Then I have here an analysis of each dollar expended by the home. It shows, at general headquarters, that for our overhead, out of each dollar, we spend 7 mills for general administration.

Mr. SWING. That is unusually low.

General WOOD. For current expenses, which includes the salaries of the officers of the branch, as distinguished from general headquarters, it was 8.1 cents; subsistence is 36 cents out of every dollar; household, which is coal, gas, water, laundry supplies, and so forth, is 15.8 cents out of every dollar; hospital is 26.8 cents out of every dollar; transportation, which is a small charge for bringing the men into the home on original admission, is 1 mill out of every dollar; repairs, which is the expense for lumber, paints, oils, and so forth, is 6.9 cents.

Mr. SCHAFER. Will the gentleman yield for a question on the repairs?

General Wood. Yes.

Mr. SCHAFER. Is it not a fact that adequate repairs to all of these institutions have not been made, due to the policy of economy? General WOOD. I would not say that, Mr. Schafer.

Mr. SCHAFER. Well, is it not a fact that the board of managers and the governors of these various institutions, in submitting their estimates, ask for a great deal more than is approved by the Budget Bureau and appropriated by Congress for repairs?

General WOOD. That sometimes happens; but repairs is the one item in the home service that can be handled really to the best advantage. The necessary repairs, I can say positively, all necessary repairs are made. But whether you paint this building this year or next year, or various things of that kind, is purely a matter of administration; but our power plants are always kept in order, so that they can operate. But some matters, like you say very truly, some matters like painting this building, or something of that kind, if we have not the money we put it off until the next year, and nobody suffers. But as far as anything vital to the comfort of the men is concerned, we keep that up.

Mr. DALLINGER. Do I understand, General, that the food is 36 cents a day per man?

General Wood. No; that is 36 cents out of every dollar we spend goes for food.

Mr. O'BRIEN. General, differentiating between satisfaction and sufficiency, are the rations satisfactory to the inmates?

General WOOD. I will say this much in answer to your question, that in the last five or six months I have had one complaint. I do not know whether that is fair or not, but I have had one complaint; that is all I have had.

Mr. O'BRIEN. That would appear to be satisfactory.

General WOOD. Of course, I have no doubt there may be others. Mr. SCHAFER. Several.

General WOOD. I have been president of the board for 13 years and know a great many hundreds of the members and they are very, very free in their correspondence with me. I get a great deal of mail every day from various members and they have their troubles. It may be they think the governor made a mistake in trying them, or they are charged for the loss of clothing and ought not be charged

for the loss of clothing, or they ought to have a job and do not get a job, and a tremendous number of things of that kind. But, as I said, in the last six months, in my mail from members, I have only had one complaint about food.

Mr. SCHAFER. Is it not a fact you have increased the rations and for several years there were many complaints about food?

General WOOD. We have done the best we could about food. I have menus here and everything, if you will just let me get through.

Mr. SCHAFER. I will say that you now have a wonderful commissary officer at the national soldiers' home at Milwaukee-Captain Bormann.

General WoOD. Yes, sir.

Mr. SCHAFER. And he certainly has set things in order and that is one of the reasons why you do not now have as many complaints from the national home at Wisconsin as you formerly had.

General WOOD. I am very glad to hear you say that, Captain Schafter, because I originally appointed Captain Bormann as our commissary at Dayton, and I am glad to know he has made good the confidence we put in him when we transferred him to Milwaukee.

Mr. SCHAFER. He is on the job all of the time and takes an interest in the welfare of the men.

General WOOD. Now, the next item in our dollar is "farm." "Farm" is a misnomer, because we have not got much in the way of farms; but we have a great many miles of road, and at each home we have a cemetery. We have a large cemetery at the Central Branch, Dayton; we have over 15,000 interments at the cemetery in the home. Our biggest item under "farm" is cemetery and roads; not farm. But the item is 3.1 cents.

Mr. SWING. It could better be called "farm, parks, and roads " could it not, because he takes care of the grounds?

General WOOD. It probably would be better. But I might say, Mr. Swing, this nomenclature, these subheads of appropriation, have been in use since time was young; they never have been changed, and when you come to an item of estimate, especially before new members of the Appropriations Committee, we have laboriously to explain to them it really is not "farm," but it is "parks, roads, cemetery, and everything else."

Mr. SWING. But you do have, in connection with a number of your homes, agricultural grounds which the men work on, or which you hire men to cultivate, either by actual day labor or crop shares?

General WOOD. Yes, sir; that is true. Now, the next item is clothing; this is an expenditure for clothes, shoes, hats, and other articles, and so forth.

Mr. SWING. Did you give us the figure on the farm?

General WOOD. Yes, sir; 3.1 cents. Clothing is 2.5 cents. (The tables above referred to are as follows:)

Statement of operations of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, fiscal year 1928, compared with fiscal year 1927

Central..

Northwestern.

Clothing for all branches.

Administration, Board of Managers,

1 Included in the per diem costs of the several branches.

The cost of administration out of each dollar expended was: 1928, $0.0065; 1927, $0.00507.

Analysis of each dollar expended

1928 1927

General headquarters: Expenses of Board of Managers, including salaries of officers and
employees headquarters office, traveling expenses of the board, office furniture, station-
ery, telegraph and telephone service, etc...
Current expenses: Salaries of all officers and employees engaged in connection with the
management of the branch, including supervision, statistics, purchase of supplies, pay-
ment of pensions, accounting, inspection and care of supplies and other property,
guards, watchmen, band; and expenditures for office supplies, equipment, stationery,
telephone, telegraph, supplies and appliances for fire protection, musical instruments,
music, books, library equipment, etc..

