There is one thing I could not pass by because it is of such great importance to the Federal Employees Compensation Commission. We have sometimes employees engaged along various lines, and shortly after I arrived at the station I found one or two who said they had tuberculosis. I think it is most essential to see that not only one man but a board of medical officers examine every employee when he comes into a tuberculous hospital to make sure that he does not show activity in tuberculosis so that later he will not have a claim against the Federal Employees Compensation Commission by saying that he was working in a tuberculosis hospital and contracted tuberculosis while in the hospital.
There are many things I would like to speak of. I was very much impressed with what the doctor said about entertainment. I believe it helps the morale and is the most wonderful thing in the world. We can spend sleepless nights building up morale in a hospital and one man can disturb the entire morale.
In closing I want to say, after all is said and done, the big thing with us is the backing we get from the heads of our department and from the Surgeon General. I have known times I felt like throwing up the sponge. All of us have gone through these moments. The main and only thing that keeps us up is the encouragement we get from the heads of the department and I want to take this opportunity to express my appreciation.
GEN. SAWYER: This meeting was called for the week of the 20th, with the understanding of the Budget Director, General Dawes, that on tomorrow the Chiefs of the various Departments of the Government were to hold their semi-annual session and we thought that you would enjoy that occasion. It has been found impossible in the compilation of the facts and figures necessary to hold that meeting tomorrow. Therefore it becomes necessary for us to change our program and I am happy to announce to you that I feel sure you will have quite as interesting a program as you would have otherwise, for tomorrow we will have as the first speaker of the morning, Congressman Madden, the head of the Appropriations Committee. If you have not heard him I am sure you will be very much interested both in what he has to say and in the way he says it. We are then to have as the next speaker of the morning, General Dawes. General Dawes is remaining over tomorrow that he may have the pleasure of meeting you personally, and I predict that you will agree, after you have heard General Dawes, that if you have had no other excuse or no other compensation in coming to this meeting, you will have it in hearing General Dawes. For the balance of the program of tomorrow forenoon, it comes to my mind that possibly it would be most interesting to you all if we were to take up some of the questions that come to your mind that have not been presented in this program. This was suggested to me by one of the gentlemen here who I noticed does not talk much but who evidently thinks a lot, that it would be to the interest of a good many if they might bring up some subject that they are particularly interested in. So we are going to have in the morning a question box, and if any of you have questions in which you are particularly interested and will present them at the desk of the Secretary, we shall try to have them taken up for discussion at this round-table hour tomorrow forenoon.
President Harding will not be here in the morning. When I spoke to President Harding to come over and address this meeting, he said to me, “General, you know Mrs. Harding and I are to receive this body tomorrow evening.” I am sure that you are going to have in that reception, in the personal contact with the President and Mrs. Harding, a joy such as you have not contemplated.
Seventh Session Friday, January 20, 1922.
GENERAL SAWYER: Fellows of the conference, as I told you yesterday we had expected this morning to be here with the Chiefs of the Bureaus. I explained to you why that program was changed. I told you also that you would not be disappointed in today’s program, and now I am going to prove it.
America produces many things. It is wonderful in agriculture, in industry, in commerce, but one of the greatest products of America is its men, and, strange as it may seem if you will stop to study it from that aspect, you will find that each State of the Union has its record for producing certain kinds of men. For instance, from Wyoming we get our stock men; from Iowa, our farmers; from Indiana, our authors, particularly our fiction writers; from Ohio, of course, we get our presidents; from Illinois, a thousand miles from Wall Street, we get the greatest of financiers. It is true that Illinois has produced more financiers than any other State, and men who have been at the head of the greatest banking institutions of the United States have come from this great corn-raising, middle-western State.
I should like to remind you, before I introduce this speaker, that this Federal Board of Hospitalization represented last year an expenditure, in all of their various lines of work, of $750,000,000.00. We have in our employ this morning something like 42,000 individuals, for which it is costing us something like $42,000,000. Today we are providing 132,000 meals for the people in the government hospitals and the employees that are necessary to take care of them. Tonight, if this northern blizzard continues, it will require 132,000 blankets to cover them; and in the most economical way in which we can provide for the needs of these sick men it will cost us—it does cost us—in round numbers, a hundred thousand dollars each day, with institutions operated as economically as they can be.
I only relate this that all of you may know and may carry this message to the country—that Uncle Sam is certainly not stingy; that Uncle Sam is really putting forth every energy he possibly can to carry out the idea of the best treatment of the World War Veteran.