Mr. PORTER. Well, Mr. Chairman, you see, the first I would know of the entire matter is as it would be received in my division in an envelope sealed up and sent over, transmitted, by the War Department. Senator HARDWICK. What I mean is this: The Secretary of War finds it necessary to call your attention to the fact that he not only had not signed this letter, but he had refused to sign it, and to express his surprise that it was in the file. Now, did it come in the file from his office, with the original file, or not? Mr. PORTER. Yes, sir; but I think, Mr. Chairman, that came about in this way, that in glancing through the file one of the attorneys in my division, under me, saw this unsigned letter. He thought it was a carbon copy of probably a letter that had been signed, so he wondered, naturally, why Senator HARDWICK. If that was true, why Mr. PORTER. If that was true, why the Secretary would send us the case; so he called-I forget whom an official in the Department of War, and they came over to look through the file, and they Senator HARDWICK. They discovered it in that way? Mr. PORTER. They discovered it. Senator HARDWICK. But what I wanted to know was this: With what part of the file did that come? Did that come with the original file from the Secretary of War's office, that submitted the case to you? Mr. PORTER. Yes, sir; it came with the original file that I have in my hand, which purported to be the original papers. Senator HARDWICK. From the Secretary of War's office? Mr. PORTER. From the Secretary of War's office. Senator HARDWICK. In other words, as near as you can tell, either the Secretary of War or some person acting for him, somebody in his department, had included that letter in the file? Mr. PORTER. Had included that with the rest of the letters in the file on that case. Mr. ADCOCK. Mr. Chairman, I understood Mr. Trainer to state yesterday that he had drawn a draft of a letter which he asked the Secretary to consider and sign. Senator HARDWICK. I know; yes. I understood that. Mr. ADCOCK. And probably, I assume, the letter went into the file along with a lot of other things. Senator HARDWICK. Well, of course, this witness would not know that. That is a matter of argument. We will hear you on that phase of the case later. Mr. ADCOCK. I did not see how that was material, because Mr. Trainer stated frankly that he wanted such a letter. Senator HARDWICK. I know that. Mr. ADCOCK. And he asked them to give him such a letter. Senator HARDWICK. Yes; I know that. Senator TRAMMELL. There is no claim here that the Secretary did sign such a letter, however? Mr. ADCOCK. No, sir; there is no claim that he did sign it, and I think Maj. Stotesbury stated that he had talked to Secretary Crowell, and he said he did not feel that such a letter should be sent; that it ought to go to the Department of Justice. Senator HARDWICK. What we are after now is just the facts from this witness, not inferences. Thank you very much, Mr. Porter. We will excuse you, with thanks for your attendance. Before we go back to your witnesses, Mr. Adcock, there are some ladies here from Chicago who have come to be heard. (After a brief conference between members of the committee and Mr. Bouvier and Maj. Loring, the following occurred:) Mr. BENNET. Is the conference with counsel anything in which Mr. Hines is interested or is it a private conversation? Senator HARDWICK. No; it was not private. I thought you were hearing it. I suggested to the attorneys for the department that in the opinion of such members of the committee as I had conferred with the sole question to which they might with propriety address themselves in arguing some of these matters was the question of moral responsibility on the part of the Government with regard to this project. Mr. BENNET. Thank you very much. Senator HARDWICK. I am glad to give you that information, because I want to hear from you at length on that question. Mr. BENNET. Surely; yes. I did not know; of course I realized that counsel had a perfect right to confer with members of the committee. Senator HARDWICK. There was nothing private at all in the conversation. The attorneys for the department were just asking me whether they could be heard at all or not, and I was suggesting that they confine themselves to certain phases of this matter. I will ask the chairman of the delegation, or any one of the members of this ladies' association who wants to proceed first, to come forward. TESTIMONY OF MRS. MARY DELANY FISHER, PRESIDENT OF THE ILLINOIS WOMEN'S PRESS ASSOCIATION. (The witness was not sworn.) Senator HARDWICK. Please give the reporter your name, etc. Mrs. FISHER. Mrs. Mary De Lany Fisher, chairman of the Women's War Hospital Committee of Chicago, organized by the Women's Press, the women's newspaper of that city, to protest against housing soldiers in the inflammable structures, absolutely fire traps, at Fort Sheridan, in which we understood it was intended to place our boys. The Women's Press is a paper that always stands for constructive things that appeal to women. It was started at the period of the beginning of the war by a group of 20,000 women, the women's committee of the Council of National Defense, the Red Cross, and the suffrage organizations, to facilitate women's work during the war, and during that time we gave all the