The District of Columbia Federation of Women's Clubs went on record, first, for the larger Federal contribution, preferably the O'Mahoney-Overton formula.

We also favor a broader income-tax base. We feel that there should be an exemption for those who pay taxes in the other States, if they are Government employees, but there are a certain number of businessmen, business people not affiliated with the Government who come here and still retain their vote in the States, and we feel that they should pay the District tax, because, after all, they are making a living out of the District government, and they are not compelled to stay here as the Federal employee, and we think there should be a difference there.

We are definitely on record, as Mrs. Parks said, for a sales tax. We feel there is a great group-well, you take day workers, there are several different orders of day workers. I know down in my husband's building there are people, whole families of grown people, who do a day's work, and they do not pay any tax, and I would like to know whether or not the waiters in the hotels pay any kind of a tax at all. I think the sales tax would be a very good thing, because then they would have to pay for the stuff they buy.

I do not think there are very many who pay income taxes here. I think on the tax books of the District there are about 150,000 realestate accounts, but that is not representative, because of the 150,000 property owners, I suppose there are around 100,000 people who own their homes, and as Mrs. Parks has just said, a great many of them are people in very moderate circumstances who bought their homes, and an increase in real-estate taxes would be a burden on them. Furthermore, they have enough worries as it is just now.

We have a board here which I think could very well be done away with, the board of zoning adjustment, which keeps the property owners on the qui vive all the time trying to protect their property. We never know at what time the board of zoning adjustment is going to rezone neighborhood property and jeopardize the rights of property

owners.

Quite often we have been out of town on short vacations, and the board of zoning adjustment has had a meeting, and property has been czɔned down from a residential restricted to roadhouses, and it happened in my own community, and it is a dangerous thing. As I say, the property owners have enough to do without watching that, and we feel that we pay a very fair real-estate tax here. We have practically a hundred-percent assessment on it.

There is certain property, however, Mr. Bates and Senator Cain, that we feel could go back on the tax rolls. I think you could well look into certain property which has been bought for park purposes. I have one small piece in point; it is called the Melvin Hazen Park; it was bought because the real-estate company wanted to unload it. They were very slick and they gave it the name Melvin Hazen because Mr. Hazen was a much-beloved figure. It is a hole in the ground: it is not good for park purposes or anything else, but it would be very valuable if an apartment house was put on there, and if the people sold it.

We know that the real-estate tax is going to affect us a great deal ore than the sales tax. I think that has been brought out by the Corporation Counsel, that even if we spent $1,500 or $2,000 on things

outside of necessaries, it would not really amount to as much as an increased property tax.

I would like to point out the fact that when the Federal tax went into effect on luxuries, of course, everybody talked about the 20-percent luxury tax. I do not think anybody stopped buying lipsticks or rouge or face powder or anything else because there was a tax on it; they kept on buying it. And I think they would do the same thing with a sales tax.

I heard Mr. Press talk about a tax on 15-cent sales. I am wondering if that thing would not be a very hard thing to handle. We would have to have those stamps for fractional amounts and I think that would be very hard indeed.

So, as I say, and as Mrs. Parks said, we do represent a cross-section of the women of the city, and the women of the city hold the purchasing power-the women of the city, any city, hold the purchasing power; and like Mrs. Parks, I have not talked to the women who are not in favor of a sales tax. We do want certain things exempted. We have definitely wanted this utility tax exempted but 3 years ago, 2 years ago, I guess it was, we came out requesting that a tax be put on all meals over a dollar and a half to be used for welfare purposes. That, Mr. Bates, was because I knew in Massachusetts I never found it was any pain at all to pay a little tax on the meal to be used for old-age pension funds, and I feel that was a painless tax, and I cannot understand why, with all the spending there was during the war, the Commissioners did not attempt to collect a lot of money and have money to use right now to make improvements. A good many cities and States did that, and when the war ended they had money which they collected from the spending population who made large wages. The Federation of Women's Clubs also went on record for a 5-percent amusement tax. I noticed that you have knocked that out of your proposals, but to us it seems a much fairer tax than to assess seating capacity of the theaters because a lot of these little neighborhood theaters only give two shows a day and it is going to work quite a hardship on them, and the large ones downtown which Mr. Brylawski runs, could very well stand the admission tax. We are in favor of that.

We are also on record for a cigarette tax. We also recommended to the Commissioners that there be a tax put on dance halls, poolrooms, and skating rinks. It would not be a whole lot, but it would all help.

