers and the compensation is a blank check to be filled in later whether the people like it or not.

6. Section 332 creates another blank check to be filled in.

7. Section 335 permits an ordinance within 13 days of its introduction to become effective, and also provides that the ordinance can be instituted at once if the vote of the Council is unanimous. Does this not preclude hearings in which the voice of the citizen is heard, such as we now enjoy?

8. Section 402. Legislation created by failure of Congress to pass legislation can find its way to the Supreme Court of the United States. The right of Congress to vote again proves this is not home rule by the people themselves.

9. Section 501 creates another blank check to be filled in later. This is the salary of the District Manager.

10. Section 503 goes further with more blank checks for the assistants to the District Manager.

11. Section 822 creates additional costs to the taxpayers.

12. Section 831 again creates additional costs to the taxpayers as indicated by subsection 1, 2, 3, and 4 of section A thereof, and subsections 1, 2, 3, and 4 of section C thereof.

13. Why does section 832 eliminate any income in the District from these sources when it charges the District for others?

14. Section 901 (a) creates 12 executive departments and section B again creates a blank check for the salaries to be paid these heads of departments.

15. Section 1002 (C), Public Utility Commission, states:

No person shall be appointed to the commission unless he has resided in the District for the 3-year period which ends on the day of his appointment.

Why a 3-year period for members of this commission and not a 3-year residence requirement for the members to be elected to the council? 16. Section 1206 (A) states:

To be qualified to vote in the District it is not intended that a person be required to relinquish his rights in another jurisdiction.

This creates dual voting privileges, and in former hearings the proponents of home rule justified this provision by pointing to two towns in the whole of the United States where this is permitted, namely the town of Cheverly, Md., with a population of 2,700, and Brentwood, Md., with a population of 2,400. These two towns came into being because Government clerks working in Washington and holding voting privileges elsewhere established these towns, and these towns at their inception consisted practically only of those holding such voting privileges elsewhere, so there was nothing left for them to do but govern themselves.

What would happen to you gentlemen back home if you advocated dual voting privileges here? What would happen to your State inheritance taxes? If you permit dual voting privileges here, what will be the legal question on inheritance taxes?

Immigrants are expected to become citizens of this Nation, renouncing their allegiance to the country of their birth. However, under the proposed home rule you would permit a citizen of a State to have dual voting privileges.

The cry of the people of Washington for years has been, "taxation without representation," but today you would confer voting privileges on those who would then have representation without taxation, because those having dual voting privileges cannot be taxed under present law. You refused the Philadelphia plan of taxation against them, and instead of an income tax that would apply to them you now have made the sales tax law.

17. Section 1702 creates a loan of $500,000 without interest for the expenses of the Charter Referendum Board, which amount is to be paid back by the District of Columbia during the next year, regardless