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Show Department of Interior Handicapped By 33 Enlistment and Induction We have women junior chemists in the Geological Survey. To meet war demands in the various bureaus we are already recalling men to service serv-ice who are 72 and 73 years old, and holding other men in service long past the legal retirement age. "As the heart-breaking stream of crippled men comes back from the battle fronts, we intend to do our best to find them positions for which they will be qualified and in which they are useful to the department. I have asked the secretary of the navy and the secretary of war to make recommendations from this group. We are doing our absolute best to clear manpower for the war." Secretary Harold L. Ickes of the department of the interior has announced an-nounced an intensification of his virtual vir-tual "cradle to the grave" search for trained personnel, exempt from military service through age or physical reasons, to carry on vital interior work on the home front. "The work of my department has been critically handicapped by the enlistment or induction of 33 per cent of all male employees between 18 and 37 years of age," the secretary secre-tary said. "I have admitted to the house military affairs committee that I erred in the administration of a deferment policy in the department of the interior. I let these men go. With the wisdom of hindsight, I see that fewer interior employees in uniform uni-form would have been more in the public interest. "It does not make sense to permit the draining away of trained personnel per-sonnel needed for vital behind-the-line service. With 4,788 interior employees em-ployees on military service as of March 1, we have had to make extraordinary efforts to fill their places." The interior department has employed em-ployed over 1,000 more women than it had at the start of the war and put many of them in positions formerly for-merly held by men, Secretary Ickes declared. "We are now hiring women engineers en-gineers and we're going to have more if we can get them," he said. "Recently we hired a 72-year-old former for-mer vice president of a bank as a stenographer. Normally, to do the nimble rough work incident to surveying, sur-veying, we hire rodmen about 18 years old, but we recently were forced to employ three 'youngsters' of 62, 67 and 71 years of age, respectively, re-spectively, as rodmen on a job near Media, Pa. "We have crippled geologists in wheel chairs, who can and do make their contribution to the war effort. |