Mr. GRANT. I think that is fair, Senator; up to this time, at least. Senator HOLLIS. And is it your judgment that a girl can not live. in the District of Columbia much cheaper than that and be comfortable?

Mr. GRANT. Yes, Senator. She can if she is willing to go a little. distance from her place of employment; that is, to the outlying suburbs. If she is willing to go well over Northeast or well out Northwest she can get by for less than that, in a fairly respectable neighborhood.

Senator HOLLIS. How cheaply would you say that a girl could live
in the District of Columbia, respectably, and with wholesome food?
Mr. GRANT. She can get by-for her room and meals?
Senator HOLLIS. Yes.

Mr. GRANT. Exclusive of car fare, for $35 a month.
Senator HOLLIS. You place that as a minimum, do you?
Mr. GRANT. Yes; for a respectable neighborhood.

Senator HOLLIS. Before we leave this subject, would the other Senators like to ask some questions? I think this is a very interesting phase of it. If there are no questions, proceed.

Mr. GRANT. We found other bodies, such as the Y. W. C. A. and the Y. M. C. A., and committees conducted by Mrs. Archibald Hopkins and other generous souls engaged in similar work. The average clerk, we found, did not want to go to any place distant from his place of employment. Almost invariably people who had been used to riding 30 or 40 minutes to their place of employment in other cities we found declined to consider any such location here. They said, "I want a place that is within four or five blocks of the War Department" or "of the Treasury Department." That naturally caused congestion in and around those departments.

Senator HOLLIS. What was the cause of that? They just wanted to be near the center of things, near the theaters. I suppose, and other places of amusement?

Mr. GRANT. Yes, precisely; they wanted to be near the entertainments, and to save time coming and going.

Senator HOLLIS. It was a general desire to be near the center of things?

Mr. GRANT. Yes.

Senator HOLLIS. Most of us are that way

Mr. GRANT. It was natural.

Senator HOLLIS. Proceed.

Mr. GRANT. That was about all.

Senator DILLINGHAM. Did you have any more difficulty in finding places for ladies than for gentlemen?

Mr. GRANT. Yes; that is true.

Senator DILLINGHAM. Why is that?

Mr. GRANT. The average householder, particularly the woman of the house, does not want another woman in the house. Women cause more trouble; and there are many more places listed for men than for women.

Mr. BROWN. Have you followed up that work, so as to keep in touch with conditions?

Mr. GRANT. Yes; since the chamber of commerce gave over the bureau, I have furnished a car to help the inspectors in going about,

and probably in that time I have looked into 500 or 600 of those places. Each day's allowance would be about 20 places to be inspected, and I have been out about 30 times. Yes; I have visited easily 600 houses. Even in the last 15 days I have found rooms on pretty streets. I remember one place, on First Street NW., on a road to the Soldiers' Home, on an improved street, an excellent room, in a comparatively new house, with steam heat and electric light, where this condition still exists, where there is a handsome, clean, satisfactory room for $25 a month for two persons.

Senator HOLLIS. And all furnished?

Mr. GRANT. Everything there-even twin beds. I understand from the housing bureau that the registration of rooms is falling off; that they have to make continual appeals; but I believe there are still a number of houses in the District which have not been opened to the incoming clerks.

Senator HOLLIS. Do you find that many of them do it for patriotic reasons?

Mr. GRANT. Yes; many of them. I said to the woman of the house in one case, "That is a very moderate charge.' The answer to such a remark in some cases was, "I have a son in the Army," "My brother is in the Army," or "I am not the profiteering sort of person."

Senator HOLLIS. Then the reluctance to have the neighbors think that they have to do it to support the family is probably overcome and dissipated by the war?

Mr. GRANT. Yes.

Senator HOLLIS. Just as economical conduct in regard to food is practiced without hesitation because of Mr. Hoover?

Mr. GRANT. Yes.

Senator HOLLIS. You say you think there are others who have not offered rooms who might do so?

Mr. GRANT. Yes; I think there are many well-to-do persons here who might offer to open their houses.

Senator HOLLIS. Have you tried any of those?

