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Show GENERAL HUGH S. JOHNSON UmlF-lur. J WNUS.VH. COMMANDEERING POWER WASHINGTON. This column has been so busy kibitzing about the conscription con-scription of men under the selective service bill that it hasn't had much space for kibitzing about the so-called so-called "conscription of industry" or wealth the "commandeering power" pow-er" added to the Burke-Wadsworth bill. Of course, the whole idea of tacking tack-ing this provision on a selective service serv-ice bill is pure political hokum. It was put there to enable congressional congression-al candidates for re-election to say to their constituents: "I wouldn't vote for conscripting men's lives until I had insisted on voting to conscript men's dollars." The power to take over private property for public use is as old as English law. It was called the law of eminent domain. It is practiced almost every day in peace time and is called the process of "condemnation." "condemna-tion." The only real difference in war is that it is called "commandeering." "comman-deering." Any important difference in the proposed legislation is only in the method for determining whether the noorf is fur "nublic use." In both cases a court must determine what must be paid the owner for his property. prop-erty. That must be so because the Constitution itself provides that private pri-vate property may never be taken "for public use without just compensation." com-pensation." In peacetime condemnation the court must adjudge both that the proposed use is "public" and what the compensation shall be. In this proposed legislation, whether the property is to be taken on a rental or ownership basis, the secretaries of war or navy can determine whether the use is "public" but it is as it must be left to the courts to determine just compensation. In time of war or times like these, where nearly every use in connection connec-tion with armament is public, there isn't much to that distinction. The law is faulty, however, in vesting the commandeering power in the two secretaries. It should be in the President That is another lesson of 1918. Both war and navy departments depart-ments frequently commandeered the same supplies. President Wilson finally straightened that out by requiring re-quiring all commandeering orders to be signed by the chairman of the war industries board. Apart from that, the Smith or senate sen-ate version of the commandeering amendment is good. The objectionable objection-able circumstance is the nature of the debate. There is no measure of "just compensation," for a human life deliberately drafted into military mili-tary service is not the donation of anything to the public. It is the periurmunce 01 an oongation to me public. "Just compensation," as required re-quired by the Constitution, for a dollar dol-lar is a dollar. On no sustainable theory do the two relationships stand on the same ground. Neither condemnation con-demnation nor commandeering are, as the politicos like to say, conscription conscrip-tion of wealth. It is electioneering buncombe. Finally, as our World war experience experi-ence proved, while "commandeering" "commandeer-ing" of some facilities like land, docks, warehouses and supplies generally gen-erally will frequently be necessary as a convenient method of deter-mining deter-mining price, the "taking" of manufacturing manu-facturing plants for government operation op-eration very rarely happens only once by the army at least in 1918. The power to do so is useful for what President Wilson called "a club behind the door" in negotiation. The practice of doing so on a rental or fee-simple basis is useless and unnecessary. The government has neither the personnel nor the ability to move in and operate a private plant. The war department, for example, ex-ample, has all it can handle in fighting fight-ing a war. If government has, as it did have in 1918, priority powers over power, fuel, supply and transportation trans-portation it. hnc & man's plant. If he doesn't behave, it can choke his operation to death in two weeks' time as we threatened threat-ened to do a few times in the old war industries board. The threat was always sufficient. We never took over any plants. No matter how you slice it, this con-troversy con-troversy is still boloney. DRAFT LOTTERY The next big news story on the domestic front will be the great national na-tional draft lottery. In the Civil war draft, names of young men in each county were written on separate sep-arate slips of paper and put in a Jury wheel at the courthouse. The order m which men's names came out was the order of their going. There was so much chance for graft and fixmg in ms methQd ta "17, we invented a new way. hnRC!iSiratin cards in h Ical nZt .SlT W"e en a "serial oughly shumed. Usually there were less than 3,000 cards in each district from 1 P " WES t0 haVe 4-000-to4,00a-wriltcn on sljPs 01 SSI""! ?,Ch Put to a gelatin srrrn , d'Stinguished audience. The ci u War drew ot the first Iv. i t contai"ed the number 4 2nn Tha'n?eant at in each of the 4.200 odd local districts the man -hose number was 258 was the first ho would be called for examination. |