Other changes in this and the previous provision are suggested to omit the use of the term "disbarment" with respect to nonlawyers since they are not members of the bar. Changes are also suggested to make it clear whether agencies or courts must act in the different kinds of

cases.

Mr. GWYNNE. Mr. Randall, there is a meeting of the full Judiciary Committee at 1 o'clock. We also have the succession bill coming today on the floor, so that I am afraid we will not have time to hear you any further this morning.

Also, tomorrow morning we have a regular full committee meeting, so that we will not be able to hear you further until Friday morning, if that is agreeable to you?

Mr. RANDALL. Very well, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. GWYNNE. There is a gentleman from Indiana who said that he had a brief statement that he wishes to insert into the record. Perhaps we could all stay just a few minutes to hear that.

Mr. Hollopeter, do you wish to file your statement, or present it orally?

STATEMENT OF HERSCHEL A. HOLLOPETER, TRAFFIC DIRECTOR, INDIANA STATE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

Mr. HOLLOPETER. I will not take the time of the committee today, but if I may have this arrangement I believe that it will be more helpful: I believe that it would be more helpful for me to prepare a statement in view of what Mr. Randall has said. We have areas of agreement as well as disagreement.

Mr. GWYNNE. Then you would prefer to prepare a statement and file it later?

Mr. HOLLOPETER. Yes.

Mr. GWYNNE. The committee stands adjourned until Friday morning at 10 o'clock.

(Whereupon, the subcommittee adjourned at 12:03 p. m., to reconvene Friday, July 11, at 10 a. m.)

(The following was submitted for the record :)

STATEMENT ON BEHALF OF THE INDIANA STATE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN OPPOSITION TO THE PROVISIONS OF H. R. 2657, BY HERSCHEL A. HOLLOPETER, TRANSPORTATION DIRECTOR

My name is Herschel A. Hollopeter. My address is 143 North Meridian Street, Indianapolis, Ind. I am transportation director of the Indiana State Chamber of Commerce. In presenting the views of my organization I want to point out that it is the largest State chamber in the United States. Our field of operation includes various services on behalf of business, commerce, and industry. The organization maintains one of the best research departments in the United States, devoting its energies to the development of factual information with respect to legislation, taxation, transportation, personnel, and labor relations and economices in general. It is from this background and the benefit of these activities that we desire to submit certan facts and considered conclusions with respect to H. R. 2657, which we trust will be helpful to the committee and to Congress in dealing with this question.

The bill would prohibit anyone but a lawyer from practicing before any governmental agency or authority with the single exception of Congress. While there are some exceptions, which appear to be inconsequential, it would require anyone having business before any agency, department, commission, or bureau of Government to thus employ a lawyer. It would prohibit appearances of accountants, tax experts, research men, personnel relations directors, or traffic and trans

portation men, who are not practicing attorneys, from appearing on behalf of others before any of the governmental agencies, commissions, bureaus, or boards. At a recent meeting, our board of directors adopted a resolution in opposition to this bill with a special emphasis on its effect in the accounting and tax situation. It was there emphasized that with the adoption of the income-tax amendment to the Constitution, business accounting is becoming more and more the basis of the determination of tax liability and that in this particular field it has long been the fact that accountants have become important practictioners before the Treasury Department and other agencies of Government.

In recent years personnel relations and labor matters have become more and more vital to industry and our entire economy. Students of this phase of economics are not at all confined to lawyers, but we find many who have specialized in this particular field of activity and who have now become more efficient and able to aid governmental agencies in developing proper facts and arriving at correct conclusions than is frequently true with the average lawyer who has not specialized in this field. At the same time many very able and competent lawyers have specialized and are devoting their entire time to this activity and even many of them would be barred by the provisions of this proposed legislation, which is more strict in some of its requirements than rules of the Supreme Court of the United States, from continuing their effective work before governmental agencies because they do not maintain law offices in general practice.

As an illustration of this, our own organization has in charge of its personnel department a very able lawyer who was elected and formerly served as judge of one of the local courts and who by specializing in personnel-relation problems has reached the top in that particular field. He now devotes his entire time to this activity and consequently does not maintain a law office for the practice of law. Under the provisions of this bill he would be barred from continuing his excellent work before Government agencies in that field.

Our research department, which renders valuable aid to various governmental agecies, both State and Federal, has in its charge a very able gentleman holding a college degree but who is not a lawyer. This department would be prevented from appearing before governmental agencies and making its services available to them in the future if this bill becomes a law. We submit that this department and its efficient personnel, after having conducted extensive research and accumulated facts, is in a position to present them to interested governmental agencies much clearer and more effectively than the average lawyer who by the provisions of this bill would be admitted to practice simply because he was a lawyer and this specialized personnel would be barred.