columns of the paper to every branch of the Government propaganda in which we could possibly help. At the beginning of this campaign for fireproof hospitals, Mrs. Edmund T. Johnson, the president of the Chicago Women's Clubone of the most conservative organizations in Chicago-called us up and suggested that the housing facilities for the crippled boys or the wounded boys at Fort Sheridan were so horrible that we should in vestigate and take up the campaign, because it was something in which all women would back us up. This we did. We organized a committee, and we decided that the best plan was quietly to have a number of the ladies from the committee come down to Washington and present the facts, as we saw them, after visiting Fort Sheridan, to Secretary Baker, and those most interested, rather than air the thing in the public press, thinking that we would cooperate with the Government to very much better advantage by bringing the facts as we gathered them to the notice of the Secretary. The seven ladies came down to Washington. We had visited Fort Sheridan in groups at different times under different weather conditions and found the buildings constructed of inflammable material, pine, seven-eighths inch pine, of which we brought a sample down to the Secreeary, poor tar roofing, plaster board inside, built two and a half stories high on wooden stilts, no supports of any sort, open spaces underneath, electric wires strung without conduits, breaking all the fire-ordinance regulations, and living conditions such that you would not want to house a very poor grade of a bicycle in the buildings. In fact, with one of the ladies of the committee I went out there, and I found a man opposite this building in charge of tools, an old man who had been working there 26 years. I said: "What do you think of these buildings over here?" He said: "I have two boys over on the other side. I am hired to take care of the tools here. We would not put them in those buildings, and I would hate to see any of my boys, either one of them, come back and be put there.” Senator HARDWICK. That was at Fort Sheridan? Mrs. FISHER. That was at Fort Sheridan-the man opposite the building. That was our first information. Then we went, without any guard, in and out of these buildings; of course, just women, mothers if you like, representing no high or low, but voicing the protests of thousands of other women who wanted to know facts. We did not go out accompanied by any construction engineers or any technical experts, but we merely wanted to see what sort of buildings they were going to put these boys in. My brother is over there, and Mrs. Sevey's son was there, and Mrs. Hunt's boys were over there. We were all interested in housing our boys and other mothers' boys properly. The thing was so very bad that we went out again and again before we came down to Washington. We presented the facts to Secretary Baker. He gave up 45 minutes of his time and received us very kindly and he said he would give me every assurance to carry back to Chicago to the mothers of the boys that they would safeguard them in every way possible-now that was a pretty broad general statement and, further, he instructed us to give all of the data of Secretary Keppel. Secretary Keppel, as I understand, explained it all to us, but we did not get any explanation from Secretary Keppel. He simply got our facts down to three points that we objected to the housing on the ground that the buildings were inflammable, on the ground of their inaccessibility, and also-there was one other point, Mrs. Sevey. What was the other point? Mrs. SEVEY. It was on account of the plan of construction. Mrs. SEVEY. The construction was not suited to the ground. Mrs. FISHER. Those are the only facts that Mr. Keppel helped us to pin our objections down to, those three peints. He made no explanation. Then we went to Surg. Gen. Ireland's office and spent two and a half hours there, and he instructed us as to the housing. We objected, showed him our samples of the wood and the roofing, and he said, "Well that is the best we can do. This project was constructed according to plans"; and Lieut. Col. Wright showed us the plans, and they seemed very nice plans if everything had been on level ground, only in this case the ground was not level. Sometimes there is a difference of 16 feet, so that in place of a two-story frame structure you have a two and a half story structure 16 feet under the first floor. So we went on down to Gen. March's office, and explanations were made by a group of gentlemen, all in uniform, who were well informed, and showed us that they were doing the very best they could; and we believed they were doing the best they could, but the best is not good enough for our boys. The net result of all these gentlemen's highly specialized work-and we admit it is well done-is not good enough, and the mothers of these boys are not satisfied with conditions there, and the sentiment is growing worse and worse. Before we went back we presented to Secretary Baker, through Secretary Keppel, our findings-the agreement of these seven ladies. That was handed to the Secretary on January 13, before we left for Chicago. I understood that he had not heard from us, so before we left we wrote Secretary Baker, and it was left January 13. I have here a copy of this