and would be incorporated into the next supplment to the United States Code, taking the place of the present titles 18 and 28, and the sale of those supplements would be greatly increased, without doubt, because everybody who would need to have recourse to the laws of the judiciary and the criminal code and crimes would have to have that supplement.

I have no way of estimating what the sales would be.

Mr. O'NEAL. But it would amount to an appreciable sum?

Mr. KEOGH. It would be large; as a matter of fact, it might possibly amount to the total sales of all the United States Codes up to date and all the supplements. It could be a total equal to the sum of those figures.

Mr. O'NEAL. Have you any idea how much of a distribution in number might be expected from the publication of this volume? Have you any idea how many were printed before?

Mr. KEOGH. Our committee has never had any jurisdiction over that. That falls to the Joint Committee on Printing.

I think when the 1940 edition of the Code was compared and printed, the Printing Office printed over 10,000 copies of that code. That is a four volume set which sells for $16.50.

The actual work of preparing that edition cost us not less than $50,000.

Mr. O'NEAL. Would there be any advantage or disadvantage in waiting a couple of years, say until the war is over, taking into consideration the mass of legislation being enacted now pertaining to the war, in connection with temporary powers, and so forth? Would there be any advantage in waiting for that publication until the war emergency is past?

Mr. KEOGH. NO; there would be no advantage in doing that because the United States Code, as such, under the law, contains only those laws general in nature and permanent in character. So the bulk of this temporary legislation would have no proper place in the Code.. Actually, our committee has indulged in a degree of discretion with respect to incorporation in the appendix to title 50 much of this temporary legislation which is of national importance at the moment, but which, after the war would not be. We have done that in order to increase the usefulness of the Code.

With respect to these matters affecting the judiciary, the Judicial Code and crimes and the Criminal Code, as a matter of fact, this is definitely the time to do it, so those titles will be in final and usableform when we resume our normal life.

Mr. O'NEAL. What sort of a set-up have you to properly direct such work as this?

Mr. KEOGH. The committee acts in a supervisory capacity.

Mr. O'NEAL. By contract you get a competent publishing and research house?

Mr. KEOGH. Exactly.

Mr. O'NEAL. You check with them, and the one you have in mind has had long experience in this kind of work?

Mr. KEOGH. The one which has handled the code. They prepared the first and subsequent editions.

Mr. O'NEAL. And they did a very satisfactory job on that?

Mr. KEOGH. Very.

Mr. JOHNSON. The $110,000 covers the cost of preparation and has nothing to do with the cost of printing and distribution?

Mr. KEOGH. No.

Mr. JOHNSON. You do not contemplate that you could control the number of volumes printed?

Mr. KEOGH. We cannot control them, but we would exercise some influence over them, as we did in connection with the 1940 edition of the Code.

Mr. JOHNSON. I believe you said there were 10,000 copies printed? Mr. KEOGH. Approximately.

Mr. JOHNSON. I believe you said one publishing company was willing to contribute up to $85,000 toward the cost?

Mr. KEOGH. No. Out of the item of $110,000, $85,000 would go to this company for the cost of its work. The remainder would be available to the committee for the employment of the necessary clerical and expert assistance, to coordinate the efforts of the committee and the publishing company. We should not be in a position of being completely obligated to the editorial company, but since we have final and ultimate responsibility we should have a degree of control over that work of the company.

Mr. JOHNSON. When the work is completed would the company have access to it, where they could publish their own edition?

Mr. KEOGH. The Official United States Code is not annotated. We do not undertake to annotate any of the current court decisions. Nor do we attempt to integrate any of the rules and regulations promulgated under the authority of our statutes.

This company that has done the work gets out an annotated edition of the code. There is one other annotated edition of the code published. So they would have an opportunity to apply the work they have done here on their own edition of the code.