I would like to point out that the tax on dance halls is $8, and in New York it is $150, and those little sources of revenue could easily be used, and they should be looked into.

Now, all of these people here have been talking about the fact that they do not want a tax on gasoline, and they do not want a tax on liquor and they do not want a tax on cigarettes and on amusements, but I belong to citizens groups that spend their time writing letters to the Commissioners asking for improvements in this and in that; there are half a dozen streets in my own community that are pretty well filled with holes from the winter, and all that, and I have written letters in my capacity as executive secretary asking for those improvements. You cannot get improvements unless you have the money to make them, and the Commissioners are authorized, of course, and bound by law to collect a certain amount of money from the people of the city, and we women feel that if you do not give them a sales tax, and if you are

not going to have more liquor taxes and cigarette taxes and gasoline taxes, then it is going to come back to our little homeowners; we are going to pay a larger amount, and we just do not think it is fair to us at all.

There is another source that we feel should be attended to. Resolutions have been sent in relative to attending schools in the District by children of residents of Maryland and Virginia. We have never had them pay because Members of Congress from Maryland and Virginia have stayed on the committee to protect their constituents, which is a very good idea.

We have addressed letters, one of the groups I belong to, the Northwest Citizens Council of Washington, to the States of Maryland and Virginia, requesting that our children be allowed to enter the State universities of those two States on the same basis as the Virginia and Maryland children, because the District of Columbia has no free college for higher education for white children. Every State in the Union has something of the kind. We have nothing here, not even a college, a junior college which is free, yet we educate the children from Maryland and Virginia in the District schools, who can possibly get in under the law, which allows them in if the parent's business is in the District, and I think that is a reciprocity thing that you gentlemen might look into.

Senator CAIN. What has the reaction of the other several States been?

Mrs. WRIGHT. Well, I had no letter from Maryland at all; and Virginia wrote me that the legislature had adjourned for the year, and they would take up that problem the next year, but they did not do it at all.

I know, going through the West you see free junior colleges and all the States have State universities. We have nothing here for our white children whatever, nothing at all. Yet there is a grant made to Howard University, of course, every year in Congress for the higher education of colored children, so when that question of inequality between the white and colored comes up that is a point you might well remember, when you think it over.

Now, we think that there should be savings in some way of the Board of Zoning Adjustments and the Park and Planning Commission. We feel that that is a very good Commission in some ways, but I do not think either of you gentlemen is as old as I am, and I remember the city of Washington when we had beautiful shady expanses at the Mall, covered with elm trees, such as Mr. Bates has seen in many of the New England towns, and we had to sit by and watch. in holy horror while the Park and Planning Commission took those, all those trees and made a bare, sandy tract out of it, and then spendI know in some cases-they spent $5,000 moving trees from other places over to put around buildings; those were expenditures that were not justified and not wanted.

As far as the highway tax is concerned, I do not think our Federation of Women's Clubs is expert in highway planning but we do feel, many of us, that the Dupont Circle underpass is really an extravagance, and furthermore it is not being run the right way. We think Connecticut Avenue should be kept as one of the main arterial highways to the city; it is a beautiful street, and we feel that this is a very,

very enormous expenditure, and that it should be looked into before Connecticut Avenue is ruined.

The Federation of Women's Clubs deferred action on the gasoline tax because at that time we had just been notified there was a 1-cent increase in the gasoline tax made by the companies.

I would like to point out in the testimony of the companies that they have not shown any concern over the fact that they raised the price 1 cent, but they are concerned over the fact that there might be a little bit of extra revenue the District could get if there was another cent on it.

Now, I have talked to the taxi drivers as I ride around the city, and even this morning I talked to one of them, and he said, "Lady, I don't mind a cent tax on gasoline. We have a low rate on it in the city.” And I said, "It is a right funny thing that a bunch of you men were up on the Hill." And he said, "Lady, people will talk about anything, and they will sign any kind of a petition if they are asked to."

I think you gentlemen know, if you get a good speaker in front of a group of people, and he talks in a very convincing way and in an energetic way, why, people will agree to anything he says, and they will sign anything; just like the sales-tax petition that has been going around the streets. I do not think that 100 of the people who signed the petition would know what the sales tax was, and I do not think they know. People will sign anything. They do not give study to it, but we do feel that the Federation of Women's Clubs is a representative group.

