Dillon S. Myer Oral History Interview, Chap XIV-XVII

Notice
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded interview donated to the Harry S. Truman Library. The reader should remember that this is essentially a transcript of the spoken, rather than the written word, although some editing was done.

Numbers appearing in square brackets (ex. [45]) within the transcript indicate the pagination in the original, hardcopy version of the oral history interview.

RESTRICTIONS
All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the Regents of the University of California and Dillon S. Myer and Jenness Wirt Myer, dated July 7, 1970. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to Dillon S. Myer and Jenness Wirt Myer until January 1, 1980. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of the Bancroft Library of the University of California.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with Dillon S. Myer and Jenness Wirt Myer requires that they be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond.

Opened July, 1970
Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri

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CHAPTER XIV

CHANGE OF ADMINISTRATION AND I LEAVE THE GOVERNMENT

DSM: In 1952 General Eisenhower was elected to the Presidency. It is the tradition that on the first of January after an election when there is a change in political parties, every one who has been a Presidential Appointee, submits his resignation to his department or to his superior officer. Among others, of course, I submitted my resignation.

I heard nothing from it until the thirteenth of March, some weeks after the President had been inaugurated. On that date I got a letter signed by the President saying that my services would be discontinued upon March 20, one week hence. I got a call from Orme Lewis who was Assistant Secretary, who had been appointed in the meantime, telling me that it was coming and he apologized and said "I’m sorry that I had to give you this message." Incidentally I found out later that former Governor McKay who had become Secretary had recommended that I be continued, but the Republican National Committee who were riding high in the saddle didn’t want anybody of the old regime. So out I went.

I might add that I doubt very much whether President Eisenhower even read the letter that he signed because he is the only man that I had known before he became President and I knew him and his brother Milton quite well and I am sure that he signed dozens of letters that came across his desk without looking at them at that time in order to go along with the Republican National Committee.

I regretted having to leave in the midst of a program that I thought was worthwhile; on the other hand I knew it was coming, and I had no ill feelings then and I have no ill feelings today, because of the fact that I was fired. I might say that part of the pressure for the change came from the Association of

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American Indian Affairs and the Congress of American Indians. In view of what I have said here about my relationship with these associations it wasn’t surprising that they didn’t want me to continue as Commissioner; but it was an interesting experience. I wouldn’t have missed it for a great deal. I learned a great deal not only about Indians but about human nature in general and one of the things that I learned was that there are more experts in the field of Indian affairs then in any other field that I know of in the United States of America.

I Become A Civil Service Retiree

DSM: The job as Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs was my last full time job with the government. During the fall of 1953 I became a civil service retiree at age sixty-two. Before reviewing my activities from that time to the present, (1969) I would like to reminisce about some people and experiences that contributed to my development and education and to philosophize a bit about things I have learned throughout my years of public service.

Congressional Friends And Political Contacts During My Career In Government

DSM: During the seventeen years or more that I was appearing before Congressional Committees and making almost daily contact with members of the Senate and the House, I learned to know some wonderful people who were occasionally demanding but usually were most helpful.

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Senator Carl Hayden

DSM: Among those was Carl Hayden who in 1968 was the Dean of the U.S. Senate. He was nearly ninety years old but he still had his faculties and was still the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Carl Hayden was one of the best politicians that I have ever worked with. I remember quite distinctly after having a visit with him in company with Leland Barrows back during the days when I was Director of the W.R.A. Leland said "He is the kind of a person that a politician ought to be. He takes people from over on the right, people from over here on the left and brings them together here in the middle." In other words he is always looking for a compromise.

I shall always remember one of those problems that he faced. He didn’t quite know what to do to resolve it but he finally figured out the answer. During the days of the War Relocation Authority the people in the Salt River Valley of Arizona were quite concerned for fear that a lot of the Japanese Americans were going to settle there and they didn’t like the prospective competition. There were a few Japanese Americans already there and they knew that the competition was something that they didn’t want to face. So they hired a so-called public relations man who was not very ethical. They put on quite a campaign against the Japanese Americans and stirred things up to the point where it began to worry Senator Hayden and of course it worried me. We already had two relocation centers in Arizona, one near Parker, on the western side of the state, and one that we called Gila in the Gila Indian Reservation a few miles out of Phoenix. Carl Hayden talked to me about it a number of times and finally when General McNarney who represented the Army before the Appropriations Committee at that time, appeared before them he took up the question with him. General McNarney just brushed it off. It wasn’t something that he had anything to do with so he didn’t do anything,

So Carl Hayden waited until the Congress adjourned for that session. Then he went down to the White

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House and saw President Roosevelt and he asked the President to send the Inspector General of the Army down to Phoenix. He told him what he wanted him to do was to establish himself in the Westward Ho Hotel and to call in the leaders of this group down there one by one and to get real tough with them and to let them know that the U.S. Government felt that they were interfering with the war effort.

The Inspector General came over to see me to get the lay of the land. I gave it to him and I said "Of course, you have talked to Senator Hayden," He smiled and said "Yes, I have talked with Senator Hayden." So they went to Phoenix and established themselves in the hotel and they called these men in from out of the Salt River Valley, and they really scared them. We had no more trouble in the Salt River Valley. They just piped down and everything went beautifully. Of course, they never knew that Carl Hayden had any part in this business and we never told anybody while he was still in the senate.

He was always the. kind of person who was representing his people and he pressed for things that he thought they wanted. He seldom made a request in which he said "It must be done." He simply proposed it , and if we had very good reason against it he’d say "Well give me a letter that I can send out to my constituents about it, giving your explanation." I have a tremendous regard for Carl Hayden the man in the Senate who seldom made a speech on the floor but did his work in committees and behind the scenes. He is greatly respected and loved by the people who have worked with him.

Senator Clinton Anderson

DSM: Another chap from that part of the world that I have learned to know quite well is Clinton Anderson who came first to the House of Representatives from

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New Mexico. At that time I was connected with the Soil Conservation Service and it was suggested by our Regional Director, Hugh Calkins, that we get in touch with the new Congressman from New Mexico and fill him in on the conservation program. I was elected to do this. I called him up, made a date and went up to see him. He wasn’t too busy so he put his feet up on a bench and leaned back and said "Tell me about it." We must have spent two hours together. He was interested both in New Mexico and South Dakota, which was his home state. He had moved to New Mexico because as a younger man he had developed tuberculosis and he thought that was a better place for him to live.

After I had filled him in on a lot of information he wanted about soil erosion, water control, and related matters, he asked me to send him all the literature that we had that had a bearing on his part of the world and on South Dakota. This was my first introduction but I saw a great deal of Clinton Anderson in later years. I got quite well acquainted with him during the period in the House and later I got much better acquainted with him as a Senator. During the days when I was Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs we had trouble with some of the so-called Indian lawyers who were always a thorn in the flesh. We talked to Clint Anderson about it so he’d set up a series of hearings, he practically chased one of them out of business with our help which we were very happy about. This lawyer’s name was Jim Curry. He had gathered up a great many contracts on Indian claims for presentation before the Claims Commission, by having the help of an Indian organization for which he was the lawyer go out and get him these jobs. He had them all the way from Alaska to the southwest and across the country and I’m sure that ultimately he probably made a million dollars out of it because he sold his interest in these to somebody else for twenty-five percent interest and as these claims began to become due he got a large return out of it without doing much about it.

I remember one other incident to show how the mind of a good politician works. One of the Pueblo groups in New Mexico had an excellent deposit of gravel and there were several people who were interested in

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getting in on this gravel for construction work. There was one chap who was already using gravel from this place, by the name of Loudermilk. There was another group who moved in and who got Senator Chavez’s brother to serve as their attorney. They put the pressure on us to let them take over an exclusive contract. We weren’t willing to do this; but the pressure got very heavy. So I went up one day and talked to Senator Anderson. I said "Senator, we have no interest in pushing Mr. Loudermilk out, but we have an interest in dividing up this gravel down there so that we can not only take the pressure off but to give these Pueblo people an opportunity to make the most they can out of it." He looked at me and said "I don’t care what you do as long as you let Loudermilk continue to have gravel." So we let about five people in with a contract that provided for a somewhat higher price. We put the money in the tribal fund for the Indians. But this again is typical of a man who is willing to compromise. We had great support from him and I shall always remember the good relationships I have had with Clinton Anderson.

Senator Richard Russell

DSM: Another Senator whom I worked with for a number of years and for whom I have a very high regard is Richard Russell of Georgia. While Richard Russell and I do not hold the same philosophy in many respects including the race problem we did get along very well in the days when I was a member of the staff of the Soil Conservation Service. He supported our program at that time and he was a very strong supporter of the Farm Security program and most of the other New Deal programs. During those days I could go to his office at any time that I wished for a conference with him, to get his advice which I very often did. At that time he was Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Sub-Committee. He always handled our appropriation hearing. After the first year with S.C.S., I presented the

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detailed information about our budget and consequently we saw a good deal of each other. Dick Russell is one of the top politicos in my opinion. With his friends, he is a man of honor. He never pressed us to do something that was impossible.

At one stage we had a chap on the rolls from Georgia in the fairly early days of the Soil Conservation Service who wasn’t producing and we told our regional director, that he could get rid of him. This word came back to Richard Russell and he called me up and said "Dillon, I have got to have that man on the payroll." I said "All right, Dick. We have got to have him off within a reasonable time. How long do you have to have him?" He said "Three months." I said "We’ll keep him three months." At the end of three months we dropped him. This was the kind of relationship that we had and it was wonderful. We could talk to each other on first name basis and we understood each other.

Senator Mike Mansfield

DSM: Mike Mansfield, the present Majority Leader of the Senate, is another great man in my opinion. I had more contact with Mike when he was a member of the House than I have had since he became a member of the Senate. I have only seen him occasionally in recent years because I have not been in Government.

During the time he was a member of the House he was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. When I was President of the Institute of Inter-American Affairs it was important that we get a new charter. The one we had only lasted another year. I went up and talked with the acting chairman of the committee, Congressman Richards, and he said "I’m favorable and I would like to do something about it, and I’ll be glad to appoint a sub-committee to have hearings on the matter. Whom would you like as chairman?" I said "Mike Mansfield." So he made Mike Mansfield chairman, and we had a good

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sub-committee. We got our charter through the House and we got it through the Senate. We had a very close working relationship. Here again I could always stop in to see him at any time. In the days when I was Director of the War Relocation Authority when I occasionally needed counsel about what to do about the Dies Committee and others who were on our necks, Mike Mansfield was one of those whom I would talk to on occasion, and he was always willing to take ten or fifteen minutes to advise about the next move.

Congressman George Mahon

DSM: George Mahon who is now Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, comes from the Panhandle country of Texas. I shall always remember that when George was a young Congressman back in the 1930's he came down to my office, and said he needed a dam in his district. It so happened that there had been a dam built, in the adjoining district which Marvin Jones represented, by the land usage agency of the old Resettlement Administration which was finally transferred to us. I told him that I was sorry but that I did not believe we were in a position to build any dams. The dam building period was pretty well past. I said "Tell me, Congressman, do you really think it would be a good expenditure of money to build a dam down there even if we had the money?" He said "That isn’t the question. My answer is no, I don’t think it is a good expenditure of money; but my constituents do and for that reason I'm asking for a dam." I said "I can understand that perfectly. All I can do is to write you a letter and tell you about the situation in regard to a limitation of funds and give you something that you can send back to your constituents"

This was the beginning of our acquaintance. I saw a great deal of him during the following few years. He was always decent, he was always ready to sit down and talk sense. Here again was a man whom I learned

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to regard so highly that during the days when we were under stress I occasionally went up to see him for advice. I remember one time I went up and called him off the House floor to talk with him, about what to do about Congressmen Costello and Dies, who were harassing us in the W.R.A. days. He told me to go ahead and take care of our business and not worry too much about it, but if it got too bad to come back and he and a few other people would go on the floor and see what they could do about it. George Mahon is a conservative, a very solid, down-to-earth realist and a great person.

Congressman "Chet" Holofield

DSM: "Chet" Holofield was a member of the House of Representatives at the time I was Director of the War Relocation Authority. He was a young Congressman from Los Angeles. I shall always remember how I met "Chet" Holofield.

We had a young chap on our staff in the first year or two of W.R.A. by the name of Gibson who was working in our Community Affairs Division who came from California. He knew we were having a great deal of difficulty particularly with the West Coast Congressmen, most of them from California. So he came into my office one day and said "I don’t know whether you will want me to do anything about this or not but I know Chet Holofield and if you have no objection I would like to go up and see him and tell him something about W.R.A.'s problems and about what your problems are, to see if I can’t arrange for him to pick up some of the chips and do something about it." I said "Go right ahead." I briefed him and he went to the Hill.

In three or four days I got a letter from Chet Holofield raising a lot of questions which I'm sure had been discussed at the time Gibson was on the Hill.

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I replied to them in writing. A few days later he got in touch with me by phone and said he thought it would be a good thing if we had a meeting of the California delegation. He said "If you like I’ll ask Clarence Lee who is chairman of the delegation to call a meeting. " I said "I would be very happy to have that happen." So he arranged with Clarence Lee to call a meeting of the California delegation. I went up still not having met Chet Holofield and didn’t know what he looked like. He was a little late getting to the meeting and Clarence Lee, the chairman, was getting itchy and had about decided to go ahead without Holofield but just at that moment he walked in. I was sitting near the aisle where I could intercept him and I simply raised up out of my seat and shook hands and said "I'm Dillon Myer" and he said "Fine" and then went right on up front.

Holofield explained to the California delegation that he had a number of questions which had been bothering him. He had gotten in touch with me and I had been so helpful about answering them that he thought the rest of the delegation ought to have the opportunity to hear some of the same answers, so he had arranged for this meeting. He introduced me and we had a real session as we did four or five times subsequently through the next few months. It was an opening wedge into the delegation and the opportunity to get acquainted with these Congressmen many of whom felt that they had to batter us day after day after day because they thought it was the politic thing to do.

As soon as that meeting was over Chet Holofield and a young man by the name of George Outland who was in Congress only a term or two closed in as we came out and guided me to Holofield's office. They sat down with me and told me about the "facts of life" as far as California politics were concerned. They said that they wanted to be helpful and that I could call on them at any time.

I shall always remember one suggestion that Holofield made. He said "I think you ought to send a mimeograph statement to the whole West Coast delegation every time something happens that the Hearst papers

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and others blow up into something that isn’t quite right. Keep them informed week after week, and month after month so that people like Dick Welch (Congressman from San Francisco) will have his feet tied to the floor if he has the facts so that he can’t say he didn’t know about them." We adopted this practice and it was most helpful. It enabled Congressmen to be in a position where they had to know that I had sent them information giving our side of the events which was very often at variance with what went into the newspapers, and very often at variance from what was being fed out of the Dies Committee's Mr. Stripling and others. I shall always give my heartfelt thanks to "Chet" Holofield and to George Outland for the fact that they were willing to be the buffers.

It so happened after the Tule Lake incident in the early days of 1944- the whole California delegation with few exceptions and some of the Washington and Oregon delegations, twenty-one out of thirty-three West Coast Congressmen, signed a petition to President Roosevelt to have me fired. I was very pleased to know that "Chet" Holofield and George Outland and John Coffee from the state of Washington and several others were not on the petition. Some of the others were away at the time but several of these people were courageous enough to give us the support that we needed. I occasionally still stop by and say hello to "Chet" Holofield, because I feel very strongly that a man of his type should know how much he is appreciated.

Congressman Charles Levy

DSM: There are two other people who are now out of the Congress that I want to talk about briefly. The first one is the late Charles Levy who at the time I first knew him was Congressman from the Spokane area of the State of Washington. This was back in the days when I was with the Soil Conservation Service.

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One of the reasons that I got so well acquainted with Congressman Levy was the fact that he was on the sub-committee of the House Agriculture Appropriations Committee. We saw him regularly as we went before the committee with our budget. At one stage I presented a budget for small water development projects which had been transferred to us with the Land Use Division. Charles Levy spoke up and said he thought this was something that should be the responsibility of the Bureau of Reclamation. When the bill came on the floor he bucked our appropriation for this particular item on the grounds that it did belong in the Bureau of Reclamation. So I called up the Chief of the Bureau of Reclamation whom I knew at that time and told him about the problem. He said "We are not interested in doing this kind of work." I said, "Would you be willing to meet with Congressman Levy and me if I got in touch with the Congressman and arranged a meeting?" He said "I would be delighted." So we had the meeting. Charles Levy came down and met with us.

The Chief of the Bureau of Reclamation told him that there was a mistake about this. It wasn’t something that they could do or were really interested in or were equipped to do but it was something which the S.C.S. was equipped to do. So Levy accepted the statement and went back to the Hill. At the first opportunity he got he got up on the floor of the House and said he wanted to correct a mistake. This was the first time I had ever known a Congressman to announce publicly that he had made a mistake! He corrected his mistake by saying that he was wrong about this and he now wanted to support the program for small water development of the type that we were presenting and gave his reasons for it. I called him up and said "Congressman, this is the first time that I have ever known a politician who was willing to admit to the world that he had made a mistake, and I just want to give you a great big pat on the back and say thanks."

