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Show CHARGES WASTE OF PUBLIC FUNDS Criminal Misuse of Money Alleged by Providence j Paper, Frear Says. WASHINGTON', July 13. Affidavits ' purporting to ' show criminal misuse of public funds by the spruce production division di-vision of the army air service, collected during the past year ""by the Providence Journal, have been submitted to the special house committee investigating war department depart-ment expenditures and are being investigated investi-gated by a subcommittee of which Representative Rep-resentative Frear of Wisconsin is chairman. chair-man. According to a statement authorized today by ilr. Frear, the affidavits allege that contracts for spruce production .and railroad construction on the Pacific coast were awarded under the cost-plus system to companies which had no practical experience ex-perience in the work, with the result that great sums of money were wasted. Dishonest methods were used by the companies, com-panies, It is charged, to obtain larger fees from the government. "Charges are made." the statement says, "that the government was subjected, under the cost-plus system, to a cost of practically $1150' per thousand feet for spruce when private concerns were procuring pro-curing the same kind for from $130 to $17S. "The affidavit asserts the waste caused by companies in building camps in inaccessible inac-cessible localities ran into main- thousand dollars; that there was an utter lack of proper care of foodstuffs and that in many cases hundreds of dollars worth of flour, lard even pepper were carelessly thrown Into the mud at the side of the road and left to rot. In one instance, even stoves were left exposed to the weather and ruined. "There are affidavits alleging that miles and miles of two-inch plank road were built into t ie forests a-nd never used, and camps constructed where spruce was felled but not an inch ever brought out." Colonel Price P. Disque. former chief of the spruce production, is criticized in the affidavits for having adopted wasteful waste-ful methods "for the production of spruce, for having used poor judgment in the lumber tracts to be worked, and for having hav-ing often reversed himself in decisions. Hy his adoption of a process for splitting split-ting loss, it is charged, only 200,000 feet of "timber was obtained from 8.000,000 of lops by one mill and only n per cent of the timber was fit for airplane stock. |