Mr. JOHNSON. I am wondering if in the matter of salespeople buying those volumes would not prefer to have the annotated edition rather than this set, and if, in the ultimate end, the Government is not spending this $110,000 to make a study for a law-book company to make an annotated set, after the Government is prepared to sell them, and the company probably make a lot of money.

I am wondering whether the law-book company considers there is sufficient field to warrant them in making the study and preparing the code.

Mr. KEOGH. They have no authority to do it, but I dare say they have undoubtedly collected a lot of the articles and have done the other work necessarily indulged in in doing this job. But if they did that they would have to come to Congress. The primary responsibility is ours to see that the laws that are passed are in such form as to be understood by the public.

Mr. JOHNSON. There is nothing to prevent them from getting out such a work.

Mr. KEOGH. They just lack the authority. They are bound in the preparation of their annotated editions by the classifications that our committee makes of public acts enacted during any session of Congress.

Mr. JOHNSON. How do the law-book publishing companies operate in getting out the statutes of the various States?

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Mr. KEOGH. They do that, I assume, in the same manner that we do, by contract with them.

Mr. JOHNSON. Do they have special authority from the States to prepare those statutes?

Mr. KEOGH. Most of the States have permanent law-revision commissions.

Mr. O'NEAL. Why could not one of the law-book publishing companies take all of our acts and do the work that you are asking to be done and let them make up the cost of that out of the sales of the annotated code?

Mr. KEOGH. I have made a number of inquiries on this subject, and you will find that wherever any publishing company goes into a State to codify State laws they are paid for that work by the State. The West Publishing Co. codifies the laws of the State of New York and brings that in in the form of the McKinney Statutes. They and other companies do similar work in other States.

The Bobbs-Merrill Co. does that work principally for some of the Western States. They are all paid by those States for that work. They then superimpose their annotations on the official code, but that is an entirely different matter.

I would like to come back to the question of whether it is not preferable to have the annotated edition. Of course it is, but it costs a great deal more. The Official Code sells for $16.50, while an annotated edition sells for about $260, with an annual service charge of $15, plus the cost of recompiled volumes. Our annual supplements cost about $1 or $2, depending on the size.

The records of sales of the Official Code in the Government Printing Office might give an answer to your question.

Mr. JOHNSON. As I recall, the Bobbs-Merrill Co. gets out the Revised Statutes of Indiana. I do not know whether the Indiana Legislature have appropriated any money paying them in any way for getting that out. I think in about 10 years they get out a new revision of the statutes, and all lawyers have to buy a set of those statutes. Of course, they cost a considerable amount. They are not so large; I think there are probably four volumes, and I believe they cost about $30 or $40.

Mr. KEOGH. I do not know specifically about the situation in Indiana, but I think probably you will find that that company is paid by the law revision commission, or some similar body in the State, to do that work.

Mr. JOHNSON. It has never been called to my attention that they do, and I question very much whether they do.

Mr. O'NEAL. You think you need this full amount for the fiscal year 1944? Could you not start it with a less amount, or do you think you will require the full amount in 1944?

Mr..KEOGH. I think we should know in advance that we are going to be able to do the job completely, since $85,000 of the $110,000 is the estimated cost of the contractor.

Mr. O'NEAL. Is there any time limit on the contract?

Mr. KEOGH. We have not even discussed the terms of the contract. The committee would check on it if we had the means to go ahead with it.

I would like to refer for a moment to the question of whether this is the time to do it.

This is the time to do it. I think it is a tragedy that this great legislative body of ours has suffered for so long a time with an accumulation of the type of legislation we have had. I am not now referring to substance, but rather to form.

You can pick up almost any law we enact and read a provision in it for the repeal of all laws inconsistent with it, "that all laws inconsistent herewith are hereby repealed." That imposes upon the bar of the country and the courts of the country the duty to determine what laws we intended to repeal by that specific act. We, in effect, force upon the courts the duty to legislate for us.

Mr. JOHNSON. Do you not believe you would run into a lot of discussion and difficulty if your committee would attempt to determine what laws Congress intended to repeal?