As a result we got to be very close friends. After he became a judge in Western Washington, whenever I went that way I always stopped in to see him and had a good visit with him. He was a wonderful man.

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Congressman Norris Poulson

DSI: The other Congressman whom I want to mention briefly is Norris Poulson. Norris was a young Congressman during the "battle" of the War Relocation Authority in the early 1940's, who was a member of the group who met with the California delegation that I mentioned previously. We thought Norris was willing to listen and Bob Cozzens who was in Washington at the time and I spent quite a little time with Poulson trying to convince him that he shouldn’t go off the deep end. But he evidently thought his political interests were strong enough on the other side that he finally went on the floor of the House and made a scathing attack on me personally and on W.R.A. Naturally we didn’t quit speaking to him but we didn’t see as much of him as we had previously.

He then was out of Congress for two terms and was reelected. While I was in the Capitol building one day shortly after I became the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs which was six or seven years after his attack, I ran into Norris Poulson. We stopped and shook hands and he said "Dillon, I have been intending to tell you something and here’s a good opportunity. I just wanted to tell you that you were right and I was wrong back in the days of W.R.A." I said "Norris, I appreciate that and I always kind of thought that when you really understood what it was all about you probably would change your mind. I appreciate it very much. "

Well, this wasn’t the end of it. The first time our Bureau of Indian Affairs Appropriation Bill came on the floor a big husky "blow-hard" Congressman-at-large from Ohio, named Bender, got up and took out after me personally and made a scathing statement in some respects very similar to the one that Norris Poulson had made seven or eight years before. Lo and behold, Norris Poulson got to his feet the minute he had an opportunity and said "You are completely mistaken. I know Dillon Myer. I once made a statement about him myself that I now regret because I have come to the conclusion that Dillon Myer was right and I was

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wrong in those days, and I still think very highly of him. I am sure that you will find that you are wrong about Dillon Myer."

I called Norris Poulson after I read the record and thanked him for what he had done and said again that this was the second incident that I had ever known where a politician had been willing to get up on the floor and say that he had been wrong. He said "Well, Dillon, it almost got me licked. I came off the floor and Bender had barged out of the door and he grabbed me by the lapels and I thought he was going to kill me. I stood my ground and he let loose pretty soon but he was so mad because we were both Republicans and he couldn’t understand why I had let him down."

One other little incident. Some time after we had finished the W.R.A. program and after I had resigned from the job as Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Jenness, my youngest daughter Margaret and myself made a trip to the West Coast. We got into Los Angeles and the newspapers had big headlines about the big fight the mayor was having about trash collection. Here was Norris Poulson's name right across the top of the paper because at that time he was Mayor of Los Angeles. I said to my family "I must call Norris up." The next morning I called him, and I was greeted as an old friend. He wanted to know what we were doing and I said "Well, Margaret wants to see Hollywood so we were planning to go over to Hollywood and spend a day or two in Los Angeles seeing the sights." He said "Do you have a car?" I said "No." He said "There will be one down there in thirty minutes." Presently we were paged and when we went out the front door here was a. wonderful driver who had spent a lot of time on one of the Hollywood lots. His father was employed over there in one of the big studios and he was then serving as chauffeur for the Mayor. We had the use of a big black Cadillac with a telephone and all the equipment in it, and we were shown around Hollywood in style that day, as a result of my knowing the Mayor and my past experience with him. This was a heart warming experience. When we got into the car and were well established Jenness reached over and touched me on the arm and said "Just let me touch you."

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Relations With Congress

DSM: There are other people whom I learned to know in my Congressional contacts that I might mention but these stand out in my memory at the moment. For fear that I might go on and on I think I had better close it out simply with this statement. The one thing that I missed more than anything else after I got out of the Government and did not have any official contacts with the committees and members of the Congress, was the fact that I didn’t have the opportunity to sit down across the table and have the kind of give and take that we had in the days when I was a "bureaucrat." I learned to enjoy the committee sessions thoroughly. I also enjoyed seeing my friends on an official basis.

I learned after a short time that once you are out of the Government and you have no business up there you are not really welcome in most of the offices other than just to shake hands and say hello because these people are busy people. I still miss it but I had a good experience during the seventeen or eighteen years of Congressional contacts.

HP: One of the things that has impressed me of the descriptions of the people on the Hill whom you knew is that you were never afraid of them. So often in Government there is disproportionate fear of the men on the Hill. But you seemed to have accepted them as your equals and were relaxed and impressed with them and I think this must have contributed a great deal to your ability to get along with them.

DSM: I must admit that during the first few rounds I had on the Hill I was nervous and a bit afraid, and occasionally defensive, much to my disadvantage. You never want to "bark" back at the old-time Senator across the table. You had better take it in stride and get at it some other way and I learned this after the first one or two hearings. I learned very soon that as long as I knew more about the subject then the people across the table did, I could have fun out of it because I was confident that I had the answers. I occasionally

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took it on the chin for a while but I learned to wait for the opportunity to make the record clear. So it did get to be fun.

It is true, generally speaking, that if you play fair with the people across the table the Congressmen and the Senators, they will usually play fair with you. This is something that you have to learn the hard way. Even in the days of the Eightieth Congress when we were taking a terrible beating when I was Commissioner of the Public Housing Administration because they were trying to kill public housing, we had on the whole very courteous treatment before the committees and a chance to build out part of the record.

Speaking of this type of thing I have another incident that maybe I should throw in here.

Senator Pat McCarran was a politico of the first order from Nevada as everybody who ever knew him knew. He was hard boiled, he was tough but during the early days of the War Relocation Authority they wanted some people out of the relocation centers to help with the raising and marketing of tomato plants which they grew in the Moapa Valley in Nevada. They didn’t have the needed labor in those days. The war was on and we had pressure from every side up to and including finally the Governor who had not as yet given us a letter which we required saying that they would be responsible for law and order and see to it that the evacuees were properly treated and protected. Among others, we had a call from Senator McCarran's office.

It happened that Rex Lee who at that time was in charge of our Salt Lake Office, had gone over to Nevada to meet with the Governor. I could not reach him that afternoon but I left a call for him to call back that night. When he called I asked him whether the Governor had promised to send a letter and He said "Yes." I said "Do you think he will?" and he said "Yes." I said "Let the folks go to Nevada to help them get their work done." They were over there by noon of the following day. As a result of that we had a call from the Senator's assistant saying that the Senator had had the most expeditious service that he

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had ever gotten out of anybody in the Government and they appreciated it very much. A few days later McCarran called personally to be sure that I had gotten the message.

It wasn’t very long after this incident, a few weeks or months, we had our appropriations bill up before the senate committee. Normally if the House passes the bill without any change you don’t go to the Senate unless you are called because there is nothing to be changed and this is what happened in this case. The House had passed the bill without a change in any respect. So I was surprised when I got a call from the Hill saying that they wanted me to come up and testify before the Senate. I went up and as we waited in the anteroom Senator Hayden came through and I stopped him and said "Senator, tell me why we are up here, do you know?" He said "No, but I will find out." So he went into the room and came back out and said "I don’t know why but Senator McCarran wants to talk with you. He is up on the floor now fighting another battle, so I understand that the hearing you are going to have will be postponed until tomorrow."

The next day Senator McCarran came in and there was about ten or eleven other Senators who were members of that committee present. The Senator came in loaded with editorials and pieces that came out of the Nevada papers all of which were violently against the Japanese people. It was the same kind of campaign that had been going on in the Salt River Valley in Arizona. I realized that this had overlapped into that part of Nevada which wasn’t very far away. The Senator would read one of these tough editorials or one of these tough pieces written with a byline by somebody out there and he would end up by saying "Mr. Myer, I agree with that. Now what do you think?" and he gave me all the time I wanted to rebutt. I had right in my file a telegram from Senator McCarran asking that we send these Japanese Americans in, about whom the newspapers were protesting. Well, this went on for about an hour and a half. McCarran was building the record and I was also, because he was giving me plenty of opportunity to build my record.

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When he finished he stood up and said "Off the record." He turned to the rest of the committee with a smile and said "Gentlemen, this has gotten to be a very tough problem out in my part of the world, in my State, and I even had a letter the other day from a man who told me if I didn’t do something about it he would vote Republican the next time." Of course everybody laughed. I said "Senator, before you leave and while we are off the record could I ask you a couple of questions?" He ’said "Why of course, Mr. Myer." I said "We sent some folks into Nevada to help some of your farmers down in the Moapa Valley with their work and they are still there. Would you like us to take them out?" He said "Not by any means, Mr. Myer. We very much appreciate what you did for us. You did a wonderful job. They are still there and the people are very happy with them and please don’t do anything about it. Just leave them there."

All of this was off the record. I fished his telegram out of my case during the time that all of this was going on. Leland Barrows punched me and rolled his head sidewise back and forth. He was afraid that I was going to present it and of course I wasn’t. I just wanted him to know I had it. Well this was all there was to it. He was just building up the record and here was the proof of it. A few days later when the Congressional Record of this hearing came to my office which it always did from the appropriations hearings, for us to make any corrections in the record, I called Senator McCarran's office and talked to Miss Adams, his trusted assistant, and said "What is the relationship between the present Governor and the Senator politically?" She said "Mr. Myer, we wish we knew." I said "I’ll tell you why I asked. I mentioned the Governor's name on two or three occasions in my testimony. I didn’t have to and it isn’t pertinent or necessary to the testimony and I just wondered whether I should strike it out which I can very easily do." She said "Mr. Myer, do you have a letter or a wire from the Governor asking that you send evacuees in to help do this work?" I said "Yes." She said "Will you send us a copy of it?" I said "Yes." She said "If you will do that you can do anything you want with that record." So this was the reason. He was afraid that the Governor was going to run against him

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for the Senate one of these days. The Governor had built a pretty bad record on this situation and he wanted to be sure that he couldn’t outdo him when it came to being against the "Japs", so called.

One other incident that I think may be worth recording has to do with the Senator, who until recently was Minority Leader of the Senate, Everett Dirksen. I learned to know Everett Dirksen during the days when I was appearing before the House Appropriations Sub-Committee on Agriculture of which he was a member. We got quite well acquainted because he was of course a minority member and was supposed to be picking at everything we did. In spite of this we got to be very good friends. During the latter part of my period with the Soil Conservation Service after the so-called land use program was transferred over to us, we had some problems with some of the things that had been completed before they came to us. One of them was a dam that was built down in southern Illinois which cost a lot of money and of which Congressman Kent Keller was very proud. It was probably a good thing in their community but it probably wasn’t justified on the basis of the authorization. They happened to have an engineer in those days who liked to build dams and he didn’t worry too much about the justification.

In any case, we got a letter one day from Senator Dirksen, who at that time was Congressman Dirksen, asking for a detailed statement about this particular dam in Kent Keller’s district. He wanted to know about the costs and the justification for it. We wrote him about a three or four page letter. As I usually did under these circumstances instead of mailing the letter I took it up. I handed it to him and said "I think maybe you ought to read that while I'm here because if there are any further questions I can then answer them." After he read it, I said "I have a message for you. We told Kent Keller that we had this letter from you and Kent Keller's reply was 'You tell Everett Dirksen to get out of my district and if he doesn’t I’ll kick his ass out.' " So I told Everett Dirksen this and he leaned back and just roared. He said "Well, I think Kent Keller is justified. I don’t usually meddle in other peoples affairs who are Congressmen from other districts. The only reason I sent

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you this letter is because it was sent down to me by Joe Martin, the Majority Leader of the House, and he asked me to handle it and that’s the reason I'm handling it." We had a good laugh about it and I'm sure he sent the information on to whoever requested it and that was that.

I saw Everett Dirksen many times during the years when I was in Agriculture and occasionally when I be came Director of the War Relocation Authority.

Attitude Toward Congress

HP: As I have mentioned before, I can’t help wondering about the one common denominator that is your lack of fear. You seemed to have the attitude when you went up on the Hill that you were certainly as good as anybody whom you were talking to. This lack of fear seems to be an important ingredient to your successful relationships there.

DSM: I'm not sure that I can explain to you just how all of this came about but I will do my best. I think I should start by saying basically I was quite a shy boy who grew up in the country. I didn’t have too many public contacts in my very early days but I did have a good many as a teenager when we began to deliver commodities to cottage people and others. This experience may have had something to do with my having learned how to deal with people. I worked in a grocery store owned by my aunt and uncle off and on throughout the years when I was in grade school and I think that helped.

Basically though, I think that my family relationship was a factor. My Mother was also a very shy person but she was a very proud one. Without having anything much said about it, there was never any question in our family but that we held our heads up. We were not any better than anybody else but we were not any

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worse than anybody else. My Father was highly respected in the community for his honesty, his frankness, his ability to communicate with people and his helpfulness to them. My Mother was highly respected too, although she didn’t have the same kind of active part in community life as my Father did. The home relationship and example were good ones.

When I was in college I was a member of an Agricultural fraternity which was most helpful to me. I had help on every turn if I needed it with studies that I wasn’t too good at. I was encouraged and I was expected to do my best. So this was also a good atmosphere.

When I got out on the job myself I began to look around me and I began to wonder why some of the people who were much older than I hadn’t gone further then they had. I wondered if they hadn’t worked hard enough, whether they didn’t know enough about their subject, whether they didn’t know how to present it well, or what the problem was. I found myself trying to do something about that, and it wasn’t very long until I realized that I was willing to present anything that I knew which was in my field to anybody and to present it fairly well.

There was one incident that probably was a good one. I went out on an extension trip with a group of older extension men to attend two or three meetings. At one place we had a local experimental field which was run by our department. Somebody asked me a question about it and before I got through I admitted I didn’t know too much about it. We hadn’t more than left that building until I was jumped on from all sides by my associates and was told that you never admitted that you didn’t know about something. You gave the best you knew and say that there was probably additional information but you didn’t deny your knowledge because as they pointed out, immediately after my admission of ignorance there weren’t many more questions.

I found before I had been out of college very long that I was willing to tackle any job that was assigned to me within my field of knowledge or within

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my area of responsibility with confidence. I suppose this was pretty basic to my later approach to Congress. I don’t know exactly when I came to the conclusion that there wasn’t any percentage in kowtowing. I never did kowtow. I don’t think my Mother or Father ever kowtowed to anybody. We told the truth as we knew it and we did our work the best we knew how, and we never felt any particular shame about the way we handled a matter.

I remember quite distinctly after I moved from my first job at the University of Kentucky, and after I had been county agent at Evansville, Indiana, for a time, when I was offered a job at Purdue by G. I. Christy who was the Extension Director, I learned that there were certain people on this staff whom he loved to "ride." They never came into his office or they never came around him that he didn’t do something that I thought was bad to them. I used to say that evidently he could see a man's knees shaking under his pants the minute he came into the office. He always climbed right on and went to work on him. In my case he never did because I think he knew that I wasn’t going to take it.

HP: Apparently there is something of a bully in many people.

DSM: That’s right. He was a bit of a bully. But he never bullied me. I realized that this was important to me. I suppose that was simply another event in my realization that the thing for me to do was to remain firm and not allow myself to be bullied.

After I became a. member of the staff of the Soil Conservation Service and I began to handle part or all of the hearings before the Appropriation committees of the House and the Senate, and before any other committees of the Congress, for the first few times I must admit that I was nervous and a bit defensive. At one hearing Senator Bankhead had dug into me pretty deep and I had barked back at him. After the hearing was over Hugh Bennett who was my chief at that time very decently and very kindly reminded me that I should not loose my temper. I should handle it in a somewhat more tactful manner. This was good experience.

I never went to the Hill that I wasn’t thoroughly prepared so that I felt fully confident that I knew

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more about it then anybody else, even the people in my own shop, because the budget hearings were my particular bailiwick. As a consequence I had no fear. As I saw these Congressmen, many of whom had been former prosecuting attorneys, sitting across the table from me trying to dig into the testimony to find some holes, it got to be a big challenge to be able to meet their questions head on and to build a good record. It wasn’t very long until we began to establish a mutual respect.

Politics

HP: Did you ever consider going into politics?

DSM: I have been asked many times whether I had considered going into politics. My answer has always been no I never have. First of all by the time I learned something about politics I was living in the Washington area, I was a well established "bureaucrat." As a matter of fact I was living in Virginia a good deal of the time where politics didn’t appeal to me. I encouraged Jenness to go into politics once as a member of the Falls Church council, and I had a lot of fun serving as her advisor, but I never was in it myself.

I enjoyed myself in my bureaucratic relationship with people in politics. I respected those people I knew who were the good ones. I knew when to show disrespect at the proper stage to those who weren’t the good ones.