Subsistence: All expenditures for food supplies, for kitchen and dining room equipment,
and for wages of all employees engaged in connection with the preparation and serving
of meals

Household: All expenditures for coal, gas, water, laundry supplies, equipment, beds, bedding, and other furniture and household supplies for barracks and quarters, and salaries of all employees engaged in connection with the heating, lighting, water system, laundry, and dry cleaning plant.

Hospital: Salaries of assistant surgeons, trained nurses, and all other employees engaged
in the care of the sick; expenditures for drugs, special diet, hospital equipment, caskets,
and other hospital supplies..

Transportation: Pay of transportation of applicants reporting, members transferred, etc.
Repairs: All expenditures for lumber, paints, oils, boilers, machinery, parts, and the
general upkeep of buildings and equipment, and salaries of chief engineer and all em-
ployees engaged in the maintenance and repair of buildings, steam lines, water lines,
etc.
Farm: Salaries of all employees engaged in connection with farming operations, dairy,
vegetable garden, repair of roads, park system, cemetery, etc., expenditures for all
supplies, tools, and equipment used in connection therewith.
Clothing: All expenditures for the purchase of cloth, shoes, hats, and all other articles
and materials used in the fabrication and repair of clothing, and salaries of all officers
and employees engaged in the manufacture, distribution, and repair of all articles of
clothing..

Total.

General WOOD (continuing). Now you asked me a question about food. I have before me here some tables. This last table is the amount of rations consumed by each man during the month of December, 1928. I will introduce this in the record.

Mr. SWING. Housewives would know what that meant, but members of the committee who put up the money only measure food on the basis of cost. Have you the per diem per capita cost?

General WOOD. Yes, sir.

Mr. SCHAFER. And do you not include oleomargarine under that item of butter? Is not that the principal item under the butter heading?

General WOOD. Yes, sir; we have "butter."

Mr. SCHAFER. Well oleomargarine is certainly not butter.
General WOOD. Butterfat constituent; I will put it that way.

Mr. SCHAFER. I think your table should be amended so that it does not appear, in the hearings, as if there were no oleomargarine served; when, as a matter of fact, you serve it for butter.

General WOOD. I do not deny that, Mr. Schafer, at all.

Mr. SCHAFER. Personally, I would like to prohibit the use of oleomargarine in the place of butter in the homes.

Mr. GOODWIN. You are absolutely right.

General WoOD. Now for that amount of food which I have narrated and which amounts to some pounds of food a day, the cost at the central branch, in December, was 32 cents per man, in the general mess; 43 cents in the hospital mess; and 59 cents in the T. B. mess. Mr. SWING. Your general mess, then, is less than half of what either the Army and Navy is, is it? Do you know what the Army and Navy is?

General WOOD. I believe it is 50 cents.

Mr. SWING. The Navy is higher than the Army.

General WOOD. The last time I served in the Army it was 50 cents; I do not know what you gentlemen have done since then.

Mr. SWING. They have gotten civilized and gone up, since then, in both the Army and the Navy.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you had your allowance for diet, character of the food served, and the rotation and change in food from day to day, gone over and examined by competent dietitians?

General Wood. We have dietitians on duty in every home.

The CHAIRMAN. And do you serve a balanced diet such as would tend to keep the inmates in good health?

General WOOD. We try to. I have before me now, for the purpose of the record, the menu of the Central Branch for the present week. Mr. SCHAFER. In those menus, where you serve oleomargarine or some form of oleomargarine in lieu of butter, do you designate the oleomargarine as butter?

General WOOD. No, sir; butterine. It is right here as "butterine." Mr. SWING. I think it would be interesting to put those in the record.

Mr. DALLINGER. Is it not a fact, General, that many of these preparations of imitation butter, made of pure coconut oil and things of that kind, are very much better tasting and very much better than some of the butter that is served?

Mr. SCHAFER. I will say it is not as good as the butter from Wisconsin.

Mr. SWING. I would like to know if the gentleman from Massachusetts uses any of those things he speaks about.

Mr. DALLINGER. I certainly have.

Mr. SWING. I did not say "have you; " I said "do you?"

Mr. DALLINGER. I try to get the best butter, but a whole lot of the butter that is served is not fit to eat.

Mr. SCHAFER. Oh, if they spend the money they can get the butter, and they can get ten times as much butter as they need-A-No. 1 butter, from Wisconsin.

Mr. GOODWIN. Does the personnel at these homes eat exactly the same food as the members?

General WOOD. The personnel?

Mr. GOODWIN. Yes.

General WOOD. May I ask what you mean by "the personnel." Mr. GOODWIN. The administrative officers.

General WOOD. They buy their food. They are not furnished their food; the officers buy their food.

Mr. SCHAFER. Do you furnish servants to the officers in charge of these institutions?

General WOOD. No, sir.
Mr. SCHAFER. Not any?
General WOOD. No, sir.

Mr. SCHAFER. No cooks or waitresses?

General WOOD. If they have any servants in their own quarters, they pay for them; they are not furnished.

Mr. SCHAFER. And they pay for their food, too?

General WOOD. Yes, sir.