Mr. GRANT. Yes; we have. Our citizens in the bureau are continuously busy, and every once in a while some acquaintance will call up and say, I have a room that I might let, but I hate to have anybody else in the house." I would say, "It is your duty to do it." and nine times out of ten we would bring them over. Many of them are people from Chevy Chase and other suburbs; and they turn in their rooms at very moderate prices.

Mr. CHAPIN BROWN. Did the chamber of commerce do what it did as a matter of commerce or patriotism?

Mr. GRANT. Patriotism. The compensation we got was the privilege of working Christmas Day and New Year's Day and holidays, and we never got to the office so early or left so late that we did not find somebody there clamoring for a room; "I have just gotten into town, and I must have a place to sleep." We went early and stayed there late at night in order to take care of them.

Thank you very much.

Senator HOLLIS. There is a gentleman sitting back there, Mr. Gore, who, I understand, wants to be heard. Do you care to make a statement?

Prof. GORE. I do not represent anyone except the unrepresented citizen of the District.

Senator HOLLIS. We have heard from him on occasion.

Prof. GORE. I did not come with the expectation of saying any thing.

Senator HOLLIS. We will hear you.

STATEMENT OF PROF. JAMES H. GORE.

I am

Prof. GORE. I might say that my name is James H. Gore. a retired professor of mathematics. As an actuary I was very much interested in the figures that Mr. Browne gave. As a mathematician I can not follow his computation when he says that 5 per cent would be a fair net return for property, and gave, I believe, the figure 4.15, and said that an increase of 10 per cent as proposed by the Johnson bill would give the owner 14.15 per cent. He is assuming that 10 per cent was 10 per cent on the value of the property, whereas the 10 per cent is only 10 per cent on the rent.

Senator HOLLIS. And if you figure that 10 per cent is a fair increase on the rental that would add only 1 per cent to the net?

Prof. GORE. That would add only 1 per cent to the net return to the owner instead of 10 per cent, making a little over 5 per cent instead of over 14 per cent that Mr. Browne referred to.

I have just one or two objections to make to the bill. First of all. it is special legislation and it is local. It affects the District of Columbia instead of affecting other parts of the country where profiteering is even greater than or as great as it is here.

Senator HOLLIS. Right there, you know that we act as the local representatives of the District of Columbia; we are the local legislature, and other legislatures will have to look out for their States.

Prof. GORE. Yes; but this casts a reflection on the tendency here in the District of Columbia, tacitly, in comparison with the other districts of the country, as though conditions here were abnormally bad in comparison with the conditions elsewhere.

Senator HOLLIS. They are abnormal, whether bad or good.

Prof. GORE. It is unfortunate that we should bear that blame. I own some property, fortunately. Some of it is in apartments, and I have compared my net returns during the past three months with net rentals of the corresponding three months a year ago, with all apartments occupied, and I find that my net returns are 40 per cent less on that property than they were last year. Now, if I am to be restricted in the rent that I can receive for my property, I should also have some protection in the charges that are made for improvements and repairs to that property, and for the service rendered. If I rent a house to a plumber and you permit no increase in his rent. he ought not to be allowed to increase his charges when he makes repairs on other properties that I have; so that if we are going to do any price fixing it ought to be general instead of special. It affects only one class; it affects only the owners of property.

Senator HOLLIS. Do you happen to know anything about the English law that has prohibited any increase of rents over what they were on August 1, 1914?

Prof. GORE. No, sir: I do not.

Senator HOLLIS. You have not heard of it?

Prof. GORE. No, sir. My own notion about price fixing is that if we are going to fix one price we should fix them all. Cut all of them down or cut none of them down. This bill does not take into consideration emergency values. For instance, some parts of our city have been changed absolutely in the last year, as to character. Large Government buildings have been erected in certain parts of the city, and immediately surrounding those buildings we have small residences that heretofore have yielded a small return as residences, which have suddenly become valuable for stores or restaurants or eating houses or other purposes; so that there is the intrinsic value there, and not a fictitious increase, and these people should have an opportunity to profit by these fortuitous conditions.

Senator HOLLIS. That is the unearned increment?