Jenness was asked at one time after she had been on the town council to run for Congress in our district in Virginia. We discussed it at some length. Finally we sat down one evening and I said "Do you know how much it would take to do this job without accepting somebody else's money?" She said "No." I said "Well I have been making some inquiry about it. It would

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take about fifty thousand dollars." She said "Let s forget it." So we forgot it.

It is true that many people who are in politics have started where it didn’t cost that much money. They built up their knowledge of the game and they built up a clientele. Former President Truman, for example, was a county judge, what we would have called in Ohio a county commissioner, as one of his first jobs in the political field. Of course he had support from some very strong people in Missouri. How much he had to kowtow to those people I don’t know. I must say though that I think he made a darn good President and he knew when to draw the line. He knew when to say yes, and he knew when to say no which others have not always been able to do.

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CHAPTER XV

SOME PEOPLE AND EXPERIENCES THAT WERE IMPORTANT IN MY LIFE

DSM: My parents were two of the finest people I have ever known. They were both people who practiced the Christian faith and were quite active in church work but the important thing is that they were people who really lived their beliefs and taught them. I think I am beholden to my Dad, as well as to my Mother, for the training I received in learning the necessity of always being honest and of remembering that there was a Golden Rule and when you were tempted to overstep to remember to repeat the Golden Rule to yourself and try to do something about it. I have said many times that if I could leave this world with a feeling that I had the respect of the community in which I had lived and operated equal to the respect that my Father enjoyed in the community in which he lived and worked, I would feel very happy.

I shall always be grateful for the kind of parents I had. They were farm people. Their life was much more restricted from the standpoint of communication with the rest of the world than mine has been, but nevertheless they lived a wonderful life and they passed on to me and to their other children something that is impossible to get otherwise than by having the right kind of parents.

HP: I wish you would backtrack, and give some description of the personal appearance of all of these people: Your Mother, your Father, Mr. Orr, all of them that you have mentioned.

DSM: My Father was not as tall as I am. As I remember him he was five feet nine inches, I'm six feet one inch so I'm four inches taller than he was. My Mother was five feet seven inches which was a fair height for a lady in those days but still she was not considered a large woman. My Dad when I first remembered him had almost

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black hair and a very dark mustache and one of the things that I shall always remember he had a very bad case of diphtheria and was ill for some time during which he allowed his beard to grow, and he had a very dark beard. When he shaved it off his face was so white that we marveled at it. My Dad was not a man of great physical strength. On the other hand when he decided to do a day’s work he really could do a day’s work. He was wiry, he was active at all times except when he was ill, and he kept going at a great pace right up to the time he left this world at age eighty years. I remember quite distinctly that we used to talk about Dad cracking his coattails as he went down across the field to catch the inter-urban. He always went in a hurry and he went almost as fast as I did when I was running to catch the car to go to high school.

My Mother had long beautiful auburn hair. She had to cut out part of it occasionally because it was so heavy it made her head ache if she kept it all. She could sit on her hair and I loved to see her comb it. She had the kind of complexion that goes with that color hair and she freckled easily. She was very careful to wear a sunbonnet when she went out into the sun to do garden work and she did a great deal of work in the garden. She liked to be outside.

HP: Flowers and vegetables both?

DSM : There were both flowers and vegetables, and also fruits in the garden. She had raspberries and blackberries which she helped to pick.

We always went blackberrying out into the wilds where we nearly always got chiggers but she loved to come in with two or three buckets of blackberries and she would "put them up."

She was a great person, a person of tremendous energy and vitality although she wasn’t the kind of person who moved around fast. She looked after the chickens, and the garden for the most part. I helped her as I got older. She did a lot of other things, and of course in those days, there was much canning of fruits in particular and a little later vegetables

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and the frying down of sausage in lard. She looked after all of these things and more while she raised a family of four kids.

HP: How much difference was there between you and your sisters?

DSM: My brother is three years older than I am. My sister next younger than I is about four and a half years younger and my youngest sister was born ten years later so that I was in my teens when she was born.

University Life

DSM: As I moved along into college I was most fortunate in being invited to become a member of the Alpha Zeta fraternity which had very high scholarship standards and a group of serious students, who saw to it that I and other freshmen were told about it in case they found we were lagging in our studies. Furthermore if we needed tutoring in any subjects we received it from the Juniors and Seniors. I particularly remember having been tutored in Chemistry by Tom Phillips which I needed very badly. This got me through Chemistry. The relationship with not only the undergraduates but the opportunity I had to become acquainted with many leaders in the agriculture field not only at my own university but people who came in from other institutions for meetings at various times was highly important in providing information and inspiration.

Dr. Arthur McCall

DSM: Dr. Arthur McCall who recommended me for my first job was rather a rotund person. He was a large man

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and thickly built. He had dark hair and wore a mustache. He walked calmly and slowly but he had a spring in his walk. He had a beautiful smile and was a most pleasant person to be with and to deal with. I had the privilege of not only knowing him during my college years when I was a student of his but I met him socially on a number of occasions because we were members of the same fraternity and when we had various activities in the fraternity he usually came. Throughout the years I kept in touch with him, especially after I came to Washington. He had already joined the staff of the Bureau of Soils and Chemistry and it was always a pleasure to see him and sit down and talk with him from time to time. I would remind him of the fact that he had started me off in spite of low grades and he always said that he was glad that he had done so.

Many years later, in 1947, Dr. McCall and Dr. Warburton on the National Director of Agricultural Extension jointly sponsored me for membership in the Cosmos Club in Washington.

George Roberts and Edwin Kinney

DSM: After I left college and went to Kentucky I had two bosses, both of whom were wonderful people. George Roberts was head of the department. He was a chemist and took care of the soils work in the department generally and his assistant was Edwin Kinney who handled the supervision of the teaching of field crops as well as supervision of all of the variety tests and other crops experimental work in the Kentucky Agricultural Experiment Station. Edwin Kinney has passed away only recently at age eighty-seven. He had been living with a daughter in Washington and I visited him on a number of occasions during the last three or four years. He graduated at Ohio State University some years before I did, in 1908, as I remember it. I graduated in 1914.

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Kinney was a little more than medium height, probably five feet ten inches or five feet eleven inches, a bit rotund, not fat but with a bit of flesh, a man of quiet demeanor who was always busy. In addition to his teaching activities he wrote replies to questions that came in to him from two or three farm papers in the south. I can remember seeing him walk the floor and dictate his replies to those questions which had been presented for reply. He was a wonderful boss. George Roberts was also my boss but Ed Kinney worked more closely with me then George Roberts did.

Roberts believed that everybody should have some responsibility and as a consequence I was given a full teaching load as soon as I was able to carry it, after I had finished my college work in the first semester at the University of Kentucky. I taught courses in field crops, both to the four-year students and to the two-year students and assisted in the supervision of  the soil laboratory. They suggested that I also give a course in farm weeds, which I did. It had never been given as far as I know, at that institution, and I had a lot of fun doing it because I learned a great deal about weeds and plants. I had to start from scratch. We did quite a bit of it during the fall and spring when growth was such that they could be identified.

HP: Did you use a textbook for that?

DSM: We did not have a textbook for farm weeds. I wrote to the various experiment stations throughout the country and got bulletins which described weeds and weed control. I developed a very good library. I wish I still had these materials by the way but they have gotten lost along the way. The Ohio Experiment Station had an excellent bulletin. I used these for my lectures and also made them available in the building where the students could come and use them. In some cases I got extra copies so that they were available and could be taken out.

HP: What is a weed? What is the definition of a weed?

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DSM: The best definition of a weed that I have ever heard was by L. H. Bailey the great plant man from Cornell University. He said "The weed is a plant out of place."

HP: Then if a stalk of corn were in a field of wheat, it would be a weed.

DSM: Would be a weed, that’s right. Normally you think of certain plants which are regular pests in the farm, jimson weed, the different kinds of pig weed, and lambs quarter. In the small grain crops there is cockle and corn flower and wild mustard. There are certain plants, vetch for example, which is a very good crop if properly controlled but if vetch seed gets into and comes up in a wheat field it wraps up the wheat so you can practically take one corner of the area where the vetch grows and shake the whole area because it winds up the crop. Vetch was known as the tares of the Bible. But it is a good crop. It is a good leguminous crop if kept separated from the small grain crops.

HP: You must not have been much older than some of your students when you were teaching these courses.

DSM: I wasn’t. I started doing some teaching while I was a Senior because I didn’t graduate until June after I went down to Kentucky the first of February. I was taking courses right along with some of the seniors and I was supervising laboratory work of some of these very same people.

HP: This is most unusual isn’t it?

DSM: No, it is not too unusual or wasn’t in those days because they had student assistants in various laboratories, who were majoring in the work. We had student assistants who helped supervise the chemistry labs and both in general chemistry and agriculture chemistry. Sometimes we had assistants who were not yet graduated who were Seniors so it wasn’t entirely unusual although it wasn’t common. Usually it was graduate students who were the assistants.

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HP: What did you teach the students? How to identify and how to eradicate?

DSM: That’s right. In the course on weeds we taught them how to identify weeds, and control weeds. We usually did this on field trips during the part of the season when we could identify them in their native habitat although we did have bulletins and certain text materials that we could use for identification purposes. We also gathered specimens which could be brought into the laboratory and dried.

On our field trips we would go out on the farm and around the fence rows and through the edge of the campus. You could find weeds almost any place; especially in the good Blue Grass soil of central Kentucky they spring up easily.

G. I. Christie

DSM: The top man in the Purdue Agricultural Extension Service was G. I. Christie. He was an Canadian who had graduated at Guelph Ontario Agricultural College and had done his first work in the states in Iowa before he came to Purdue. He also was a specialist in the field of Agronomy and he loved to make speeches. He was tall, I would suppose six feet, somewhat heavily built with an excellent voice and he didn’t hesitate to put it out. You never had to worry about hearing G. I. Christie because he was articulate and careful and he never was at a loss for words. He made many, many speeches and he appreciated people who could make speeches. I think I have already stated in a previously that he heard me make a couple of speeches in the first few weeks that I was on the job in Evansville which evidently led to two different offers later, the first one which I turned down and the second one which I accepted to become more closely associated with him at Purdue University.

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G. I. at that time was widely known among the extension group and was probably one of the outstanding extension people of his day. He came to Purdue in 1905. By the time I got there he had already been on the job eleven years and was well established.

Christie was the kind of person who if you would knuckle to him he'd make your knees shake every time he saw you. It happened that I never knuckled and for some reason or other he respected me. As a consequence we got along beautifully. He gave me the opportunity to do a number of things which I am sure he would not have done had I been willing to be his vassal.

Harry Ramsower

DSM: After leaving Purdue I moved to Ohio as County Agricultural Agent in Franklin County, Ohio, because I was approached by Director Harry Ramsower of the extension service and asked to take the job. Harry Ramsower was also one of my fraternity brothers and much older than I was. I think he had graduated in 1906 and was well established as a Professor of Agricultural Engineering when I was in college. He was an excellent teacher, a man of better than medium height. He was quite nearsighted and wore glasses, had a good voice. He was another person who believed that you should have your lectures and speeches well prepared and to say them in such a way that there was no question about what was said. He was able to make himself heard at the far corners of the room and was highly respected as a teacher. He was later appointed as Director of Extension and this is where he was when I was invited to come back to Ohio.

HP: What brought you back to Ohio? Was it that you felt that you wanted to go back to your home state? Was it more of a possibility of an advancement in your job? What factors went into that decision?

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DSM: I came back to Ohio mainly because I had bought a farm about twenty-five miles east of Columbus, Ohio, in 1917, just before World War I had broken out and at that stage I still thought I was going to farm it myself sometime. This opportunity to come back to Columbus, Ohio, which was only twenty-five miles away, was an opportunity to keep in close touch with my farm and its operations. I decided to take the offer I think mainly because it was near the farm and of course it was also near my home. My Mother and Father were still living and it provided an opportunity to see them more regularly.

I also wanted additional county agent experience. I didn’t dream at that time that I would accept Director Ramsower s offer two and a half years later to become the District Supervisor in Northwestern Ohio, but I did. This came at a time when I was still thinking that I was going to farm.

Howard Tolley

DSM: Howard Tolley was head of the AAA Planning Division. I worked with him as an immediate member of his staff and he gave me many, many challenging jobs to do including among other things the review of the proposed States Soil Conservation Districts Act which I had the opportunity to help get adopted in the states after I moved over to the soil Conservation Service.

He was a man of real intelligence and ability and a great person to work for and to work with. He spoke with a low voice. One of those people who never seemed to be ruffled and went about his business with no pretense what so ever. As I look back I think of him as one of the great sponsors that I had during that particular period. I continued to see him often after I left the Department of Agriculture up to the time of his death.

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Milton Eisenhower

DSM: I owe a great deal to Milton Eisenhower who at the time I came to Washington was the head of the Information Service for the Department of Agriculture. Milton, along with Paul Appleby, decided evidently after a time that I had certain abilities that should be utilized.

About the time I moved over to the Soil Conservation Service he was assigned by the Secretary to help integrate the Soil Conservation Service into the Department, and spent part of his time for the first two or three months working at this job. He had an office in the Information Service and another office in the building where the Soil Conservation Service was located.

HP: It was an unusual assignment for an information officer.

DSM: Yes it was. In the meantime the Secretary had made him the land use coordinator in the Department and he continued to handle the information office for some time after that. He finally gave it up and Morse Salisbury took over the job as Director of Information.

HP: Had Milton had newspaper experience?

DSM: Yes. He had had some newspaper experience. He also had had some experience as an attaché in the State Department Counselor Service in Scotland. He was brought to Washington back during the Republican regime when William Jardine was Secretary of Agriculture. He was an Assistant to the Secretary of Agriculture in 1924 and he continued in Washington until he took the job as President of his Alma. Mater, Kansas State College in 1944.

In any case Milton and Paul Appleby recommended that I become the head of a Division of States Relations and Planning in the Soil Conservation Service. He fought the battle with the Civil Service Commission to get a job classification set up which I could afford to take. I am sure every division head in the Department

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of Agriculture thanked him and me because they were all raised nine hundred dollars a year when the new grade level was finally approved in September of 1935. I moved over to the Soil Conservation Service in Agriculture. In the meantime, Milton Eisenhower was Land Use Coordinator and we worked very closely together.

I served on his committee while I was still with the Agriculture Adjustment Administration to write up a program for the integration of the Soil Conservation Service into the department. I also served with him on many other committees to which I was assigned throughout the years.

Then, he had been appointed against his will as Director of the War Relocation Authority in March 1942 where he served only three months when he received an appointment as Deputy to Elmer Davis in the Office of War Information. It was then that he recommended me to Harold Smith, who was the Budget Director, for his replacement as Director of W.R.A. which resulted in an appointment by the President to succeed him in June of 1942.

During those years Milton Eisenhower was quite a supporter of mine. He promoted my interests at almost every turn. At the end of my work in W.R.A. he wrote me a wonderful letter saying this was a job that he couldn’t have done, and was very complimentary about the work that I had done. So I feel very kindly toward Milton Eisenhower.

In brief Milton was a man whose middle name was public relations. He frankly did not like to be between what I have often called the rock and the hard place. He didn’t like to make tough decisions which might effect his relations with other people. There was always a struggle within him when he had to face such a problem. That is one of the reasons that he was unhappy in the W.R.A. program.

He was an excellent public relations man, an excellent writer, and a highly intelligent and articulate person with a great deal of charm who has been most successful not only in the work that he did in

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Agriculture but in his three different positions as college president since he left the Department. His first one was already mentioned as President of Kansas State College, then he moved to Penn State College and during that period there he got the name of Penn State College changed to Penn State University and later he moved to Johns Hopkins University where he retired in June of 1968.

Paul Appleby

DSM: The late Paul Appleby who when I first knew him was Assistant to Henry Wallace, one of five or six assistants, was the key man and Wallace's right hand man. He graduated at Grinnell College and spent a number of years in Iowa and was quite well acquainted with the Secretary before they came to Washington.

Paul was highly intelligent, a person with definite ideas. At times he was irascible but if he was for you he would support you to the limit. He was little better than medium height, on the slender side, with graying hair, with very sharp eyes and was a highly articulate person.

My first personal experience with Paul Appleby was not a very happy one. I was still working in the Agricultural Adjustment Administration as head of the section on compliance plans and I had proposed that the compliance office in Iowa be moved from Des Moines to Ames where they would be more closely associated with the college of agriculture extension service. I came in one morning and Victor Christgau, who was my immediate boss, said that Paul Appleby wanted to see me. I asked him if he had any idea as to why and he smiled and said "No." I went over to Paul Appleby's office and in those days I wore a hat every place I went outside the building. I laid my hat on his desk and sat down and he said "I would like to have you state your reasons for proposing to move the compliance

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office from Des Moines to Ames." So I proceeded to state all of the reasons. When I finished my statement he looked at me with a cold stare and said "When you came in here I had an open mind about this matter but now I haven’t because I don’t think you stated one good reason why the office should be moved." I looked at him for a moment, got up, picked up my hat and said "Well I guess that’s that" and walked out.