report. Senator HARDWICK. Give it to the reporter, please, if you will. Mrs. FISHER. I will read one clause there, one sentiment. I think that expresses how we regarded the explanations these gentlemen gave us. (Mrs. Fisher thereupon read the latter part of the letter referred to, beginning with the words "After a careful examination of the plans," etc. The entire letter is as follows:) Hon. NEWTON D. BAKER, Secretary of War, Washington, D. C. WASHINGTON, D. C., January 13, 1919. SIR: At a meeting of the Woman's War Hospital Committee of Chicago the chairman of the committee presented a statement volunteered by Fire Chief Henry, of Washington, D. C., that he considered hospital buildings of the same model and construction as those at Fort Sheridan, Ill., to be unsafe as regards fire hazard. For hospitals of similar construction in the District of Columbia, he said that he had ordered stand pipes to be erected at the end of each building and a special fire guard to be detailed from his department, to be on duty at all times. This statement was later confirmed by Maj. Goldsmith, United States Army, expert on fire risk, and Mr. Hogue (or Hogge) of the fire underwriters. This information, coming at a time when this committee was disposed to accept the assurances of the men in charge of the construction of these hospitals, viz, Lieut. Col. Wright. Gen. March, and aides, as well as Surg. Gen. Ireland, and Maj. Billings, that they considered the Fort Sheridan hospital buildings now in course of construction to be fire safe, if the specifications are carried out to the letter, forced the committee to the conclusions that the buildings as they investigated them in process of construction are unsafe. 1. Because of the inflammable material used in construction. 2. The location on a hillside, making it necessary to have the frame foundations vary from 4 to 15 feet from the level of the ground or erecting the buildings on stilts. After a careful examination of the plans, as outlined on the blue prints presented by Col. Wright in Gen. March's office, it is evident that they were planned for level ground; while at Fort Sheridan, the ground not being level, one end of the building is on flat ground and the other end is erected on stilts 15 feet high. This committee, therefore, insists that the buildings at Fort Sheridan are not fireproof or fire safe, nor can they be made fireproof or fire safe without the expenditure of more money than remodeling the buildings justifies. We therefore respectfully request the Secretary of War to issue an order, in compliance with his expressed wish to us, to safeguard the soldiers, viz, to prevent the use of the Fort Sheridan structures as hospitals; and, further, this committee requests that it-the committee-accompanied by an official representa tion of the construction department, selected by Gen. March, and one other expert in construction, selected by the committee, such expert a man not connected with any Chicago enterprise, shall visit Fort Sheridan and examine the hospital buildings now under process of construction, in order to satisfy themselves that the specifications are being carried out to the letter. That Fort Sheridan is too far from Chicago for the mothers conveniently to visit the patients being treated there, because of the time and expense involved. Therefore we request Surg. Gen. Ireland to make provision for the wounded soldiers from Chicago to be cared for in and near that city. Respectfully submitted. Executive Secretary. (Permanent address: 1714 Stevens Building, Chicago, Ill.) Mrs. FISHER. That was the final result. There are several other points. Would you like to hear them all, Senator? Senator HARDWICK. I think you might let the reporter put them in with your statement. (The additional communications referred to, attached to the foregoing letter, are as follows:) Hon. NEWTON D. BAKER, WASHINGTON, D. C., January 13, 1919. Secretary of War, Washington, D. C. S13: I am appending to this recommendation two additional and individual recommendations made by members of the delegation which conferred with you on Friday. Respectfully, Secretary Executive Committee. WASHINGTON, D. C., January 11, 1919. At a meeting of the Woman's War Hospital Committee from Chicago, it was resolved: 1. That the hospital buildings now in course of erection at Fort Sheridan will be "fire safe" if the specifictions are carried out to the letter. 2. That this committee, accompanied by an official representative of the construction department selected by Gen. March, and one other expert in construction selected by the committee, such expert a man not connected with any Chicago enterprise, shall visit Fort Sheridan and examine the hospital buildings now under process of construction in order to satisfy themselves that the specifications are being carried out to the letter. 3. That Fort Sheridan is too far from Chicago for the mothers conveniently to visit the patients being treated there because of the time and expense involved. Therefore we request Surg. Gen. Ireland to make provision for the wounded soldiers from Chicago to be cared for in and near that city. Respectfully submitted, MRS. DEWITT GARRISON, Mrs. FISHER. As I have said, we were not satisfied with any explanations that we received, and we went back to Chicago, supposing |