Traffic, is disapproved; construction will remain under operations," the purchase of real estate was separated from construction, and the recommendation as above quoted was not carried out.

The Construction Division states that, in securing their sites, there was a lack of cooperation by the facilities department of the Division of Purchase, Storage and Traffic, and that in a number of cases it has been necessary for the Construction Division to enter upon property and proceed with construction before purchase or rental of the site had been consummated.

The board is strongly of the opinion that, as stated in the memorandum of July 18, 1918, by the Director of Purchase, Storage and Traffic, the construction work and the purchase of real estate should be under one organization unit; that, in time of war, it is very important that land and real estate matters should be handled with the greatest speed and that wherever practicable, proper safeguarding of Government interests requires the taking of a renewable lease or an option to purchase or the purchase, at a reasonable price, of land or other real estate on which Government improvements are placed.

Many other difficult real-estate problems now exist, due to the lack of Government title, option to purchase, or satisfactory lease of land upon which the Government has expended large funds for grading, structures, plants, and plant facilities. The Construction Division states that it always raised this question and either settled the matter itself or received a statement that some other bureau was responsible for its proper handling. Col. Lincoln Bush of its engineering division, states, for the Construction Division, that it has already cleared up all the land-title business for which it was made responsible and is now endeavoring to clear up similar business for which, it is stated, other departments, principally the Ordannce Department, had been responsible.

Problems of disposal or retention of real estate and of the salvage or other disposal of material thereon are now most important. Some of the cantonment and camp sites are of strategic importance for the furture military program. It is possible that such property, and other like property, if Government owned and not used, could be leased or otherwise utilized, in time of peace, in ways which would offset some of the carrying costs. In some instances the cost of the real estate is such a small fraction of the expenditures already made and its ownership by the Government is so essential, either to adequate future preparedness or to the proper sale or salvage of the Government improvements, that it was advisable to acquire title. In many cases more than enough could have been saved in salvage of improvements to buy the land and thus avoided the necessity of

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selling many modern structures at junk prices because of nonownership of the land by the Government.

The utilization of war plant facilities in peace times might entail Government ownership thereof with private operation either with or without Government participation in the earnings. This plan has serious objections owing to possible politics and patronage abuses. The Government could, however, take title to much of this property and lease it to the highest bidder, possibly keeping some control over the character of improvements made, retaining the right to eject the tenant in time of emergency by paying appropriate damages.

The War Department in emergencies should be authorized to buy land without special legislative authority. Such a provision would have saved much time and money, especially in Ordnance Department expenditures made on land owned by other parties. The Secretary of War might be authorized in emergency to buy necessary land out of funds appropriated for specific projects, as in the case of Army camps. In the case of the railway right of way of the Norfolk Terminal the land was condemned under the pure food law in order to meet emergency conditions.

PART V.

SECTION 44.

PRINCIPAL CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENTS.

The foregoing sections are chiefly devoted to the presentation and analysis of information and facts ascertained by the Board of Review of Construction respecting the emergency construction program of the War Department and its work completed and in progress. The following sections state at greater length the principal conclusions and suggestions for improvements which the board has to make. They are followed by a transcript of conclusions copied from preceding sections. A condensed statement of suggestions for improvements, made in the interest of better efficiency in War Department construction, is given in the letter of the board transmitting this report.

SECTION 45.

CONSOLIDATION OF GOVERNMENT CONSTRUCTION.

Soon after war was declared the work of designing and building the cantonments and camps was all placed under the Cantonment Division, especially created for the work and developed into an Army organization functioning along essentially commercial lines, with the right to report direct to the Secretary of War. This was followed by combining all War Department construction under the Construction Division of the Army, which operated in a similar manner. The results so demonstrated the advantages of this plan for executing such construction that the Board of Review has studied the possibility of consolidating the nontechnical construction work of all departments of the Government and here presents its conclusions.