The very next day he called me by phone , called me by first name, was most affable and from that time on we were good friends, in spite of the fact that I'm sure he was irked and I was more irked than he was after our first conference.

Paul continued as assistant to Henry Wallace throughout the period when I was carrying the battle to get the States Soil Conservation Districts Act passed by the various states, and he was quite favorable to our program. He believed strongly in the water shed idea because he thought the counties were outdated as governmental units of any importance. He also thought that certain of the states should be combined such as the Dakotas and other states with very limited populations. Every time we got into a battle Paul was always there and ready to support us.

I forgot to mention the fact that in 1937 he and Milton Eisenhower I think it was Paul’s idea recommended to Hugh Bennett that I become the Assistant Chief of the service rather than Chief of a division. This happened almost immediately. It took me a long time to find out that this recommendation came out of the Secretary’s office. Paul and I got to be very close friends and by the time he became Under Secretary after Henry Wallace left and Claude Wickard became Secretary of Agriculture we saw a great deal of each other.

Later he went to Syracuse University as Dean of the College of Administration and was there for a good many years. He became quite well known in the field of public administration. He wrote a couple of books, and finally retired in Washington.

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M. L. Wilson

DSM: Another gentleman who was one of the great men of the early New Deal days was M. L. Wilson. M. L. when I first knew him was head of the Wheat Division of the Agriculture Adjustment Administration and I started dealing with him during the year when I was in charge of the Agricultural Adjustment Program in Ohio. The wheat program was one that we dealt with regularly. He later became Assistant Secretary of Agriculture and then finally Under Secretary before he took over the job of National Extension Director which was his last job in the department and in the Government.

"M. L." was an earthy kind of person who had strong beliefs about how he should live and stuck to them. There was a story going around that somebody was in his office one day and he received a call from Mrs. Roosevelt inviting him to the White House for some kind of a function and every once in awhile he would say "Well, Mrs. Roosevelt I think you will have to give us a rain check this time." He didn’t accept the invitation. M. L. had definite opinions about social functions most of which he didn’t feel were very important.

He was a delightful person to go on trips with or to hobnob with in his office if he wasn’t too busy, because he always had some tales to tell about experiences that he had had.

On two or three different occasions I heard M. L. give a full description of Custer's battle of the Little Big Horn to people who were not as well informed as he was. He had lived in Montana for a number of years. He loved history as well as geology, and philosophy and a lot of other sciences.

M. L. made many contributions to the program which a lot of people knew nothing about. For example, he was greatly interested in the Mormon practice of maintaining a store house throughout the years, which they used to help supply food to unfortunate people, in this manner taking care of their own poverty problems. Out of his interest in the Mormon store house came the idea

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of the Ever-Normal granary which Henry Wallace got credit for and which, of course, he promoted. But it was M. L.'s idea.

M. L. Wilson also had a great deal to do with the program of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. As a member of the staff of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics at one stage he had been a party to the development of a program which involved domestic sales at one price and foreign sales at a lesser price in order to get rid of surpluses. This was known as the Domestic Allotment Act.

M. L. also conceived the States Soil Conservation Districts Act. He learned that down in Texas in certain areas they had what was known as wind erosion control districts. He had lived in Montana where they had some range problems and they had some grazing districts so he put two and two together and decided that there should be a general pattern of districts for erosion control and land use. So M. L. and Philip Glick prepared the first draft of the States Soil Conservation Districts Act.

There was a group of people who were known as "M. L.'s boys." I prided myself on the fact that I became one of M. L.'s boys before I left the Department, because he didn’t take everybody under his wing. I shall always be glad that I had the opportunity to work closely with M. L. Wilson throughout the years that I was in the Department.

Henry Wallace

DSM: Henry Wallace was Secretary of Agriculture during most of the several years that I spent in the Department of Agriculture. I worked with Henry Wallace very closely from 1934 until he became Vice President in 1941. Even after he became Vice President I occasionally went to the Hill to have talks with him because he

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was always willing to see me and he always told me not to worry about using his time "because the Vice President didn’t have anything much to do anyhow." He would always put his feet up and listen, and served as my advisor during the bad days of the War Relocation Authority when I needed somebody to talk to, about whom to see, how to go about it, and other problems. I also had some contact with him when he was Secretary of Commerce later.

Those of us who had worked for Henry Wallace, had two or three luncheon dates with him after he left the Government when he came to Washington. These were interesting and highly worth while. Henry was a rather shy, retiring type of person in his social contacts. He had rather bushy auburn hair as his Father had. He had been editor of the agricultural journal "Wallace's Farmer" for a number of years before he came to Washington. He had definite opinions regarding the fact that farmers should have the same opportunity for what he called parity of income along with industry and he went all out to try to work out a program that would provide for parity. My relations with him while he was Secretary of Agriculture were largely in conferences with other people, either small groups or large groups on policy matters, reporting in on problems of various types. Occasionally I was called in to provide information that he wanted to be brought up to date on.

Henry Wallace was a great man in spite of the fact that he occasionally got carried away with philosophies which were a bit off beat. At the time he became a Presidential candidate of the Progressive party he lost a lot of friends and a lot of support. I have never understood quite why he did that but in spite of it I still think that he was a great man and I think he made a great contribution.

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Hugh Bennett

DSM: I spent more time with Hugh Bennett than anybody I had worked with in the Department of Agriculture. Hugh Bennett was chief of the Soil Conservation Service when I joined his staff in 1935- He had come to the Department of Agriculture in 1903 as a young college graduate. He joined the Bureau of Soils and Chemistry at that time as a chemist. Throughout the years he was involved in soil survey work, and had become a persistent erosion control advocate long before the New Deal came along.

Hugh was responsible for initiating a program of Erosion Control Experiment Stations which were established in different parts of the country long before the New Deal. The purpose was to secure scientific data on the amount of water and soil loss under various conditions. Most of these stations were carried on in cooperation with the states. However he was not a very great admirer of state agricultural institutions generally, because he felt that they were paying too little attention to soil erosion. There were only two or three state people whom I know of who were in his good graces. One of them was Dean Funchess of Alabama who supported the soil erosion control program. Another one was a Doctor Miller of Missouri. The Extension Service as far as he was concerned had been quite remiss in many respects and he never quite forgave them.

I was brought into the service in order to head up a division of States Relations and Planning, and I had my problems in the early days because of his antipathy to the Extension Service. I was in rather a tough position at times because Milton Eisenhower who at the same time had become Land Use Coordinator of the department and Paul Appleby who was the Secretary's right hand man usually called me in and talked to me about problems that I felt they should have taken up with Hugh Bennett. Usually they were related to administrative problems which Hugh wasn’t much interested in. I followed the policy of going directly back to the office and reporting to him just what went on in every case. Gradually we developed a very excellent relationship.

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Harold Smith

DSM: Harold Smith, who was Director of the Bureau of the Budget , at the time that I was recommended to follow Milton Eisenhower as Director of the War Relocation Authority, was another gentleman for whom I learned to have a high regard.

Smith happened to be the man President Roosevelt looked to for recommendations regarding the administration of W.R.A. because it was set up as an independent agency and was reporting "only to God." So Harold Smith was the man that I went to see rather regularly. I never walked into his office what he didn’t grin at me and say "Dillon, you know I am not your boss." I would say "Yes, I know you are not my boss but you are the one man that knows something about the W.R.A. problems and I need somebody to talk to," so he would listen. We talked many many times. He was most kind to me and served not only as someone to talk to to get things off my chest but as an advisor from time to time.

Harold Ickes

DSM: Much to my surprise, Harold Ickes was one of the best bosses that I ever had. I was reluctant to go to the Department of Interior partly because Ickes during the time I was in Agriculture was always in a scrap with Agriculture. I didn’t find out until quite a long time later that he also had some reservations about me. He was the kind of person who was known as the "Old Curmudgeon" but he had a rule which I appreciated very much namely that he would see any bureau chief in his department within a twenty-four hour period and sooner if the emergency required it. I could always call up and get an engagement. Usually if I called in the afternoon or evening I could get one the next day. While I was supposed to report

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through Under Secretary Abe Fortas it was quite well understood that I could always see the Secretary.

On several occasions I did have some difference of opinion with Under Secretary Fortas and we went to Harold Ickes with our problem. I always got the kind of support that I felt a boss should give.

Secretary Ickes required that everybody submit their agendas for travel to him at least three days ahead of travel time, so that he could countermand the order if he thought we shouldn’t go. When I was about to leave on a trip to the West Coast which included a speech in Los Angeles. About six o’clock in the evening I got a little note from Ickes which said "I don’t think this is anytime to be making speeches. Furthermore I'm concerned about the amount of gasoline and oil you are planning to use on this trip and I don’t think the trip should be made." The reference to gasoline and oil was due to the fact that he was responsible for wartime conservation of these commodities.

As a result of this little orange colored note I called up his secretary and said "Eleanor I want to see your boss and I want to see him now. " She said "just like that." I said "Yes, just like that." She said "How about eleven o clock tomorrow morning?" I said "Fine." At eleven o clock the next morning I arrived on the scene and when I was told that he was available, I walked into his long office with this little orange colored note between my finger and thumb. I walked the full length of the office holding the little note in my fingers and laid it on the corner of his desk and I said "Mr. Secretary, I want to talk to you about the note you sent me and about my plans for the trip." He said "All right, go ahead." So I explained to him exactly why I was going.

I started out by saying that I had been in Government for quite some time and that I had never yet made a trip on Government funds which I felt was not justified from the standpoint of expenditures, and I didn’t intend to start now. I felt very strongly that this was one of the more important trips that I had scheduled during the W.R.A. days. He listened to me with great care, never said a word until I finished. Then he simply

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said "All right, go ahead." This was Harold Ickes at his best. He always would listen and if he respected you he would pay attention to what you said. This was the type of battle that I won a number of times.

Harold Ickes became a retiree after he blew himself out of the Department of Interior by fighting the appointment of the gentleman who was recommended as Secretary of the Navy. Consequently, the recommendation which he had made to the President that I become an Assistant Secretary of Interior was never sent to the Senate.

Matters Of Importance That I Have Learned From Experience

DSM: Some of the things that I learned rather early in my work after I got out of college included such things as the importance of securing participation on the part of the people you were working with if you expected them to enjoy the wonderful feeling that results from participation and accomplishment.

I learned this very definitely in my early county agent work when I met with a group of people in the Blue Grass neighborhood where we met all day long in the wintertime. What we did there was to ask the participants to bring in samples of corn, potatoes and various things that we were going to talk about, and then ask them to discuss their own methods of doing things which lead to a discussion in which I simply served as a moderator. I saw to it that the discussion moved ahead and usually they would ask me to summarize and add my comments at the end. This procedure led to real interest, real enthusiasm and in my judgment it was highly important.

Very early in my county agent experience I learned the importance of remembering peoples names and faces. My first office caller came in to ask a question and I didn’t have the answer and I told him to return the

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next time he was in town, which he did. When he came in I said "Good morning, Mr. Pierce," and I thought he would faint, he was so pleased and surprised that I had remembered him. This little incident made me realize that this was highly important to people. So we established a system in our office that would help us to remember names and faces by developing a file of all visits in the field or to the office, and what we talked about, so that when we put it into the file it was pretty well fixed in mind. This stood me in good stead throughout many years.

I remember one instance after I had been in extension work for ten years or more, including service as county agent in Columbus, Ohio, during Farmer's Week I used to go to my office through the hallway of the Agricultural Building where groups of farmers were registering or visiting. Naturally I stopped to speak to a lot of people and called them by name as I went through. One day as I was going down the hall a Mr. Reasnor who had a stand where he was promoting the sale of farm paper subscriptions followed me, tapped me on the shoulder and said "Mr. Myer, I want to ask you a question." I said "All right." He said "Do you know everybody in Ohio?" I said "No. I don’t know everybody in Ohio but I know a lot of people who live in Franklin County and. I know some other people from around the state." He said "I have watched you for the last three days as you have come through here, you have shaken hands with everybody, you have called every body by name." I grinned and said "I think I may have overlooked a few." But it was true that I had learned the importance of remembering names and faces.

Because of certain experiences that I had in county agent work I learned that it was very important before I started on a project to bring all elements into the picture and this means that I learned the
necessity for planning even small details. This grew out of the experience which I have already mentioned regarding the oversight in not alerting dealers to the fact that I was recommending new varieties of soy beans and consequently when the farmers called for them they weren’t available. The dealers as well as the farmers were quite upset because they had varieties that weren’t adapted and as a result I had to do something about

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correcting my mistakes. I tried to avoid such mistakes in my future planning. It is important to face up to mistakes and oversights and to see to it that they are corrected if at all possible. This early experience helped to fix that into my mind so firmly that I didn’t forget it throughout the years.

I learned also the importance of keeping an open mind, keeping flexible and open to constructive criticism. I have already mentioned the fact that the county superintendent of schools who went with me to meetings pointed out things that my use of language was not adapted to the audience to whom I was speaking.

Also the incident when Fred Trueblood, the managing editor of the Evansville Courier Journal, arranged to have lunch with me and pointed out that I needed publicity whether I thought I did or not in order to get my job done, and as a consequence I practically wrote their farm page every Friday and reported meetings. An interesting by-product of this was that I learned a great deal about the newspaper game by dropping in after meetings. These experiences pointed up the need for an open mind and the importance of keeping flexible. It is something that everyone should learn particularly if they are going to work with the public.

Supervisory Techniques

DSM: In regard to techniques used in supervision, I think the major one that I discovered rather early in my supervisory experience was the importance of studying each individual with whom I was working, whether in the field, in meetings, in the office or at home, to learn all I could about him both as to his strengths and weaknesses. Then I was ready when the time came, and there always is a right time to make suggestions. It is not always the right time when you first think of it. It is time when a proper opening occurs and you have an opportunity particularly to use an example

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to drive home a point. This I believe is probably the most important technique in the supervision of people. I asked one of my former county agents recently what occurred to him as being important in my supervisory work. He said "Well, the first thing I think of is you very soon learned more about me than I had learned about myself."

In my supervisory experience after World War I as indicated earlier there were several agents in my area who had been appointed during the emergency and who were not well adapted to county agent work. It was important that they move out of that job and into something to which they were better adapted. I became convinced rather early in the game that it was important to help a person who was not adapted to the job to make the adjustment as quickly as possible into something where he was better adapted. It was good for the person as well as for the work at hand. I followed this policy throughout the years. It wasn’t always easy to tell somebody that he should move into another job but it was easier in the long run because when you dilly dally about making adjustments that it is quite obvious must be made, it gets worse rather than better.

Another major factor in supervision is teaching by specific example rather than using generalizations. This goes back again to timing. I found that if I recognized a weakness and then if I took time to try to find an example that would illustrate not only what that weakness was but how it could be corrected, it was better than to barge in and talk about the weakness before you had fully analyzed the situation and before you had a specific example or suggestion as to what to do about it.

I learned another very important fact about reports from one of the Washington supervisors in my early days of county agent work. I was harping about the fact that many monthly and long annual reports were irksome and I wondered if anybody ever did anything about them or ever utilized them after they were written. It was pointed out to me that this was the wrong approach in thinking about reports; that basically reports properly prepared and properly thought through were most important to the individual in his work than

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they were to the people who read them, whoever those people were. The reason is that good reporting requires sitting down, taking inventory regarding accomplishments, where you have been, the kind of things that have happened. This laid the basis for future planning in a way that isn’t possible otherwise.

After getting this point of view I found reporting a much different and pleasanter task then it was earlier. I tried to pass this on to people who found reporting irksome and I think I cured many people of being upset about making reports when they began to realize it was important to themselves as well as to others.

Preparation and planning for the work ahead is of first importance whether it means planning a speech, thinking through on what may happen at a meeting, what participation you are going to be called upon to enter into, what kind of contribution it is possible to make, or any other phase of any project that involves complex situations.

I remember quite distinctly that during World War II when I often went to Capitol Hill to meet with committees of Congressmen from California and other West Coast States. A certain cabinet member who went along was sometimes quite eloquent when he was stirred but most of the time he fumbled because it was clear that he had not prepared himself for what he was going to say or what he was going to do.

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CHAPTER XVI

THE YEARS AFTER 1953

A Temporary Retirement

DSM: On March twentieth 1953 I retired temporarily. I spent four months resting. The first month was fun. I would get up in the morning, get The Washington Post and climb back into bed and read the paper in bed. I did a lot of loafing and resting. At the end of the first month I found that I had had about all of that that I wanted and I was sure that Jenness had had about enough of me, because I was beginning to get itchy. So I began to look around to see what there was for me to do. I soon came to the realization that there was no job in the Government in Washington where I could go to work because they weren’t going to allow anybody who had had three Presidential appointments in the past twenty years to be on the payroll during the Republican regime. So what to do?

