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Show RATES H)UR STARo Big Business with Capital B VA Tackles Stupendous Job By WALTER A. SHEAD WNU Wahlnla Carrt tptodcnl. WASHINGTON. A slightly built, grayish, baldish man wearing the fatigue uniform of a four-star general, sits behind be-hind a huge desk in the mammoth, block-long Veterans' administration ad-ministration building. He is, without doubt, among the busiest men and has one of the biggest jobs in the .world. He is Gen. Omar N. Bradley, administrator of veterans' affairs. He brought with him to Veterans' administration the same qualities for which General Eisenhower gave him equal command with General Montgomery on the western front during the war and which made him one of the most respected commanders, one of the ablest tacticians and disciplinarians in tne army. Although eligible for retirement. General Bradley accepted the assignment as-signment by President Truman in an effort to bring to a state of efficiency effi-ciency the badly-managed, overgrown over-grown Veterans' administration created after the last war and bogged down in red tape and bureaucracy. bu-reaucracy. General Bradley took Into VA his resourcefulness as a military leader, his bent for democratic action, for efficiency, for loyalty and discipline and his respect for the G.I.s who fought and won a war, thousands of them under his direct command. ' Streamlines Agency. He has streamlined VA; he has decentralized the administration into regional commands. The Job is one of the most stupendous and far-flung tasks in the world today. I General Bradley is head of the biggest mutual insurance business in the world with policies in force totaling 35 billion dollars on the lives of some five million veterans. He directs a medical program which hires 9,000 doctors and cares for 90,000 patients. Providing benefits and relief in one form or another tor more than 14 million World War II veterans, VA maintains a master file of 24 million veterans or their dependents who have received active benefits. At the present time, approximately 18,300,000 Americans are veterans of some war. For instance, VA has on Its mailing list about 28,000 Kellys, 17,500 Cohens, 2,000 Komlnskis, 16,000 Shultxes. From this tremendous tre-mendous number of former servicemen, VA has received as high as 11 million pieces ot mall in a month. General Bradley heads one ot the country's largest loan agencies and, as of February 1, VA had approved loans for 639,200 G.I.i amounting to more than $3,421,000,000. Although a majority ot these loans were for homes and farms, they raneed all the way from the veteran who started a diaper service in Spartans-burg, Spartans-burg, S. C, to the farm boy who wanted to purchase a new harrow in Arkansas. Wholesale Purchases. A purchasing committee of tremendous tre-mendous magnitude is another of VA's activities. This agency buys in mass lots for veterans' hospitals such as 676,000 pounds of breakfast cereal at one time, 144,000 pounds of salted soda crackers, 7,014 albums of records for juke boxes, 800,000 volumes of books for hospital libraries. li-braries. As of February, 1947, more than 2,430,000 ex-G.I.s were In schools or on-the-job training under provisions ot the G.I. bill. Approximately 385,-000 385,-000 private business firms were conducting con-ducting on-the-job training courses. About 1,000 G.I.S are obtaining education edu-cation and allowances for study in foreign schools. In addition, General Bradley administers ad-ministers pension and disability payments to veterans, which run into the billions of dollars, and bur-.ial bur-.ial benefits, which also run into the billions. Under terms ot one law, he bought more than 6,000 automobiles tor war amputees. He also directs a service to supervise legal guardians guard-ians and custodians of about 141.000 wards ot VA, children of deceased veterans. Benefit Payments High. Approximately six million veterans veter-ans have received unemployment and self-employment compensation benefits through VA and United States Employment service. Most of the VA administrative problems, which were at an extremely ex-tremely low ebb when General Bradley took over, have been due to the mushroom growth ot its activities. activ-ities. How long will the nation be paying huge pension lists? In March, 1946, VA made the final payment to a dependent, closing the rolls on the War of 1812, Faymcnls still are being made to 49 dependents of Mexican war veterans, while 916 veterans and 2,392 dependents of Indian wars still are getting monthly cheeks. There are 116 Civil war veterans, with an average age of 100, who are still receiving payments. Plagued By Changes. VA officials say that the peak of payments to veterans and dependents depend-ents ot World War I was not reached bntil 1940. In the meantime, congress passes new laws and changes those on the books, creating new administrative headaches. More than 200 bills affecting af-fecting veterans were Introduced in the first two months of the 80th congress. Cost of administering the VA program pro-gram tor the fiscal year 1947 is expected ex-pected to be approximately 8 billion dollars. |