The system of dividing Government construction among a number of departments is at variance with business practice, which usually combines similar activities under one administrative bureau. Concentration of authority need not cause upheavals or delays, as it requires only a gradual combination or transfer of responsibilities, as was proved by the success which followed the placing of all War Department construction under one organization. Had it been

possible to effect this combination earlier, much time, money, and wasteful duplication of effort in Government bureaus and industrial processes would have been saved.

Special fitness, training, and experience in organization, selection of personnel and creation of standards are necessary to the success of a single Government construction bureau. With the interested bureaus it should plan any desired facilities and decide all questions which relate to the location of the several units of a group of buildings, the arrangements of their interiors and the machinery to be placed therein, and other features of importance affecting the later production operations. The work should then be executed by the construction bureau, which must be trained to Government methods. and an appreciation of Army and Navy standards and requirements. During the war this was lacking among many civilians in and out of uniform.

It is wrong in principle for each bureau to attempt to do construction, for such subdivision among separate organizations created for different specialized kinds of work precludes the attainment of uniformity and economy in methods and results. It creates delay, duplication, conflict and waste, and allows the more aggressive bureaus to accumulate an excess of facilities at the expense of the others and to the detriment of the general program.

The separate performance of like work by the major departments of the Government means failure to use desirable working methods that are possible only with consolidation. The separate tasks are usually too small for the best men or too large for average men. Such a plan results in expensive procurement and inspection, prevents desirable standardizing of types of units, and makes property accountability difficult. These defects can not be overcome by using, under central supervision, the individual bureau construction organizations, as this would cause divided responsibility, irritating conflicts of authority, and useless duplication of employees and executives. The present methods of handling much Government construction work seem to involve complications of authority, or red tape, and to fail to grant the authority that should accompany responsibility in order to obtain quality, economy, and reasonable speed.

The bureau handling peace-time Government construction must, to be successful, comprise a trained personnel of large and varied experience, who, as well as the work, should be freed, so far as possible, from limitations of military rank or seniority. This requires. the liberal utilization of civilian experts to avoid the complications and difficulties inseparable from a military organization. Under such a plan, when the Army is in action in time of war, it could be given control over the execution of its own construction. There

seems little reason for doing this under peace conditions except as to technical military construction.

The war emergency proved that war must be fought by the entire Nation, of which the great majority are civilians, and that the responsibility for executing even Government war construction must be placed with experienced civilian engineers and constructors.

The payment of higher salaries than those of the Army classification is necessary in order to obtain the best expert service. This is impracticable under the present plan, as the cost would be too great because of an excess of partly employed men scattered among a number of bureaus. Consolidation would make it possible to secure the best talent for Government work with a resulting saving in total salaries, and also to obtain more efficient expenditure. Payment of these relatively higher salaries to expert civilians is warranted because of their short term of service and the fact that they would not have the benefit of the life positions of the Army. Such civilians showed their willingness to accept the regular Army scale in war time by their prompt acceptance of call and service with the Construction Division.

To handle properly a large volume of Government construction work control must be exercised through centralized supervision. This should fix the general standards and policies and be decentralized as to the design and execution of individual projects, so permitting the proper adaptation of general plans to local conditions by those in direct charge of each piece of work.

The War Department alone should not be relied upon and made responsible for the success of the Army in war. In peace times its status is necessarily one of inaction, and such an organization, normally inert, can not of itself expand speedily to the full proportions necessary for meeting all Army needs in a war emergency and assure the country of protection. In time of war the War Department is expanded under great strain from a relatively small to the largest Government department. At such times other departments, particularly those having to do with internal affairs, are contracted and many of their activities practically suspended. As the Government has to utilize civilians to perform its construction work during war, it is desirable to relieve the War Department from dangerous strain in war by having a peace-time construction organization which, being unhampered by military regulations, could work at maximum efficiency and in war could handle emergency construction speedily and effectively. A sufficient amount and variety of work to keep its personnel well trained would be provided under such a plan without enlarging the normal and proper scope of Federal activities.

Observation indicates that satisfactory results in the war emergency construction have been accomplished largely by, and in