Group Health Association

DSM: It so happened, along about a week or two after I began to be concerned about keeping busy, I had a call from one of the committee who had been appointed by the Group Health Association to find a new Executive Officer, who asked if I would consider the job. I told him "Yes, I would consider the job, but I would like to talk about it further."

He said that the board would insist that whoever took the job would be agreeable to signing a contract

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to stay on at least two years.

I said "Well, I’m sorry but I don’t think that is a good idea. I don’t think they would want to keep me two years if they weren’t happy with me. Furthermore I don’t think they would want to keep me for two years if I weren’t happy with my job at Group Health. As a consequence you tell the board that I might be interested but I would not be interested on the terms that you have just suggested." So the job had gone out the window as far as I knew.

The Hand Of Fate Intervenes

DSM: About a week later I had lunch with James Mitchell who was formerly Commissioner of the Civil Service Commission and now of Brookings Institution. Jim and I were good friends and he said "Dillon, what are your prospects?" I said "Well, I have only had one and I guess that has gone out the window." I explained to him what had happened he said "Do you know that I am a member of the Group Health Board of Directors?" and I said "No, I didn’t know that." He said "Do you mind if I reopen this question?" and I said "No, I don’t mind. I am not asking anybody to do this sort of thing for me but if you would like to do it I don’t mind."

I got another call. They said they would like to talk with me and I went down to talk with them and the upshot of it was that I signed up as Executive Director of Group Health, and went to work the first of July 1953 and spent more than five years in that particular spot.

Group Health Association is a medical cooperative that was organized in late 1937 or 1938 by the Home Owners Loan Corporation personnel office. The agency put up forty thousand dollars to start the program off. They needed a little money to hire doctors and to get

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other things going before the membership got under way. This was fortunate, because if that forty thousand dollars hadn’t been provided Group Health Association never would have been able to make it. The chief of the agency had to answer to Congress later on for this financial help but he did a good job of defending his position and got away with it.

I became a member along with my family in 1938, when they first opened up the membership rolls to other government agencies outside of H.O.L.C. and I have been a member ever since excepting for a couple of years around 1940 to 1941 when I became a little discouraged with their seemingly insoluble problems and we dropped out for a time, but we went back in in just a few months so that I have been a member for most of the last thirty years.

At the time that I took over the job as Executive Director of Group Health in July 1953 there were about eighteen thousand five hundred participants. By the time I left a little over five years later we numbered around twenty-three thousand five hundred with a new group coming in which would bring it up to around twenty-five thousand. The District of Columbia transit workers group were just then being accepted as members into the agency.

My major activity during 1953 and most of 1954 was that of trying to strengthen several of the administrative and supervisory areas. A professional administrative analyst group had been called in about a year before I became Director, which had reviewed the pattern of the organization and made recommendations regarding the organizational pattern as well as other suggestions. Most of these had already been accepted and activated and I didn’t feel that I wanted to do anything about changing the pattern generally at that time.

In addition to the medical division, there were three other divisions: the clinical division; the finance and records office; and a membership division concerned with getting and maintaining members as well as keeping membership records.

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One of my first jobs was to establish a sound liaison and understanding with the medical director and the medical staff. Fortunately this didn’t take long. Henry Litchenberg was Medical Director in addition to being the Chief of Pediatrics. Henry and I established a pattern of having weekly luncheons together to review anything that we had not had time to take up during the previous week. We established certain ground rules early in the game which kept us from getting into each other’s hair. He was responsible for the medical program and I was responsible for the general administration including the personnel problems that we faced in regard to other personnel in the shop including these who were in the finance office, the records office, the nurses and the assistants in the medical program and the personnel people.

There were two major areas in which Henry Litchenberg and I didn’t agree. One of them was that I felt quite strongly after I had been there for a short time that the records which had been developed throughout the years and which were no longer active should be utilized for research purposes. There were various problems that the doctors were interested in having some answers to, which would also benefit the membership. Henry felt very strongly however that patients had been told the records were personal, were private and shouldn’t be used. So we never got the chance to use them for this purpose, even though I was convinced that to do so would not have broken the confidentiality of individual patient’s records.

The other problem which I felt needed improving was our procedures for the recruitment of doctors. I made suggestions from time to time that key doctors, key heads of divisions and the Medical Director might go out to medical colleges near graduation time to try to interest some young doctors in coming to Group Health, We would thus have had a better selection than we would by simply waiting for applicants to come along. But I was never successful in convincing them that they should take time off from Pediatrics, Adult Medicine, and other things to do this kind of a job.

One of the first jobs in the administrative and supervisory area that I insisted be done was the

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installation of a classification and job writing program because they had no job descriptions on any of the personnel. They were hired orally and off hand and I pointed out that I thought our turnover was due in part to misunderstandings that had developed because they didn’t remember all of the things that they were supposed to do. So during the first six months in particular and during most of a year in the clinic area the division chiefs were busy writing job sheets but we got them done and in good shape and they were utilized. We saw to it that each applicant for a job got to read the job description, and to have a copy if he wished for his own use, of the job that he was expected to fill. It was how we were able to cut down the turnover, mainly because of the classification system, the job descriptions and more thorough recruitment procedures. This is one of the main things that I think I contributed during the first few months.

One other thing we did in the personnel area was to eliminate a few people who were not efficient from a few key spots. We established a plan for having meetings with the supervisors from the different areas from time to time. Early in the game we did it every week or two and when we had these meetings the first thing on the agenda was to give the supervisors a chance to tell me and the division heads what problems they needed help with if they could get it. Following this listing of problems we established some methods of finding out for ourselves some of the problems in the shop.

One problem was the tendency on the part of employees when they were asked a question to which they didn’t have the answer, to refer the caller to somebody else, without knowing whether the other person had the answer or not. On two or three occasions patients told me they were referred to as many as five or six different people to get the answer and they still hadn’t gotten it.

At one of our supervisors meetings I made it quite clear how we expected this matter to be handled. One, we were not to speculate on what the answer was, nor were we to speculate on who had the answer. If they weren’t sure of answers to questions, the caller

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was to be referred to the division head, whether it was finance, clinic, or membership; or to the Executive Director. When this rule was laid down and accepted we had no more complaints of this type. This seemed a little thing but it had been going on evidently for quite a long time.

Another problem was a tendency on the part of some of the staff to engage in quarrels with patients or members who came in in a militant mood. Very often patients were in a militant mood and wanted to scrap with somebody. I had long ago recognized that there were certain people that liked to beat people around if they thought they could get away with it but they did not try it with top people, because they were sure they couldn’t get away with it. So we laid down another rule which was accepted by the supervisors and passed along to the staff and which functioned almost perfectly. This was that if somebody started being difficult that they do what telephone operators did in those days when a caller got rough with them. They said "I will give you the Chief Operator". In our case it was not the Chief Operator but the division head, the clinic head, or the Executive Director again. This practically cured that particular problem in a very short time.

We also established training meetings for such simple things as how to answer a telephone, how to greet members, and how to utilize the telephone. We got some people over from the telephone company to put on a demonstration and it was amazing what a difference this made throughout the whole shop. The staff now answered the telephone by saying who they were and giving some information about themselves. Also telephone courtesy was emphasized as well as passing along the caller to the right people if they needed to be referred elsewhere.

At the suggestion of the clinic supervisor, I started making regular trips throughout the shop. Just wandering around up and down the aisles, into the laboratories, into the dental offices, back of the scenes into the medical offices accomplished two things.

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One was that the staff were aware that I was interested in what was going on. They probably assumed that I was checking on whether or not the procedures that had been established were being carried out, but the main thing that was accomplished and it was important, was the developing acquaintanceship with the personnel behind the scenes being able to greet them and have them feel that somebody was interested in what they were doing. I did this usually two or three times a week, although it depended on how much time I had to do this kind of thing.

We had a real problem in the dental area because we were losing money nearly every year. So we established a system of records which came to my office each month which helped us to put our fingers on where the weaknesses were and where the losses were in time and income. As a consequence in a very few months time we had the dental clinic up in the black and were able to make certain recommendations that eliminated lost time and kept everybody busy at the chair. There were two or three dentists that weren’t too happy about this because they enjoyed the opportunity to do a little loafing on the side but nevertheless it did work out.

One of my very important problems, and it was a problem, was my dealings with the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee. The Executive Committee was outdated but was maintained mainly because the two or three doctors who were members wanted to be able to say to other doctors who raised the question that they did have a part in policy formation. The Executive Committee met between Board meetings and usually we repeated everything that we had gone over in the Board. So it was duplication but we weren’t able to get rid of it.

We had on the Board of Trustees, in those days, two or three people who had objected to my appointment and didn’t hesitate to use the needle at every meeting about budgets, about this, that or the other but in particular who took long hours of time to talk at length about things they felt they knew more about than the administration did. It became quite boresome and I became impatient.

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For example, early in my regime Mark Coleborn, a board member, insisted that the board send out a questionnaire to all the personnel under my general supervision to find out what their gripes were. I put my foot down rather strongly and said I thought I could find out what their gripes were. Fortunately the majority of the board supported me.

I asked Coleborn for a list of things that he wanted to talk about and he took time off from his job one day and came over to the office and we spent two or three hours together. From that time on he and I personally got along pretty well although he was always difficult in board meetings because he usually had some point of view that was different than that of the majority of the board.

Another fetish of his and of Bill Reines was that the audit should be an administrative audit. This meant that they felt that Group Health should hire auditors who would not only audit the finances but would go into the problems of administration generally, and studying what the administration was doing and make comments and recommendations regarding it. This I opposed with the argument that if they didn’t have confidence in my administration all that they needed to do was tell me, and I would submit my resignation and they could find somebody in whom they did have confidence in; but they never let up. I got a bit tired of this kind of quibbling but I got more tired and more impatient sitting through long, drawn-out meetings where little or nothing was accomplished.

We started negotiations well before my last year with Group Health with the Transit Workers Union, a group that are now members and have been since the fall of 1958 After carrying on the negotiations for quite some time and reporting back to the board, some of the board members felt that I wasn’t doing well enough so they appointed a committee of three to take over and they did the negotiating. They made some concessions which I didn’t feel were fair to the rest of the membership, so in September 1958 I submitted my resignation. My agreement called for a sixty day notice and I continued my work until November fifteenth.

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There were three major reasons why I decided not to carry on. Probably the most important one was that I was a bit bored by this time because I wasn’t really busy over half of the time. I didn’t want to take over any of the jobs of the division heads or to get my fingers into things that they were doing well. We had cut down the gripes on the part of members to the point where I didn’t get very many of those and as a consequence I was only busy at the time when we were preparing budgets, or getting ready for board meetings, making reports or in my routine trips around the clinic which I made a couple of times a week in order to keep in contact with what was going on.

I had meetings with my division heads and supervisors from time to time but I still wasn’t busy and I wasn’t very happy in not being busy. I was bored with the board meetings and I came to the conclusion that it was not the type to work for a group of people. I would rather have one boss.

The other item which probably brought things to a head at that particular moment was our disagreement with the committee and with the board on the certain phases of the contract that was made with the Transit Workers. This was simply a straw on top of the other things. So I left the Association November 15 1958.

I think I should add that my relationships with the personnel, that was my responsibility to deal with, was excellent. It was a very happy relationship. We got along beautifully and all through each month up until the time of the board meeting. There wasn’t an unhappy moment from that standpoint, except that I didn’t have enough to do. Our division heads were quite cooperative and very loyal and I still enjoy going down to Group Health and spending an hour or two wandering around seeing some of the old timers who are still key people on the job and it’s a great satisfaction to me to know that they are still there and that they are glad to see me.

This finishes the comments about my work with the Group Health Association and we are now going to talk about the job I took on for the United Nations as a so-called "expert" in the field of public administration at Caracas, Venezuela.

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A Move To The United Nations

DSM: During the fall of 1958 after I left my job on November fifteenth with Group Health, I talked with my friend the late Bill Howell who was executive officer of the International Bank about the possibility of some international service that I might find interesting and where I could be helpful. He suggested that I get in touch with Herbert Emerich of the United Nations and let him know of my availability. This I did. I had known Herb Emerich for a good many years. As a matter of fact he had preceded me by some time as Commissioner of the Public Housing Administration. I had known him also in other capacities.

My contact with him resulted in an offer to go to Venezuela as, as I have indicated above, an expert in the public administration field. I might say that I don’t like the term "expert" but this is the term that the United Nations used and this was a part of my title. I never used it when I was on the job. I was a representative of the United Nations in public administration.

And To Venezuela

DSM: The reason why the United Nations was involved there was the fact that the U.N. was invited to send a representative down to Caracas following the coup which eliminated the former dictator Perez Jimenez better known as P.J. The Minister of Finance requested that someone make a survey of the needs of the government in the field of public administration. So Herbert Emerich did this survey during the late spring and summer of 1958 and made a series of recommendations most of which were carried out.

Herbert Emerich’s report indicated that he found great determination in Venezuela at that time to accelerate the economic and social development of the country. Because of this announced policy he felt

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that it was important that they do something about the modernization of their administrative procedures. He felt that in order to carry out their programs successfully it would involve an unusual partnership between private and public sectors and that there should be better communication between the government and the private sector. In order to make the program effective a sustained effort was necessary to up-grade the capacity in the public administration area of Venezuela in order to enable it to discharge the responsibilities of its share of the partnership efficiently, and to satisfy the general expectations that had been raised in connection with the proposed reforms.

The principal administrative needs, as he outlined them, included an improvement in government organization, with more clearly defined functions; a simplification and expedition of government procedures; a central and modernized system of fiscal controls, development of economic data as a basis for better control and for decision-making on policy matters. Above all, a vastly improved system of public personnel administration and training was needed.

Another phase of the problem that he felt must be considered was the problem of what is generally called delegation and participation to relieve the undue congestion of routine business at the top in the various agencies. He indicated that while the United Nations personnel could help and advise, it couldn’t perform the task itself in doing the kind of modernization job that was essential. As a result he recommended that a temporary national commission on public administration be established, which was carried out promptly. This was based more or less upon his know ledge of what the Hoover Commission had done in the United States upon two different occasions. This commission was to make contributions themselves and to recommend laws and regulations for administrative reform. They would also provide for hiring additional contract personnel to assist them in their program and setting up task forces, etc.

Among other things he recommended that it would be necessary ultimately to create a permanent central office of organization and methods, and to enact a law

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for a modern civil service system and modernization of their personnel system generally.

He recommended the adoption of a modern system of obligation and accrual accounting of the revenues and expenditures of the government; strengthening the office of the budget and the Minister of Finance; the appointment of budget officers in the major ministries and autonomous agencies; the perfection of a system of departmental accounts subsidiary to and in harmony with the central accounts and the Ministry of Finance office; and the classification of government transactions on the model of the United Nations system to reveal not only the governmental budget but also the relationship to the total economy of the nation, and with the cooperation and the approval of the Office of the Comptroller General, to study a system which would permit better post audit of public expenditures.

He felt that in the study of organization and methods that the problem of decentralization and the delegation of administrative procedures, were highly important in the interest of relieving the congestion of day-to-day business in the ministries and to create time in the ministries, from excessive routine, for more attention to matters of policy and improvement of administration.

He also felt that simplification of routine procedures with quicker and more efficient service to individual citizens and to the business community was important, and that equal treatment should be provided for by public procedures established under rule of law and that decentralization in a prudent manner of government functions was necessary to achieve a sense of civic responsibility and citizen participation in the states and municipal government. He recommended that the technical assistance program of the United Nations could be utilized in part and recommended the assignment of several different experts who might be helpful, one to be in the field of general public administration and organization and methods; one in finance; one in personnel; and one in training. In addition to this, he suggested that firms of management consultants be engaged by the Minister of Finance to produce quickly an adequate staff, free from

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day-to-day responsibilities for the large amount of detailed survey work analysis and systemization that would have to be done. I believe I am correct in saying that he recommended that two such firms might be adequate. He felt that the staff of such firms were needed particularly in organization and classification studies, installation of new methods, in personnel. He recommended that only management firms that had successful experience in the field of public administration in several countries be considered. They should be attached to the staff personnel of Venezuela for the interpretation of national needs and conditions to enable the staff to benefit from stimulation and training.

When I reported for duty on March 1, 1959 I found three instead of two, contract agencies on the
job with a total personnel of twenty-six people who had been hired by the previous temporary executive director of the commission. In addition to that, the recommendations that had been made regarding U.N. personnel were being carried out. I followed John Blandford, who had been in charge of over all general administrative work. He had started work on September first and had agreed to stay only six months so I was to take over following him on March first.

J.D.M. Smith of England was already on the job and functioning as their finance expert and Michael H.H. Loew of the Union of South Africa had been designated as the expert in the training field but had not arrived on the scene as yet but was practically on his way. David Walsh, also of England who was an excellent civil servant in England was hired for a year’s service in the field of personnel. He did not come on until April.

