When the President of the United States assumed this central control of routine business, he did what any man would do in connection with a private corporation; he called together in conference the business administration,—everybody connected with the business of the Government as head of department or independent establishment—Cabinet Officers correspond to Vice Presidents in a business corporation. Of necessity they had allowed this disgraceful system of chaos and extravagance to go on. It was not their fault any more than it is the fault of you gentlemen, who have been running along independent lines, because you were not joined together in a system operating under a central authority. We all were properly subject to the indictment of loose business methods because the President of the United States had not imposed a unified plan and system over us nor had he created the machinery by which this plan would be carried into effect, as he has since done. In connection with surplus supplies, every department formerly was selling its supplies in the open-market, and other departments were buying the same kind of supplies in open market. In a number of cases speculators would come and buy our public sales material from one department to sell it to another department at two or three times the price. Real estate was being leased in cities right along from private owners, when the Government had vacant property to rent. This was the custom also in connection with motor transport. If any Department wanted something moved and did not have motor transport, it would go out and hire motor transportation. There was no machinery by which the empty motor trucks and idle men of the other departments could be used. When goods were to be shipped, everybody would route them as they pleased. There was no unified central authority which could deal with the services as a whole as regards the classification of freight and the whole transportation question. The same thing existed in the making of contracts. The same thing existed in Government purchasing. There was competition between the Departments, the Departments themselves not being coordinated. In the Treasury Department alone we found 18 separate points of purchasing activity. Everything was run in Government business as if it was composed of 41 separate corporations. How were things changed for the better? It is all simple enough. It all depended on the President because he alone had the authority to impose the methods of coordinating and controlling this great general business, just as he is coordinating these great activities here today through this Board, presided over by his appointee, General Sawyer, a co-ordinator.