Prof. GORE. Absolutely; and that is the basis of a large amount of our prosperity. Other cities, other localities, have occasional business booms.

Senator HOLLIS. That is the landholder's view.

Prof. GORE. Yes; of course, the basis of our wealth will come from the land in some form. When you fix the rental value of property you are fixing the value of the property itself, because when you attempt to sell a piece of property, the question at once comes, What does it rent for? and the prospective buyer will figure back from the rent to what he considers the value of the property; so that when you restrict the rental value of property you are restricting the selling value of property; so that instead of protecting some would-be landlords you are placing the burden, the embargo, the weight upon the owner of the property who might wish to sell; and that, I think, is a great injustice, and should not be tolerated. Those are just some ideas that occurred to me.

I know, in my own case, war legislation should not be in the interest of the individual; but I am sure that I am only one of a class. I bought a very valuable piece of property that was under lease, and it had been leased by the owner to a personal friend at a mere nominal price. I expected to either sell the property or relet it at the termination of the lease, which will occur now very soon, and if this law goes into effect I will not be able to increase the rent to anything like what it should be, and to what I expected it would be, nor could I sell the property to anyone, because the would-be purchaser would figure out what the rental value would be under the operation of this law, knowing the present rental; consequently the price of that property would be depreciated probably 30 or 40 per cent, which, of course, would work an injustice. That is an individual case, but I am sure it is only one of a type.

That was the only thing I wanted to say.

Senator HOLLIS. Do you believe in establishing a rent administrator?

Prof. GORE. Absolutely, because conditions are changing almost day by day.

In regard to the matter that was referred to by the previous witness- -as to houses in well-to-do parts of the city-I have quite a large house on Sheridan Circle, and I live all alone. When this appeal was made for persons to take in clerks and others who are coming to the city I said to my servants, "Now, I have one little

room here that I am not using. I am perfectly willing to allow these rooms to be occupied by persons who might need them, and you may have the entire amount." I gave it all to the servants. They protested. They would rather not be encumbered in that way. So that there is one of the difficulties that will occur in trying to place people in private houses; it disturbs the domestic machinery; and those of us who have lived in Washington any length of time know that that is rather a delicate bit of mechanism, that on the slightest provocation your servants will leave you, and there is the greatest difficulty in procuring others, so that that is the difficulty there.

Senator HOLLIS. There was a gentleman here yesterday who wanted to be heard-Mr. Linkins.

Mr. LINKINS. Yes, sir.

Senator HOLLIS. We will hear you next.

STATEMENT OF MR. GEORGE R. LINKINS.

Senator HOLLIS. What is your full name?

Mr. LINKINS. George R. Linkins. I did want to get a chance to ask Mr. Browne one or two questions.

Senator HOLLIS. He evidently went out so as to escape that chance. What is your business?

Mr. LINKINS. I am in the real estate business, and also I am a lawyer, and also I am in the banking business, and I am chairman of the committee of the board of trade that had this matter under consideration.

In presenting the views of the Washington Board of Trade to your committee upon the bill H. R. 9248 I desire to first call your attention to the fact that the Washington Board of Trade has placed itself squarely upon record as opposed to profiteering in rentals, either in Washington or elsewhere. Having made this clear, in order that our motives in opposing the Johnson bill may not be misconstrued, and in the interest of brevity, I will present the matter under the headings of several principles as unanimously adopted by the board of trade at its meeting held on February 19 last:

First. That any legislation upon this subject should be to the whole country and not to the District of Columbia alone. Unless legislation intervenes to prevent, prices are fixed by the law of supply and demand. The rental of real estate is no exception to this rule, as owners of real estate in Washington who passed through the several dull years just previous to the entry of the United States into the world war can testify to their sorrow. This law of supply and demand works as well outside of the District of Columbia as inside of it, and there are many other places in the United States where through shortage of housing facilities, due to war activities, the evils of rent profiteering are rampant and where the sufferers are as well entitled to relief as here.

I know of several instances that have come to my knowledge in the past two or three days surrounding several of the camps in the South and one camp in the North.

Several instances of these conditions outside of Washington have been called to our attention, and we submit that when legislation on