The public administration commission had been established soon after Herbert Emerich completed his general survey in accordance with his recommendations. The first executive officer for a few months was a Dr. Lander who was connected with one of the very important and large oil companies in Venezuela but he felt that he needed to get back to his job so Dr. Beneto Raul Losada was the new Executive Director who had been on the job only a short time at the time I arrived on the scene.

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My major responsibility appeared to be largely one of coordinator and liaison representative between the various groups. It was a large problem to coordinate the activities of the various contracting agencies, three of them, and the U.N. experts who were functioning in some cases in the same field as the contracting agencies, the commission itself and with the government representatives who were in general charge of the area in which the commission was functioning. This was probably the major task which took up a great deal of time. John Blandford who had preceded me had done a good job in systematizing and organizing the projects that were being carried out by the various contracting agencies as new projects were established. I was responsible for writing up some additional projects and seeing to it that they were accepted by the commission and by the contracting agencies, so that we had a job sheet that we could work to.

I think that I should mention who the three contracting agencies were: The Public Administration Service of Chicago was functioning in the field of government organization; the J.L. Jacobs Associates of Chicago were doing the work in the field of personnel administration; and the Griffenhagen-Kroeger Inc. of the John Diebold Group of New York were working on governmental systems and procedures, particularly in the field of finance.

I neglected to mention in addition to the other U.N. personnel previous to my arrival on the scene Dr. O. Glenn Stahl of the United States Civil Service Commission had served from November 1958 to February 1959 in assisting the Commission in preparing a draft of a new civil service law and presenting it to the Commission and getting it generally approved. It was finally approved after I arrived on the scene but it had been pretty well established before Glenn Stahl returned to Washington.

In April of 1959 Dr. Manuel Perez Guerrero was designated by President Romulo Betencourt as the chief of the central office of coordination and planning and he was also designated as the principal liaison officer between the Commission and the Presidency.  Following

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the establishment of the Commission in October 1958 some twenty-five Venezuelan coordinators, so-called, and about forty Venezuelan technicians, or really trainees called technicians, were recruited to work as counterparts with the management consultants and the United Nations staff, so that all told we had ultimately five U.N. people, twenty-six people on the staff of the consultant agencies and forty additional people who were assigned to work with the contracting agencies who were Venezuelan, making a total of around seventy-five people; this in addition, to the few additional people working in the general office staff of the Executive Director. There was an executive secretary and a public relations officer in the Commission as well as a secretary, and clerical personnel who were also recruited locally in Venezuela.

The annual budget which was provided by Venezuela was more than one and a half million dollars which was quite a lot of money but nevertheless it was put up freely. Venezuela, being supported largely on oil, didn’t seem to worry about it. By March of 1959, the month that I took over from John Blandford, the first twenty projects had been programmed and prepared in written form for approval by the Commission and were approved. In the initiation and implementation of these projects the management consultant firms and the United Nations experts worked closely in collaboration with the Venezuelan coordinators and technicians that were assigned to these projects.

This cooperative effort provided valuable training for the young Venezuelan technicians and they in turn did much of the required work on the studies and the reports and were most helpful, particularly with the problems of language and communication in many areas. The senior U.N. advisors, mainly Mr. Blandford and myself, served as advisors to the Presidential office, to the Public Administration Commission including its staff and the management consultants on matters of program planning, projection and execution, and coordination. In addition I participated in studies and formulation of recommendations in certain areas, attended many conferences with the director of the Commission and with Dr. Perez Guerrero and with the U.N. experts as well as with the management consultants

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and with officers of the ministries. It was important to keep fully informed in order to do a more effective job of coordinating the activities.

Much of my time was spent in reading reports of management consultants, also reviewing proposed laws and decrees, reviewing proposed governmental contracts, progress reports, recommendations regarding the organization of offices and agencies and the formulation of project plans. All this required preparation in memorandum form for the Executive Director and many individual conferences with key members of the consultant firms for the purpose of the exchange of information. Projects which were assigned to the management consultants included review of the work of the Presidential office, ministry reorganization, review of the work of the autonomous agencies of which there were several, intergovernmental relations, administrative assistance in the field of agrarian reform, the career civil service bill which has already been mentioned, personnel regulations, personnel classification and compensation, personnel selection standards and techniques, and social security for public employees and also the organization of the Comptroller General’s Office, a budget system, a general accounting system, payroll procedures, procurement programs, revenue administration, congressional services, and systems and procedures in the Ministry of Health and the administration of the Federal district which compares with our District of Columbia government, Venezuelan Development Corporation, the Banko Abrero which served the housing area and the National Railway Institute.

HP: This apparently was an Herculean attempt to bring Venezuela up to the twentieth century in its government administration.

DSM: That’s right. Venezuela, like all Latin American countries that I have ever known, was still running its government much as they were run under the Spanish four hundred years before. There hadn’t been too much progress in the revamping of the governmental structure and procedures, and this was an attempt to try to modernize their procedures and develop a program whereby many of the old traditional patterns could be revamped.

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There were projects also in the area of personnel training which were supervised by Michael Loew of the U.N. staff. These projects totaled twenty-eight, which had been approved by the Commission and with which we kept in touch at all stages. Unfortunately, up until June of 1960, when I completed my tour of duty, little had been accomplished in the execution of the recommendations which had resulted from the studies and which had been largely completed by the spring of 1960.

Difficulties In Modernizing The Government

DSM: Well, there seemed to be a great deal of lethargy, plus the fact that people were busy with other things. During the first year of my assignment we were quite optimistic that real progress was being made and that really outstanding accomplishments were possible and likely, in breaking old habits and modernizing government procedures, which so badly needed revision. However, cooperation in most areas came to a dead stop or reached a stalling stage when the execution stage was reached. Old habits established throughout the four hundred years or more, going back to Spanish rule, were so well entrenched that it was most difficult to break them. Passing the buck from bottom to top and the lack of delegation of authority was the general rule.

Nobody below the top man was willing to take the responsibility for making the decision, because he was not given the responsibility which, of course, meant that the whole process of government was slowed up.

Staff members selected because of political or family connections was widespread, antiquated record keeping including hand written copies duplicated many times in some instances, lack of trust on the part of top officials in employees except for a very limited few, was the sort of situation that was handed down from the centuries of dictatorship.

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This kind of procedure helped stymie the work after the first of the year along with the fact that President Betencourt was running into a lot of trouble with people who were trying to bring back the former dictator. There were attempts across the border from Columbia to bring about a coup and in addition to that there was all kinds of trouble piling up here and there with shooting and attempts at taking over. As a result Betencourt had many emergencies to face, and as these things began to happen he began to depend almost entirely upon his three key advisors who were the Minister of Mines, the Minister of Finance, and the Chief of Planning and Coordination whom I have mentioned Manuel Perez Guerrero, whom we depended upon to get things done in the government.

As a result, the President was so busy with this, that and the other that in spite of the fact that he had given strong support to the Commission, we did not get any support from him, to my knowledge, in pressing the different ministries to go ahead with the program that had been outlined in connection with the studies jointly with the ministries. Also, Perez Guerrero was so busy working with the President that he did not have much time to do much about it, so the whole situation bogged down in nearly all areas of the government.

The only ministry that really did much about what was recommended was the Ministry of Health and they did a pretty good job. The minister himself was interested; he not only worked closely with the consultant agencies in getting studies made and procedures worked out which would be adopted, but suggested other areas where he wanted work done. And he saw to it that many of the recommendations were put into effect. It was the real bright spot in the whole government at the time.

In addition to the other problems was the one that it had been traditional for top people to make all of the decisions. This meant that there was a great lack of trained supervisors, especially at the third and fourth level. In nearly all cases the Ministers and their deputies handled the business, made the decisions and things filtered up to them. They were so busy handling every day emergencies that it was difficult to get their ear about any changes.

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Incompetent people in key areas, and reluctance to make replacements where people were incompetent, was another factor in the situation. As a result of the complete bog-down of the recommendations, nobody did anything about pushing the civil service bill through the Congress which had been recommended in 1959 and it was not passed during my regime. Most recommendations resulting from other projects were ignored except as I have already mentioned by the Ministry of Health. It was a great disappointment.

About the time that I planned to leave in June 1960, Dr. Losada who had been the Executive Director of the Commission, was moved over to be Deputy to the Minister of Finance and the chap who was brought in to replace him was Dr. Lopes Gallagos who had served as a member of the Commission. Unfortunately Dr. Gallagos was not happy in the presence of "gringos" and he was so politically minded that he put personal ambitions above the work of the Commission. He didn’t actually take over until after I left but I knew him personally quite well and I got reports, of course, from the consultants and others as to what had happened later. So the work of the Commission suffered very greatly when Dr. Losada moved over.

Dr. Losada did his best to keep it on a high level and to avoid some of the pitfalls which had been usual in Venezuelan procedures throughout the years such as depending upon people who were friends and were looking for jobs rather than trying to get people who were really qualified.

My assignment called for one year. I was asked to contract for a second year, but since it was an election year in the United States in 1960 I did not want to be away for the whole year because I was still a young man who wanted to consider the possibility of taking on a job with the new administration. As a matter of fact, I hoped that I might be able to help with the campaign. So, although I was asked to extend my stay for another year, I agreed to stay only another three months which ended up in late June 1960.

As it turned out, I was glad I had not agreed to stay on, in view of the fact that Dr. Losada had

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decided to leave and that Dr. Lopez Gallagos was going to take over, because I was sure that we would not have been very happy together.

The very day that Jenness and I left for Panama, where we were going to stop off to visit friends and to do some sightseeing, an attempt upon President Betencourt’s life was made, about fifteen minutes after out plane left the ground. The car was dynamited, the chauffeur was killed and the President badly burned, but fortunately he survived. When we got to Panama we had dinner with friends that evening and the host brought home a paper telling the story of the bombing and the fact that the borders of Venezuela had been closed for a few hours almost immediately after we took off. They kidded us by telling us "We know now why you left Venezuela; you got out just in time." We really did get out just in time because if we hadn’t gotten off just when we did it would have been several hours before we would have been able to leave the country.

Social Life In Venezuela

DSM: When we had first arrived in Venezuela we stayed at a hotel for a short time, until we could find an apartment. During that stay at the hotel they were short on water and water was carried in with a bucket for us for two or three days while repairs were being made. So we didn’t have a very pleasant stay for the first two weeks, until the Blandfords left and we took over their apartment which was close to the hotel and in the part of town where it was less dangerous than it was down in the old section of the city.

It was expensive to live in Venezuela, much more expensive than it is in the states. Fortunately for us we got along very well indeed for the reason that the U.N. had a policy which favored a family of two as compared with a family of four or five. We received

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the same fringe benefit allowance for family care and maintenance as a family of four or five received. It was difficult for a family with several children to live on this extra allowance because of extremely high costs, but we could almost live on our expense account and the cost-of -living differential and spent very little of our salary during the fifteen months that we were there for actual living costs. If we spent any of our salary it was because we traveled which we did occasionally.

After about a month or six weeks in the Blandford apartment we found another apartment in the same building which was better situated with an excellent view and more space. So we really had very good living conditions. We were most most fortunate. A United Nations car was assigned to our group, which took us to the office and brought us home for our siestas and took us back to work in the afternoon, and brought us home in the evening. Furthermore, if we were invited to official parties the chauffeur picked us up, took us to the party and brought us home. So we had good transportation and an excellent driver which was fortunate, because driving is not easy in Latin America and in Caracas in particular it is a dangerous business if you don’t know your way around.

There was quite a lot of social activity during several months. We were invited to a number of social affairs both small and large by government representatives including Perez Guerrero who was working closely with us. The consultant groups also entertained on occasion, and we were always invited to those along with representatives of the Venezuelan government.

Parties start late in Venezuela. I remember particularly we were invited to Dr. Lopez Gallagos house to a party one night and the invitation said nine o clock. We arrived promptly at nine o clock a la American and when we arrived I am sure they were embarrassed, because they weren’t ready for us. Our host, who didn’t speak English very well, tried to entertain us because there was nobody else there to do it. His wife was better at it than he was and she was most gracious to Jenness, but it was about

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an hour before everybody else came. We had thought it was a cocktail party and drinks were served and then the other people began to roll in and about the time we thought we ought to be going home around eleven thirty or twelve o clock, they came in and asked Jenness to accompany the hostess out into a patio in which there was a long table loaded with all kinds of food and a big dinner was served. I don’t remember what time we got away from there but after dinner they served drinks again. The party went on for many hours.

This is typical; any number of times we were invited to cocktail parties and then when we prepared to leave after an hour or two, the hostess would come around with great surprise and say "Why we are going to serve dinner after while. Won’t you stay on?" Dinner was usually served anywhere from twelve to one-thirty in the morning.

One thing that interested us: We were told that we need not expect any invitations to the homes of Venezuelans, that they might give official parties at a hotel but not into their homes. On the contrary we were invited to Dr. Losada’s home on at least three occasions which we thoroughly enjoyed. Other Americans were also invited. I have already mentioned that we were invited to Dr. Lopez Gallagos’ house along with some of the other U.N. representatives at least and we were invited to a couple of other homes. So we weren’t blocked out entirely from entertainment in homes of our friends whom we had made down there.

Travel Through The Country

DSM: In addition to our experience in Caracas I was fortunate in having the opportunity to travel throughout Venezuela. The head of the P.A.S. consultant firm asked the Executive Director to send me along with their staff members who were going to visit the area in western Venezuela near the Columbian line. I spent

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nearly a week in the Andes country and in the valleys in that area including a visit to the University at Merida where we had interviews with the President and with his staff. Merida was all dressed up for an anniversary. The city had been established four hundred years before and they had really dressed the town up. It was beautiful, one of the loveliest towns I visited in Venezuela.

One of the things that interested me on this trip, different from what we have in the United States, is that almost every community, certainly every sizable community, has a community-owned slaughter house. Each town slaughters its own animals. We visited a couple of these establishments en route. Around the slaughter house there were hundreds of buzzards just waiting for the offal to be thrown out where they could clean it up. This is an old practice that goes way back.

Also I took a trip south to the Oronoco country with the head of the P.A.S. contract agency. We spent four or five days in that area. Among other things that we did there we interviewed various administrative people and other local and state people. One evening when we were wandering about simply stretching our legs we stopped into the library. We were amazed to find that the library which represented the state of San Fernando de Apura didn’t have any more books, if as many, as I have in my own private library at home. Most of the books were official reports of the legislature or something of that kind. It was really sad, because it was so limited, yet the librarian was proud of her library. She showed us through. This was in San Fernando de Apura which was the capital of the state by the same name.

Later on I went to Cumana for a visit to the state of Sucre with the head of the P.A.S. group. Jenness joined me there after a day or two. Again we made a trip out into the countryside to visit some of the institutions and found it most interesting.

While in Cumana, the Governor who until recently had been the Ambassador from Venezuela to Washington, Enrico Tehara Paris, met with us on two or three

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occasions. He told us about the work that he was trying to accomplish in the state, and offered us the opportunity to go over to the peninsula of Araya off the coast. It was an arid spot where there were salt works which had been traditional throughout centuries. Salt was still being harvested out of shallow areas of water which were drained off after a time and when dried up workers came in with wheelbarrows and piled the salt in very large mounds. There was tons and tons and tons and tons, because it didn’t rain enough there to melt it and until it could be processed and bagged and sent out to the various parts of Venezuela it was safe to leave it in great mounds. We were told that the former dictator, who had been eliminated, had made a contract with an Italian firm to establish a modern system for their salt works and they were almost ready to start operating.

We visited also the salt processing plant, which was an intriguing business. It was all run by electricity, the control room was very complex. It would take some time to really learn what the various gadgets were and what they controlled. This was for refining the salt which was brought in in shallow boats through little canals into this factory and dumped. It went through a process there including grinding, some type of purification, mixing with other elements that were needed and finally ended up in a bag. It went through the whole process right there on this little neck of land.

We wondered what would happen to the thousands of people who had been doing the salt work there when t became mechanized, because it was the only industry on the island.

We also went over to the island of Margarita over the weekend where they dive for pearls. It is a lovely spot and we enjoyed our visit there very much.

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Reflections On The Venezuela Experience

DSM: I'm still wondering how much good the Commission and the contracting agencies and the U.N. representatives did, and whether or not there has been any real development since 1960 in modernization of government in general and government procedures in particular.

I think the most hopeful thing out of our whole experience there was the fact that there were around forty or fifty young men who were fairly well trained in various phases of modern governmental procedures and I am hoping that some of them were able to carry on and help to establish new procedures. However, it is difficult to change the old idea in Latin America that a small group, perhaps twenty to one hundred people, control the country. It is considered perfectly justifiable that they maintain their political power in part by patronage and selection of people regardless of their ability to fill jobs. Often there are two or three times as many people on jobs as are needed. In some cases we found people on jobs and on the government payroll who were doing no work at all for the government but working some place else. Or if they were doing any work, they may do it in an hour or two in the morning and then go off to another job and earn more money some place else. This is a part of the old tradition, I presume.