Mr. KEOGH. Exactly. We do that. That is why the United States Code is replete with redundant, obsolete, superseding statutes, because we lack authority to determine which laws have been repealed by inference. It is the job of the standing committees to do that.

If we had a permanent law revision commission which would coordinate the work of our legislative drafting counsel and the work of our committee we would be able to supervise and preserve the form of the laws from the time they were in the mind of one of the members to the time they were enacted into permanent law.

Mr. JOHNSON. You do not think you would have any trouble to get sufficient manpower?

Mr. KEOGH. No; I do not think so.

Mr. JOHNSON. Or to get paper during this great shortage of paper? Mr. KEOGH. No; because we are getting out Supplement No. 2 to the 1940 code. The Government Printing Office is about ready to bind that. There will be over 1,000 pages in the supplement, which means there have been 1,000 pages of new legislation, together with the tables and indexes, since the 1940 edition of the code.

Mr. ANDERSEN. Assuming that this work is very necessary, and very justified, as I think it is, judging by your explanation; on the other hand, taking into consideration the fact that we are at war, the fact that today it is very difficult to even secure manpower on the farms to produce the food we need, and the fact that we have gone along without this for as many years as we have, do you think you can ascribe sufficient priorities to this particular request to induce us to believe that we should appropriate for this item at this time, rather than letting it go into this reservoir of things to be done immediately following the war?

Mr. KEOGH. If I did not think so I would not be here this morning. As a matter of fact, the state of our laws, today with respect to the question of form-and I address myself only to form and not to substance purposely to avoid any discusison of the substance-is due to inadequate thinking and inadequate preparation of bills drafted, introduced, and reported.

Those bills are merely statements of objectives rather than statements of the means of obtaining the objectives.

Mr. ANDERSEN. I do not believe you have to convince me as to the necessity of the matter under discussion. But what you have to convince me and probably a lot of other people in Congress of is whether or not we should do it at this particular time, in view of the existing circumstances.

Mr. KEOGH. The best answer to that is, if you think this is not the time to do it, then stop legislating on every subject except the war. Let us stop working on everything except the war.

So long as the legislative body is in session, so long as we are legislating, so long as we owe a duty to the public to let the people know what the laws are that we have enacted, we owe a duty to ourselves and to our bar to make sure that those laws are in understandable form.

Mr. O'NEAL. Let me ask you one more question: Do you not think if you should take this up with the Thompson Co. or some other publishing company, you could make a more advantageous arrangement about the cost?

Mr. KEOGH. I come from a section of the country where, as we say, we love to dicker. I have gotten an estimate from them, but I imagine we can sharpen our pencils and sit down again. That is a matter of negotiation.

I will say this with respect to the West Publishing Co. and Edward Thompson Co., that they have been most cooperative in connection with the work of our committee. They have enabled us in the last 4 or 5 years to make considerable progress.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. O'NEAL. We thank you for your statement, Mr. Keogh.

Mr. KECGH. I am grateful to the committee for giving me this opportunity to present the matter, and I hope you will give it favorable consideration.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17, 1943.

JOINT COMMITTEE ON INTERNAL REVENUE TAXATION

STATEMENT OF COLIN F. STAM, CHIEF OF STAFF, ACCOMPANIED BY GASTON D. CHESTEEN, ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF, AND BRYANT C. BROWN, SECRETARY AND ATTORNEY

SALARIES AND EXPENSES

Mr. O'NEAL. We have before us this morning the estimate for the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation, and we have with us representing that committee Mr. Stam and two of his associates.

The amount of the appropriation for the share of the House for 1943 was $30,000, and the estimate for 1944 is the same amount.

FUNCTIONS AND DUTIES

We will be glad to have a statement from you about that, Mr. Stam; but first, you might give us a little history of the joint committee. Mr. STAM. Mr. Chairman, we would like first to express our appreciation of your courtesy in changing the time for our appearance. The