Our president is a widely traveled woman. She is a woman connected with public affairs, and she has given study to this question. My legislative group has given study, and my club group and I think you will find that the rank and file of the city of Washington are in favor of a sales tax, and after all, gentlemen, we do the buying for the city; remember that.

Senator CAIN. You are in favor of paying for the improvements you seek for the city?

Mrs. WRIGHT. Yes; we are, and we know in the long run that it will give us more money in our pockets to spend than if the real-estate tax is increased.

Now, we know that, and we feel that it would be a very good thing for the city, and if we want to have all of these improvements, if we want better schools, we have just got to have the money for the things. The Board of Public Welfare is a board that needs money. I would like to point out to you gentlemen that 3 years ago the Federation of Women's Clubs had a special hearing with both the Senate and House about the need of the Welfare Department. Our plea was so well considered here that the money was immediately granted to us for a new receiving home for the children of Washington. That home could have been built 2 years ago, but a very ill-advised group that had nothing whatever to do with the District or Welfare Board managed to defeat the thing for months, and the children are still sleeping on the floors over at the receiving home, although Congress did appropriate the money at the time. Now, that is one case where we feel that the divided authority is a very bad thing. If the Board of Public Welfare had been able to go ahead, as they planned, our children would have a decent institution, but the costs have gone up so because the Commissioners listened to an unauthorized group that

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headed these things, and it is rather discouraging to us women because we have worked for them, and we are interested in the city.

As I think I told you before, my folks settled here over 150 years ago, one branch of them. We have an interest in this city. This is the Capital of the greatest Nation of the world, and we want to see it go on and see our Capital City well kept, and, as I say, we would like to see a sales tax enacted.

Mr. BATES. Thank you, Mrs. Wright.

Senator CAIN. You have a city that you can well be proud of. Mrs. WRIGHT. I know it, and I think it is because Congress runs it. Senator CAIN. I wonder if Mr. Vernis Absher is here; he is a member of the Southeast Washington Citizens' Association.

STATEMENT OF VERNIS ABSHER, REPRESENTING THE SOUTHEAST WASHINGTON CITIZENS' ASSOCIATION, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. ABSHER. Mr. Chairman, my name is Vernis Absher, and I am representing the Southeast Citizens' Association.

I have a resolution here which was passed by our association a few weeks ago which I would like to read. It is very short. This is the proposed resolution as to District of Columbia revenue:

RESOLUTION OF SOUTHEAST CITIZENS' ASSOCIATION ON DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

REVENUE

Whereas the District of Columbia is in need of additional revenue in order to carry on its regular municipal functions and to enlarge and improve its facilities to take care of its increasing population;

To mention one item of insufficiency: The public schools are inadequate in that the buildings are being inadequately maintained and serviced. The grounds are poorly kept in many places, and new buildings are needed in many localities. There are many instances where the surroundings of the schools are very unsightly and unattractive; and

Whereas only in two ways can such additional revenue be provided, namely (1) by an increase in the annual Federal contribution, and (2) by an increase in present tax rates and/or the imposition of additional taxes; and

Whereas it is desirable that the annual contribution of the Federal Government to the District of Columbia be proportionate to the benefits received in said District by said Federal Government; and

Whereas it is imperative that every person who earns a livelihood in the District of Columbia shall, through taxation, contribute toward the expense of maintaining the District municipal government: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved by the Southeast Washington Citizens' Association regularly assembled, That said association favors and recommends the following changes in, and additions to, the existing tax structure of the District of Columbia:

I. That the sales tax, as proposed by the District of Columbia Commissioners and introduced in Congress by bill H. R. 2290, be enacted and that the proceeds be allocated and used exclusively for the improvement and extension of our public-school facilities.

II. That the existing income-tax law be broadened to include the incomes of all persons maintaining residences in the District of Columbia, whether or not they also maintain residences in other States, as well as all incomes derived from sources within the District, whether of residents or nonresidents of said District, provided that nonresidents should be allowed credits for the tax they pay on the same incomes to other States, providing that such States reciprocate by the granting of similar credits to District of Columbia residents.

III. That there be an increase in the rate of taxation of all real estate in the District of Columbia held for investment or profit purposes, with no increase in the rate on real estate occupied as dwellings by the owners thereof.

IV. That the annual Federal contribution to the District of Columbia be in direct proportion to the benefits received by said Federal Government, including not only its ownership of tax-free real estate, but also the value of all services, such as water, provided by the District of Columbia.