As I have indicated we left Venezuela in late June. Jenness and I came back by way of Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Mexico. In the first three countries we visited old friends, most of whom had worked as a part of the staff of the Institute of Inter American Affairs in the days when I had been its President. It was a great joy to visit these good people again and find them continuing to do some of the very excellent work that had been carried on throughout the years. In Mexico we simply were tourists, on our way back home.

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Back Home

DSM: When we arrived home we found our grounds so over grown with two years of spring and summer growth, particularly spring growth, that it took me about three weeks to get the hedges, shrubs and trees pruned back to the place where they should have been kept in the beginning.

The house had been unoccupied except for about two months when some friends who had decided to move back to Washington occupied it until they found some place else to live. Because we were so selective we hadn’t been able to find somebody to rent the house. Jenness did not want to take a chance on having families who wouldn’t take care of it.

When we finally got things in order along about the first of August 1960 I made a date with my good friend Al Waterston of the International Bank for lunch .

A few days after my call, on the very day we were supposed to have lunch, I got a call from Al. He said "I have a young man in my office that wants to see you and wants to talk with you," and I said "Bring him to lunch." He said "He has a luncheon date but could he make another date?"

The young man was Milton Esman from the staff of the University of Pittsburgh. Milton was interested in finding somebody to take over a seminar that he was scheduled to teach himself that year but found he was unable to handle because the University had received a sizable grant from the Ford Foundation and he was going to have to spend some time administering the grant. So he had come by to see Al Waterston to ask his recommendation on who might be available to handle the course and Al said "Well you came at the right time. I am having lunch with the man who ought to be able to handle it very satisfactorily." So we made a date to meet after luncheon. Milton Esman and I, who I had met in Saigon some two or three years before, had a chat and as a consequence I agreed to take on the job.

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A Graduate School Seminar

DSM: This was a course in the graduate school of Public and International Affairs of which Don Stone was Dean.

The course concerned the theory and practice of technical and economic assistance throughout the world. It was scheduled to meet each Monday in the afternoon for two hours. So from mid-September until December 20, 1960, I commuted from Washington by plane leaving on Sunday evening and coming back on Monday evening after the class work was completed.

It was a part time job, but since it was a new course and nothing had been done in the preparation of course plans, I spent nearly full time for the first two months from mid-August until mid-October outlining the course, selecting and reading reference books in preparation for the meetings on Monday afternoon. I set my sights high enough that it took more time perhaps than some people would have taken because I decided I would not assign reference books either that were required reading or were voluntary reading that I had not read myself. So this in itself involved a lot of reading plus the fact that I scanned many other books in the process of making my selections for the assigned readings.

The seminar included eighteen people in attendance regularly, two of whom were not registered for the course but were simply sitting in because of their interest in the subject but they did participate even though they weren’t taking the course for credit.

I found the course highly stimulating. It was not a lecture course in any sense of the word; it was truly a seminar and most of the discussion was carried on by the members of the class. As a result I learned a good deal, both from my own research and from the discussions. Some of these people were quite well experienced. For example, three U.S. Air Force officers were assigned to the University of Pittsburgh for additional work and they were able to contribute substantially when they began to discuss military assistance abroad.

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One incident that amused me was that one of the students wrote a paper on what he thought the policy should be on military assistance in Latin America. He was opposed to it, and everybody kidded him, telling him that he had better not let the Air Force see that paper, because they probably would do something about it.

In the meantime I still hoped to help out in the election that year, in the election headquarters in Washington. I tried to convince the people in charge that they had need of one of my experience because I had worked in the 1956 election in particular helping to schedule candidates. But it soon became obvious that anyone over forty years of age with white hair was considered too old by the Kennedy staff. This was probably fortunate since much of my time was taken up with the seminar during September and October which I had not originally anticipated.

In addition to suggestions from Milton Esman regarding the preparation for the course I received a letter from Dean Don Stone setting forth suggestions for the need of a defined plan enough in detail to provide description of particular topics to be taken up at each meeting plus well organized reading assignments, project assignments, and reports or papers to be prepared, etc.

I look back on this particular seminar with a great deal of pleasure not only because of what I learned but because of the contacts that I made during this period.

Other Assignments And "Near" Assignments

DSM: In the meantime during the last six months of 1960 I had lunched a couple of times with Henry Labouisse who had headed a study for the International Bank in Venezuela for several weeks during my stay

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there and we had become quite good friends. I had heard that Henry had been considered for the Directorship of the International Cooperation Administration during the Eisenhower administration, but that it had been vetoed by the Republican National Committee. So one day while I drove him back to the office after lunch I raised this question and he said that that was true, that he had been all set to take over, but the Republican National Committee decided that he shouldn’t. So I said "Well, now, Henry, things are going to change this fall and the Democrats are going to win and you're probably going to get the offer to do the job again. If you do take it on and I’ll come down and help you." All of this was said half -jokingly, He said "That’s a deal."

Sure enough following my discussions with Henry in early 1961 he was offered the job of Director of I. C. A. which later became the Agency for International Development.

In late January William Mitchell, who was Commissioner of Social Security, called me and said "Dillon, we have just been handed the job by the White House of taking over the Cuban refugee program. Would you like to talk about it? We would like to talk to you," and I said "Yes, I would like to talk about it but I am afraid that I may be committed to Henry Labouisse whose name has not come up for confirmation yet, but I understand that it will, as Director of I. C. A./A. I .D." He said "Well, would you be willing to go down as an consultant during a three or four day meeting which has been called by the former Director of Refugees in Miami of the representatives of the various groups who have been working with them and who they want to help support relocation? The meeting is being called for people all over the country." I said "Yes, I would be willing to do that. I will call Henry Labouisse to see what the status is there." Henry said "Well, Dillon, it is true that I am going to be the new Director but I. don’t know when I will take over and even if I do it may be some time before we get squared away, so go ahead and work with them if they want you to in the meantime." I told Bill Mitchell this and I said "In view of that situation

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maybe you won't want me to go down as consultant." He said "Well let me check with the Secretary."

HP: Which Secretary was this?

DSM: Of H. E. W. The new Secretary was Abe Ribicoff. Bill checked with him and called me back immediately and he said "The Secretary wants you to go by all means."

So I packed my bag for a four-day trip to Miami. This was on Saturday morning. We left by plane and on Monday morning my telephone rang about seven o clock and it was Bill Mitchell and he said "Dillon, I'm in trouble. The Secretary is arriving on a plane at around noon today and I am to meet him. The first question that he is going to ask me is 'Who do you have to take over on February 1'." (This was three or four days ahead of February 1.) He said "I haven't anybody and I don’t know what to do about it and I am calling you to see whether you would continue on and take over for awhile down here until we can work out something. " I said "I would be glad to providing it doesn’t interfere with any developments with I. C. A. So I will call Henry Labouisse and let you know before noon if possible." Henry Labouisse said he thought it was a fine idea as it would be some time before things developed, and for me to go ahead.

A Temporary Assignment

DSM: As a consequence I stayed on from that time until around March seventh as the Director of the Cuban Refugee Program with my office in Miami. This proved to be a most interesting experience.

There were already several thousand Cuban refugees who had come into Miami, most of them by plane, some by boat. The procedure in Cuba was such that if anybody left Cuba at that stage they left everything they owned there. They would have five dollars in their pocket

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and that’s all. So they actually came destitute.

There were Cubans in Miami who had gotten out earlier and had been able to salvage most of their assets. The very well-to-do Cubans when they saw things developing came earlier. A system had already been established of registering the refugees as they arrived with a background of history, their professional interests, training, etc. This registration program continued and we were registering a thousand to fifteen hundred people a week. The problem that we immediately faced when we took over was the fact that no provision had been made for a welfare program for these people who came in for the most part destitute.

The city of Miami was getting badly worried about the fact that the labor market was, in certain areas, being crowded. There was some objections from Labor already on the jobs and they felt that something should be done about it. So before the H. E. W. staff, including William Mitchell and his immediate staff, left for Washington during the last of January, we sat down and worked out a program which included providing some welfare payments to people who were destitute in Miami and welfare payments for people who were willing to relocate and who were found themselves out of a job later in other areas of the country. Welfare was not provided for people who simply wandered off by themselves. So that during the seven weeks I was there we set up provisions for processing welfare cases, with the people from the state office and worked very closely with them in getting that particular program under way. We paid a great deal of attention, of course, to the question of relocation and how it was being handled and in view of the fact that I had had some experience earlier in relocation affairs with the Japanese American program in W. R. A. during the war, I was able to make some suggestions that were helpful to the various agencies that were carrying on the work. I did have some help from staff members from H. E. W.

I was able to help, I think, to some extent. There were four agencies already at work trying to assist in the relocation program. One of them was the Catholic Welfare Agency which was handling a great majority of the cases because most of the people who

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came in from Cuba were Catholics. The Jewish Agency, Hias, had a representative there. The Protestant Church Groups had combined to provide assistance in their area and there is one other agency whose official name I don’t remember but which had been in the relocation business for some time. All of these people were working with contracts which had been made with the former refugee director so one of the jobs that I was asked to carry out was to renegotiate contracts with all four of these agencies before I left the job, which I was able to do.

In the meantime I found that many many refugee groups wanted to interview the Director of Refugees. I am talking now about Cubans, professional groups and others. I also learned that the former director had refused to see these groups. I spent quite a bit of time listening to the stories and the complaints of people who felt that maybe they had been overlooked, groups of dentists, groups of other professions that felt that something ought to be done about their work and getting them established in the United States. We spent time giving them a chance at least to feel they had been listened too.

I did very little about revamping the organization of the staff and strengthening the weak spots of the staff because I knew that I was going to be there only temporarily. I didn’t think I should be making changes if I could avoid it until the new director came on. Every time I talked to Washington, usually two or three times a week, I raised the question with William Mitchell as to whom he had in mind for taking over because I wanted to be back in Washington to be close in touch with what was happening back here.

Finally after five or six weeks he told me that they were going to ask their representative in Miami who was handling the old age assistance program there to take over this job which he did and he was an excellent choice. He was reluctant to leave his other work, but he did leave it but kept some contact with it and finally went back to his original job, but in the meantime I was very happy to have a man of his caliber to take over because he was good and they carried on an excellent program. I keep in touch with

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the reports that come out monthly from the refugee office in Miami and it has been very interesting to me to find that there are about one hundred thousand permanent residents in Miami, a quite stable group.

More than one hundred thousand others have been relocated throughout the United States. The number of people who are relocated out of each new group that comes in now is much larger than it was back in the days when I was there. This is normal, because once you get a relocation program rolling to the point where you have areas pretty well established where there are a number of people who as in the Cuban case for example, who speak Spanish and where there is a chance for people to have some association with people they know well it is much easier to get others to go out. We found that during the W. R. A. days and we found it true in the refugee program so that the refugee program has picked up throughout the last four or five years and it is pretty well stabilized.

I mentioned one hundred thousand people in Miami. As a matter of fact there was a pretty sizable Latin-American community in Miami before the refugee program got under way, and this increased, of course, with the very large number of Cubans coming over in the meantime.

I went to Miami for four days and I stayed for about seven weeks, pretty close to that. I went down, as I remember it, on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of January and I didn’t finish up down there until early in March. When I found that I was going to have to stay on I called Jenness and told her I thought she ought to bring me some clean clothes and to come on down. Whish she did and she spent at least a month with me in Miami. We had very pleasant living conditions because we lived in a good hotel in Miami on a quite adequate expense account and developed some pleasant associations with a number of very nice people.

After my return from Miami in early March of 1961 I contacted Henry Labouisse a couple of times but learned that action in regard to the foreign aid program was being maintained pretty much in status quo pending a reorganization. They had established a task force to

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review the whole program and organization structure of which Henry Labouisse was made chairman, to consider how the agency should be revamped. This required almost one hundred percent of his time and left little time for the actual administrative job for which he was presumably responsible.

Earlier during December or early January I had been approached by Bill Shepard who was in charge of the I. G. A. Far Eastern region. He wanted me to accept a temporary assignment to Korea to follow up on a public works program which was to be financed in large part by the provision of U.S. surplus products, namely wheat, cotton, and other minor products for use in partial payment to workers who were doing public works jobs in lieu of cash. I had some reluctance to take this assignment out of the U.S., but about mid-April Henry Labouisse called me to say that it was going to be some time before the agency would be reorganized and asked that I consider going to Korea in the meantime to assist on the public works program which was being financed largely by U.S. products.

Temporary Assignment In Korea

DSM: I agreed and Jenness and I took off for Korea by way of Rome on about April twentieth.

We went to Korea by way of the eastern route because some of the staff in I. C. A. suggested that I spend a few days in Tunisia to acquaint myself with the public works program there that was being financed with surplus commodities and which had been operating successfully for some time. They thought this was desirable before going on to Korea where they were getting under way with a similar new and larger program. So Jenness sojourned on her own in Rome for three or four days while I went to Tunisia where B.C. Lavergne, an old friend with whom we had spent some time in the Philippines when he was acting Mission Director in 1957

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was Mission Director of the Tunisian I. C. A. program at the time. The Lavergnes asked me to stay with them in their home during my stay, which was most pleasant. I visited many of the distribution points all over northern Tunisia to learn what I could from their experience. This was a most interesting part of our trip because I had not realized how many old Roman ruins there were all over this part of the world. You think normally of the ruins being located in southern Europe and the Middle East but I hadn’t realized how many were in Africa. My whole trip in Tunisia was well worth while. I was fully briefed on the program, on the problems, on the successes and I had a most interesting and delightful time with the Lavergnes.

After three days in Tunisia I returned to Rome and we took off for Korea by plane. After a short stop over in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok we reached Korea on April 27, 1961.

I went to work immediately to acquaint myself with the program and to become acquainted with the Korean Minister in charge of his staff.

During the first three weeks I felt that I had become well enough acquainted with the job to be done and the people responsible and was ready to render some services I realized were needed. The program had gotten well under way and there were some areas particularly where the details of the agreement were not being carried out, especially the fact that in most cases the workers were being paid entirely in surplus commodities, instead of the Korean Government putting up their share of the cash that was originally proposed.

After three weeks we wakened at about .two or three o clock one morning and heard the rat-tat-tat of machine guns! I tried to assure Jenness that it was something else but she knew better. As a matter of fact it was General Park Chung Hi and his insurrectionists who were on their way in to take over the government.

This coup made a tremendous difference in our work over the rest of the period from mid-May until the time we left in early July. Following the coup we never

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knew from one day to the next with whom we would be dealing. The first army officer assigned to the area in which I was involved including the public works program appeared to be "just what the doctor ordered." He was intelligent, understanding and agreeable to the correction of some of the procedures which we felt badly needed correction, but at the end of about ten days he was transferred to another job before he had a chance to do anything about the things that we had suggested. During the first six weeks in Korea we had to deal with three different ministers.

The program which had been well thought through and well planned involved the hiring of many people on planned projects throughout the whole of South Korea on such jobs as road construction or realignment of roads, reclamation projects of various types, drainage projects where this was desirable in order to provide more land for cultivation, and similar types of constructive work. The plan was that wheat in particular, cotton in some cases, and other surplus projects that we shipped in, were to be used in part payment to the workers in the various communities. Consequently it involved setting up storage places in every area where work was being carried on, in order that payment could be made regularly week after week.

In addition to the surplus products there was a certain amount of cash to be provided by the Korean government. We found in our early visits to some of the projects that the cash part of it was missing, that the payment was being made entirely with the surplus products. This was one of the things that we called to the attention of the Minister and his staff very early. I was not there, of course, as a watch dog or an inspector, but nevertheless it did bother me that the terms of the contract was not always being handled as they should have been.

I have already mentioned that the first man assigned after the coup didn’t last more than ten days before he was transferred to another area. After about two or three more weeks I suggested that we take a long field trip across Korea to check more in detail on the distribution centers. This was agreed to and Jack Anderson, who was working with me, and I along with a

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Korean Colonel who had been assigned and two of his Korean aides took a land rover car and started out.

We had a most rugged but interesting trip. I thought that we had learned a great deal that was worth while toward the implementation of the program in the future and toward the correction of some of the things that I felt should be corrected. However the very next day after we returned to Seoul the Colonel who had spent a couple of weeks touring with us to find out what was going on, was transferred to another job. This was typical of the type of problem that I ran into day after day and week after week during the rest of the time that we were there.

It was an interesting two or two and a half months but little was accomplished on the program as far as any contribution that I was able to make, because of this personnel turn-over every three or four days. This was a period, of course, of chaos when the new military government had taken over after the coup and they were trying to adjust people to various jobs. In some cases they fired a lot of people because they felt that they should have been in the army long before and weren’t. Some of them were arrested and put in jail because of the fact that they weren’t in the army. It was not a very happy situation from the standpoint of getting work done.

