OCR Text |
Show Protection From Sabotage Described as Inadequate Civil Service Asks for More Investigators; Defense Heads Act to Avert Shortage Of Farm Labor This Summer. By BAUKHAGE National Farm and Home Hour Commentator. WSV Service, 1395 National Press Bldg., Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON. As the United States, under the lease-lend law, literally becomes the arsenal of democracy, officials lament their lack of facilities for protecting that arsenal from the enemy within our gates. If you are a first-rate saboteur or enemy agent you have only one chance out of three of being spotted by the Civil Service investigators before be-fore you are hired in a government plant or arsenal or navy yard. That in substance is what Civil Service Commissioner Arthur Flem-ming Flem-ming told a senate committee the other day when he asked for a sup-pelmental sup-pelmental $320,000 appropriation to increase the number of investigators who check the record of applicants for government defense jobs. Even with the close co-operation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Investiga-tion and the army and navy intelligence intelli-gence the records of only one-third of applicants put on the government govern-ment payroll for these jobs can be properly examined. Commissioner Flemming revealed. Efforts are now being made to get congress to increase in-crease the funds for carrying on this important work. There is always a certain routine checking on every worker who applies ap-plies for a government defense job. The police department records in the applicant's home community are examined; ex-amined; the Federal Bureau of Investigation In-vestigation (the G-men, so-called) checks the fingerprints to see if they are identified with those of an offender. of-fender. And finally the army and navy intelligence files are available to the Civil Service commission investigators in-vestigators in Washington. This procedure identifies the enemy en-emy agent or criminal or other person per-son with an unsavory record who has already run into trouble and been found out But the previously unidentified and potential offenders have to be spotted by the understaffed under-staffed 13 district offices or the headquarters of the Civil Service commission in Washington itself. Commissioner Flemming told the senators that since starting to recruit re-cruit civilian defense forces Civil Service investigators had disqualified disquali-fied 16 per cent of the applicants examined "on the ground of disloyalty disloy-alty or weak character." V Senator Lodge of Massachusetts questioned the commissioner on the type of person disqualified. Mr. Flemming gave an example: "One applicant for the position of gas welder in one of the navy yards, our investigation developed, was seen at communist meetings, attended at-tended a communist chool in Wisconsin, Wis-consin, was an active worker for the party, passed out communist literature litera-ture and books." Others have been found to have had bad records as far back as in the previous war. The Civil Service j commission says it needs' more money to stop the saboteur before be begins his sabotage. ... Prepare to Avert Farm Labor Shortage How are the farmers going to get those 3,000,000 extra farm hands they need in the summer months to get in the crops? While the national defense program pro-gram is snapping up a lot of farmhands farm-hands and getting them jobs in factories fac-tories it is also trying to provide a practical method by which the farmer farm-er will get what he wants in the way of extra labor when he wants it. Of course what William Knudsen and Sydney Hillman need right now is men to make the wheels go round that turn out armament. But the defense heads point out that the method they have devised for getting get-ting the workers they want will also help the farmer in the long run. That method is registration of all surplus labor with the 1,500 full-time and 3,000 part-time state-operated employment offices. The managers of these offices want all prospective farm hands to register at these offices, too, and are urging the farmers who are going to need help next summer to patronize these state employment agencies, too. Defense demands may result in a shortage of farm labor later, but one of the big helps for the farmer will be the employment agency. If you inquire at one agency for a farm band and that agency hasn't any registered it will consult, free of charge, any or all the other agencies. agen-cies. ... Spy From Korea 'Advertises' His Work I have just had lunch with the only spy I ever met who advertised his profession. "It is most dark right under the lamp," he said to me as he scooped up a sheaf of highly intriguing documents doc-uments which he had spread on the table before me, slipped them into a worn portfolio and whisked the zipper. We were sitting at a corner table in one of Washington's sublimated chop suey restaurants. My spy was one of these plotters but he flaunted his plots before me quite openly. Some secrets may be hidden behind the smiling slits of eyes of Kilsoo Kenneth Haan, for that is his name, but he has convinced con-vinced at least one senator that that information which he has turned in gratis to various secret agencies of the government is very welcome. Hates Japanese. Haan is 41, short, engaging, an oriental cherub in glasses, with a cast of countenance that would make you think he was a Japanese (which, he says, some Japanese do). But his calling card says that he is head of the Sino-Korean Peoples' league. And Koreans love the Japanese Jap-anese as the Pole loves the German. Ger-man. Briefly Haan's history, as he tells it, is this: He was 10 years old when the Japanese took over Korea and his first memory of that tragic event is the view he got from his hiding place under a chicken coop when the soldiers marched into his village. vil-lage. Haan soon left for Hawaii. Then one day, five years ago, because he had been active among his fellow Koreans, he was approached by a member of the Japanese consulate in Honolulu who offered him a job helping to organize all Orientals in a sort of pan-Asiatic movement under un-der the Japanese. The next year, when a delegation of American congressmen con-gressmen visited the islands to study the possibility of Hawaiian statehood, Haan told them all he knew in a public hearing. A part of the documents he showed me was a letter from a senator thanking him for his services at that time in exposing the grandiose Japanese scheme. That was Haan's first advertising of his chosen profession. profes-sion. He was soon to get more. The Japanese press attacked him. He was spat upon in the streets. His life was threatened. Comes to America. The next year he came to America Amer-ica with one chief objective, he says, and it was in describing his purpose that he quoted the proverb about the lamp. It is well known that Koreans, some of whom can pass for Japanese Jap-anese and many of whom live in Japan and in the occupied portions of China, maintain a voluntary spy system and grapevine telegraph. They still hope to win back their independence. in-dependence. Haan claims that he wants to secure se-cure the financial and moral support sup-port of the United States government govern-ment to create a real co-operative Korean spy system against the Japanese. Jap-anese. His method of advertising the ability of a Korean to get information informa-tion from the Japanese is to get it himself. He told me of his latest adventure over the chickenchopsuey and tea: From his Korean friends in Japan Haan said that he had learned that two Japanese reserve officers were on their way to the United States to prepare Japanese in this country for a war. They were bearing a notorious text book of propaganda and procedure, the translated title of which is "Three Power Alliance and Japan-America War." Haan set out to locate the officers and get the book, first notifying certain cer-tain authorities in Washington of his intention. The task seemed so impossible im-possible that one man, who needn't be named, bet $25 that the indefatigable indefat-igable Korean couldn't succeed. The book, according to Haan, is now in the hands of the proper au-' au-' thorities here and he has $25 in his pocket How he got it is another story. j |