I should like to submit something now with respect to my own field, that of traffic and transportation. The work of my department is governed and controlled by a traffic council composed of about 175 traffic managers of our various manufacturing and industrial members. We are especially concerned with the application of this bill, if it should become law, as it would affect our work before the Interstate Commerce Commission. Many of these Traffic Managers are practitioners before the Interstate Commerce Commission. That agency provides its own rules of procedure and rather rigid requirements for admission to prac tice before it so far as class B practitioners are concerned. This is the class designated as nonlawyers. Class A is the attorney class and the requirements here are not so rigid, so far as personal experience and knowledge of the specialized work of the Commission are concerned.

Although I am a class A practitioner there, I can say frankly that the class B (nonlawyer) practitioner being required to submit proof, through this rigid examination process, of his personal knowledge and qualifications to handle the specialized practice of the Commission is frequently if not generally better qualified to guard and protect the interest of those he represents than many of the class A (lawyer) practitioners. This is logically true because entrance to the class A group is simply through certification that he or she is a member of the bar of the highest court of any State.

This bill states that it is "to protect the public with respect to practitioners before administrative agencies," yet it makes no distinction between lawyers who have specialized or particularly qualified themselves for the particular work of the agency before which they endeavor to present the interest of their clients, and those who have not. Certainly we must admit there are many attorneys who are in good standing at the bar of the highest court of their State who possess no experience nor special knowledge of the matters handled by many of these agencies. Certainly many of them are less informed and less qualified

in such particular field than someone, not an attorney, but who by experience and special study and application in such field has fully qualified himself in this special line.

It is not enough to say that anyone with a degree in law has the basic training to readily assimilate this special knowledge to become as proficient as one who has devoted long years of specializing in that particular field.

This bill would not protect the public interest against the general practitioner who might accept a case before an agency, in which special field he had no prior experience and of which he had not informed himself. Neither would it protect it against the careless or unscrupulous persons, of which, I am sorry to say, we have too many in the legal profession as well as all other professions.

My own experience in specialized practice before the regulatory agencies on transportation, both Federal and State, dates back to 1920, or for almost 30 years. I can say frankly and truthfully that I have seen many lawyers in good standing at their local bar who were less qualified to protect their clients' interest on the extremely technical and intricate principles of transport economics than many traffic managers who have devoted their lives to a specialized study of the subject. This bill would bar those better qualified in favor of those less qualified in such instances; and there are many.

We must recognize that our present-day economy and our governmental procedures are becoming more and more involved and intricate. Even in the legal profession this is calling for specialists in various lines and in such the former general practitioner finds himself confused and inadequately equipped to deal with the special problems. As a member of the legal fraternity, and a member in good standing of the bar of the United States Supreme Court, I cannot escape a feeling of inconsistency, if not a bit of resentment, that these movements and these measures are always conceived and pressed for by some members of the legal profession only. They would require, in every instance, the employment of a member of that profession in many situations where someone not a member may be serving adequately. It would thus protect the financial interest of attorneys, who designed it and who are pressing it, yet it is alleged to be for the protection of the public, which it might not necessarily be.

This kind of a measure has been considered many times in the past and the Congress, in its wisdom, has concluded it was not desirable nor proper. It should be so considered now. It would in effect establish a closed shop, so to speak, for attorneys-a thing that has just been specifically rejected by the TaftHartley Act, the most important legislation passed by Congress in many years. We earnestly and respectfully urge that no such legislation is now necessary and that this bill be given the committee's disapproval.

PRACTICE BEFORE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

FRIDAY, JULY 11, 1947

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE No. 2 OF THE
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,
Washington, D. C.

The committee met at 10 a. m., Hon. John W. Gwynne (chairman) presiding.

Mr. GWYNNE. The committee will be in order, please. In view of the fact that the House meets at 11 o'clock today, I think that we had better start. You may proceed, Mr. Randall.

STATEMENT OF JOHN D. RANDALL-Continued

Mr. RANDALL. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, when the committee recessed on July 9, I had discussed H. R. 2657 through section 7. I now begin with section 8 and will conclude as soon as possible. [Reading:]

OPERATION AND EFFECT

SEC. 8. Any person willfully violating any provision of this Act or rule, lawfully issued hereunder, or knowingly submitting any false information required pursuant hereto, shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.

(NOTE. The added words indicated above are suggested for obvious reasons. Since this is a criminal provision, willfulness and knowledge would undoubtedly be read into the language anyway but may preferably be made express.)

The Post Office Department has suggested that this penalty is too severe. However, it is no more severe than similar provisions for similar purposes in the Federal statutes.

The Interstate Commerce Commission and the National Labor Relations Board have raised the point that this provision may apply to officials as well as private parties, and state that it has not been customary to make such matters criminal offenses so far as officers of Government themselves are concerned. While such a provision would not be unprecedented, in any event these agencies have failed to take into account the fact that the word "person" is defined in the Administrative Procedure Act to exclude agencies, and that definition is carried into this bill by reference in section 2 of the bill. Hence the objection is based upon a misconception.

Continuing the language of the bill:

No individual holding or eligible for credentials under section 5 and serving by appointment as an officer, employee, or consultant in any agency or branch of the Government of the United States shall act or receive compensation during such service or thereafter as an attorney for other interests with respect to (1) any matter in which the United States is interested and he renders or has