I had full support from Ray Moyer, who was the Director of the Mission, and John Heilman who was the Deputy during the time that I was there. They did everything they could to assist me in getting the job done. Also I had full support from the Acting Ambassador Green, who was quite interested in the program and who kept in touch.

A Stop Off In India

DSM: During the time that I was in Korea, Douglas Ensminger who was in charge of the Ford Foundation

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program in India visited Seoul because he was on the program of an international meeting that they were having there. He came to see me and talked about the program in Tunisia and in Korea and said that he thought that it was something that they should be interested in in India. He asked if I would be willing to stop in India on my way home. I told him that of course I would providing the I. C. A. people felt that it was a desirable thing to do. After he returned to New Delhi I got word from Tyler Wood who was the I. C. A. director in India, that the idea had been approved and he had arranged for the approval by the I. C. A. in Washington. Consequently Jenness and I went to India en route back to the United States and spent a most interesting week during July of 1961.

Ty Wood and his staff were most gracious and helpful as was Doug Ensminger and his staff of the Ford Foundation. I had several interesting meetings with the top members of India's planning staff who were responsible for their series of five year programs that had been launched. We were provided the opportunity to visit a demonstration village north from New Delhi and on the weekend Doug Ensminger supplied us with a car and chauffeur to take us to Agra to see the Taj Mahal which, of course, was a thrill.

In the meantime we had the opportunity to see the Indian countryside between New Delhi and Agra. We found in India, as we found in some of the other countries, that one of the very real problems in carrying out a program of this kind was the lack of trained people or the lack of competent people at the local level who had had any basic education at all to take over and be responsible for a program of this type. This was one of the problems in South Korea.

Returning from Korea on our way home, we stopped again briefly in Hong Kong, and before reaching India, Bangkok, and in London for a day to see friends who were with us in Caracas, Venezuela in 1959 and 1960.

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Chairman Of A Personnel Review Board

DSM: Upon our return to Washington in late July Henry Labouisse asked that I serve as chairman of an executive personnel review board. During the whole month of August I was busy with files and board meetings during which time we reviewed the records and secured information from people who knew about the work of one hundred fifty-two staff members who were in the top echelons of the foreign aid program throughout the world. We completed a report on each one for the Director. It was a pleasant assignment because we had an excellent board to work with.

In the meantime the reorganization pattern was shaping up and Henry Labouisse told me that during this interim he wanted me to take over a new division which was planned -- a division of research and technical cooperation -- in the revised setup once it was finally approved. Before assuming that responsibility, however, he had another assignment for me. It had been decided to review all the cases that were brought before the personnel division in Washington as a result of Public Law 621 which authorized the review and selection out of people who did not meet the standards that they felt were required for the new A. I. D. agency which was finally formed and named. I was asked to head one of the review panels which started work in September. We were busy at this job through the middle of December.

This was not as pleasant as the executive review procedures which we had just completed because it was dealing with cases that had been recommended by somebody for selection out and we had to decide whether we felt that the recommendation was a sound one or whether it wasn’t. Naturally it is not a very happy procedure when you are having to recommend that people be dropped from their jobs.

During August and September we began to hear rumors that some of the White House young men who President Kennedy had brought in were feeding out material to some of the columnists to the effect that

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Harry Labouisse was not tough enough and that a Republican banker should head the program. It was evident there was an attempt on the part of some of the smart young men to run the program from the White House rather than leaving it in the hands of the director.

Harry Labouisse was appointed as Director in February and was almost immediately made chairman of a task force. This required practically all of his time and he never did get a chance really to serve as the head administrative officer. Dr. Dennis Fitzgerald carried most of the job during that period.

A Change In Directors

DSM: The upshot of all of this was that Harry Labouisse resigned effective October first and they soon announced that George Wood, a Republican banker from the First Boston Corporation, would replace him. It so happened however that the Washington Post published a story relating to Wood's opposition to the T. V. A. and to cooperatives generally and played the story in the middle of the front page. As a result so much controversy developed regarding Mr. Wood's place in the picture that his name was withdrawn and another name presented. The name of Mr. Fowler Hamilton was hurriedly submitted to the senate and he took over in December. Of course all of this meant that my appointment into a key spot in the new program went out the window. Possibly the bright young men in the new regime felt that anyone seventy years of age or older was no longer useful. I did continue to serve in the personnel review program until late in December.

During this period I had lunch with Harry Labouisse and learned that he had taken a bundle of the clippings of the various columns that had appeared, many of which appeared in overseas editions, to President Kennedy, who said that he had not known about them and that he

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was very sorry. Harry Labouisse told the President, according to his statement, that the pressures were such that he felt that it would be better if he resigned. Which he did. He then told me that Secretary Rusk had called him in and obviously had tried to convey his regret about the whole thing. After a nervous and agitated discussion on Rusk's part he produced a map to show where there were openings or probable openings in embassies throughout the world and practically said "Take your choice." Harry selected Greece and in the early part of 1962 he became the Ambassador to Greece. After serving in that spot for a term or more, he took on the job as Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF in New York, and that is where he is today.

A Position With The Organization Of American States

DSM: Early in 1962 my good friends Albert Waterston told me that the Organization of American States or rather the subsidiary the Pan American Union were planning to hire someone in the administrative field to develop some studies and procedures and to serve those countries interested in the modernization of their administrative organization and procedures. This was an entirely new approach on the part of the Pan American Union. Al told me that he had recommended me for the job. Following an interview in January with Dr. Walter Sedwitz and Senor Alvaro Magana and others, I accepted an appointment as a consultant under a one-year contract beginning February 19, 1962. The contract had a proviso that the contract could be terminated by either party on sixty days notice.

The first few weeks were devoted to orientation and contacts throughout the agency, plus other agencies, and various groups, the reading of documents along with review, selection and procurement of published materials in both English and in Spanish,

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in order to provide a working library in this particular area. A partial bibliography of available materials was prepared and made available to those interested. Liaison was maintained with related agencies including a division of public administration of the United Nations and the Agency for International Development.

I represented Dr. Sedwitz as a panel member relating to international assistance on the program of the American Society of Public Administration at their meeting in Chicago during the early days of my assignment. Arrangements had already been made before I came with the agency with the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs of the University of Pittsburgh for the preparation of two basic papers. The first paper, entitled "Administrative Criteria for National Development Plans" was completed in draft form in March of 1962. The second paper "Proposed Programs of Study and Research on Development of Administration in Latin America" was completed in late April. Both papers were carefully reviewed and some time was devoted in reediting of the first paper in cooperation with the University of Pittsburgh staff.

Much time during April and early May was devoted to preparation of detailed plans for a meeting of a task force which had been proposed and which was scheduled to meet for three days May twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth. The planning included securing a list of prospective members, selection of members and making contacts with these people to try to get them to take on the job, the preparation of an agenda, and other essential activities that were necessary to prepare for such a meeting.

Dr. Sedwitz had told me that I was to be chairman of this task force , then just a few days before the scheduled meeting he told me that Dr. Gorge Sol Castianos, Executive Director of the particular area in the Pan American Union, whose initials were I. A. Ecosoc which had to do with economic and social development, had suggested that the chairman be elected by the members of the task force. I objected to this approach for the reason that I felt that any one selected who had not been closely in touch with

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the purposes and detailed planning would be at a loss in expediting the work of such a group. Dr. Sedwitz said that he would discuss the matter further with Dr. Sol Castinanos. In the meantime he, Dr. Sedwitz, was called away to a meeting in Europe.

Consequently, on the morning that the conference was to begin, May twenty-third, Dr. Sol appeared on the scene and turned to me and said "What arrangements have been made for a chairman?" I realized that Dr. Sedwitz had not discussed the matter further with him before leaving for Europe so I simply said that Dr. Sedwitz had told me earlier that I was to serve as chairman. This he immediately accepted and the conference got under way with a statement by Dr. Sol about the conference at Punt Del Este where he had been one of the people that had attended.

As the conference went along I arrived rather slowly at the realization that my immediate boss Senor Magana had been responsible for the proposal that the chairman be elected. Obviously he was very upset at the turn of events and seemed quite sulky and uncooperative throughout the whole three days. He did participate when called upon, but he did it rather unhappily, I thought.

We proceeded with the three day conference as planned, and had a most constructive and agreeable conference in spite of the fact that I sensed that Senor Magana was unhappy. The task force recommended a number of things. There were seven major projects for consideration which I will summarize as follows:

1. They proposed a survey to be conducted of three teams of two or three members each who would visit each of the twenty-one Latin American countries, consult with ten to twenty key leaders, at which time they would introduce and review the paper on "Administrative Criteria for National Development Plans" mentioned earlier which had been prepared by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School. The objective would be to secure constructive comments about the paper which would be useful in connection with a possible revision. The teams would also review the most important problems or barriers affecting adequate

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administration in these countries, to determine with responsible officials any needs for service which might be rendered by the Organization of American States in the development administration area.

2. A proposal for a conference or perhaps three group conferences of delegates from each country to discuss the basic questions and problems outlined in the paper "Administrative Criteria for National Development Plans" which would be held later in 1962.

3. Consideration of the establishment of a research documentation, translation and training center somewhere in South America.

4-. Plans for an inventory and an index of past and current research and publications in the field of public administration and related matters.

5. The initiation of an overall study of autonomous institutes and agencies in regard to their relations, coordination and integration with the rest of the governmental structure and a similar study of financial control problems with particular reference to a review of accounting and auditing responsibilities,

6. The development of a publication of a simple and adequate conceptual framework for a sound personnel system and the same for a good budgetary system.

7. A determination should be made of whether an updating of the overall study of administrative problems similar to the Blandford study of the early 1950s should be carried out.

Following the conference I proceeded to prepare a summary report of the actions of the conference with the list of agencies and individuals who should receive copies of such a report. This report was typed, and I prepared a request for duplication of the number of copies required. I very soon found out that Senor Magana had quietly vetoed my requests in this regard along with some other items which was, I'm sure he knew, most embarrassing and frustrating to me.

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I came to the realization that he was going to do everything possible to get me to resign my job, because he was quite unhappy with me in this particular spot so I asked for a meeting and had a meeting with Senor Magana. After discussion for quite some time even though he wasn’t completely frank with me, I came definitely to the conclusion he would block everything that I proposed if he could do so. I then went to Dr. Sedwitz and told him of the impasse and asked that my resignation be accepted as of July first. This was already late in June because I had been working to get everything in order before we sent the material out and it took me several days to come to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to get the summary report duplicated. Dr. Sedwitz refused to accept my resignation, saying he wanted time to work out some other basis for continuing my services as an consultant.

As time went on nothing happened, so I fell back on the sixty days notice clause in my contract. I presented my resignation effective at the end of sixty days and I had little to do after July first. I couldn’t get agreement to have my services terminated and since I was held by the contract there was nothing for me to do but stick around and twiddle my thumbs. As a matter of fact I did a great deal of reading during this period to fill in the time. The months of July and August were unproductive, and my resignation was not accepted until September first.

This experience of having been stymied and boxed in by a jealous and revengeful boss was a new experience for me and it was not a pleasant one. I realized, of course, shortly after I came on the job, that perhaps I had made a mistake by accepting the job since I was fourth man down on the totem pole. There was Dr. Sol Castianos at the top, Dr. Sedwitz, Dr. Magana and then myself. This was something that I had not been accustomed to for some time and perhaps part of the fault was mine.

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A Travel Interlude Then Further Assignments

DSM: During late January and February and part of March 1963 Jenness and I took a trip to Hawaii, Fiji, American Samoa, New Zealand and Australia.

After our return from this trip and a few weeks of unemployment, I made a luncheon date with Frank Coffin who was serving as Deputy to the Director of the A. I. D. program. Frank had been an excellent member of the executive personnel review panel during August of 1961 which I had chaired and we had become good friends.

During the luncheon I asked whether it was against the law or policy of A. I. D. to hire anyone over seventy years of age. He laughed and said that he knew of no such law; or policy. I said "I do not wish to embarrass you in any way but I believe that I have the ability to contribute something to the agency and I would be happy to serve as a consultant in any area where my experience and talents might serve best." He immediately said that I should be able to render real service in the area of research and technical services and he would speak to Dr. Baumgartner who had taken over the job that Harry Labouisse had planned for me and also explore other areas. As might be expected nothing developed in Dr. Baumgartner's area but only a few days later I received a call from the personnel office to ask that I serve on a personnel review panel. I accepted for part of May and most of June of 1965.

Soon after this, in late July, I had a call from David Stanley of Brookings Institution who told me that he had asked A. I. D. for some help from them on a study of the higher civil service in Government and it seems that he talked with Frank Coffin, who was acting at the time. Frank had told Stanley that they would make me available and agreed to pay my salary. So on August 5, 1963 I started to work with David Stanley at Brookings. My major job was that of interviewing a long list of civil servants in grades above grade fifteen both in Washington and in the field, and in preparing detailed reports on these interviews. I

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was carried on the A. I. D. roles from August fifth until September thirteen and then transferred to the Brookings payroll under contract until October 25, 1963. The results of this study were published in November 1964 and authored by David Stanley with acknowledgements to those of us who had assisted in the study.

Following this assignment I was again appointed by A. I. D. as a consultant on November 4, 1963 to serve on a panel to review a long list of employees as a first move toward a selection out process. This work continued throughout the rest of 1963 and into early 1964. We completed the job and reported to David Bell in February 1964.

Jenness and I then started planning a European trip. In early July, Jenness and I, along with our eldest grandchild, Pamela Hall, toured Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, France and then spent six weeks in England and Ireland, returning about mid September, 1964.

Shortly after my return I was asked by the personnel director of U. S. I. A. to serve on a promotion review panel which was to review for possible promotion, the records of the foreign service officers who were at work in U. S. I. A. I learned that James Mitchell who was then working with the Brookings Institution, and who was a good friend, had recommended me for this spot. This assignment was interesting and enjoyable because we had a good panel, two of whom were members of the staff of U. S. I. A. and two of the State Department. I was the lay member not attached to any agency.

I Do Some Writing

DSM: We finished this job in December 1964 and this, as it developed, was my last assignment as consultant in any of the governmental areas. So in 1965 after coming to the realization that I wasn’t going to be

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selected for further part time work I started writing a book which came to be entitled Uprooted Americans with a subtitle The Japanese-Americans and the W.R.A. during World War II. The manuscript was completed in late 1966 and will soon be published by the University of Arizona Press. I would like to add that I had excellent help on this manuscript from four of my very good friends who served as readers and reviewed the document from time to time.

They were Helen Pryor, Philip Click, Morrill Tozier (both of the latter had served with me in W.R.A.) and Mike Masaoka who at the time of W.R.A. was Executive Officer of the Japanese-American Citizens League and who has continued to be closely associated with the J.A.C.L. throughout the years.

The manuscript has also been reviewed by William Hosokawo , Associate Editor of the Denver Post, who made a number of constructive suggestions.

Upon its completion I wrote to Doctor Edward H. Spicer, head of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Arizona, an old friend and a former member of the War Relocation Authority staff. He asked that I send a copy of the manuscript to him for review and possible referral to the University of Arizona Press.

After reviewing the manuscript he recommended that it be published. The University of Arizona Press agreed. Consequently the book will come off the press early in 1970.

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CHAPTER XVII

POSTSCRIPT - .SUMMING UP

DSM: It was my good fortune to have been born of wonderful parents, and to have been reared on a farm at a time when thrift and hard work were virtues. The farm tasks and responsibilities, which were hard at times, were accepted as a major part of a farm boy s' life. The work habits that were formed in early life were important assets in later years.

I have had the benefit of good educational training all the way from the one-room country school through college and post-graduate work.

I have been fortunate also in having good bosses throughout the more than forty years of public service.

All of my many jobs have been interesting and worthwhile. I have had the opportunity to visit most of the fifty states officially in the company of personnel who had an excellent knowledge of the people in the areas but they were also well versed in the nature of the flora and fauna. This kind of guide service could not be hired for love or money for it was avail able only among the well trained public servants who were agriculturists, conservationists and others well versed in the lore of the areas served.

In addition I had the opportunity to visit many foreign countries officially with the same kind of well trained escorts.

The two jobs which stand out in their contribution to my development are: my first job as a County Agricultural Agent in Vanderburgh County, Indiana, where as a young man of twenty-four years, I was on my own for the first time. I learned there that I liked working with people and my confidence in my own ability increased greatly. New vistas opened up for me as a result of that experience.

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The second one came many years later when I took over the Directorship of the War Relocation Authority for four .years in 1942. This was a tough job without precedents or guide lines. I learned many things for sure during that four years including the confirmation that many of the tenets which I had grown up with were still valid. Also the importance of planning and never giving up so long as there were stones unturned and that people of good will often came to the front more slowly than those of ill will but they stayed with it longer once they took hold.

During this period I lost all feelings of fear or insecurity that had occasionally been bothersome up to that time.

All in all, I have had a wonderful life with many opportunities for learning and development in my many jobs. On top of it all at age thirty-three I married a most wonderful girl. As a result we have a family that makes me very proud.