Sold!

Klaxon-voiced New York Auctioneer Jacob Goldberg had had a three-and-a-half-hour grilling by the Mead Committee (formerly the Truman Committee) and he was hopping mad. Finally he stood at bay, angrily accused the investigators of trying to tear down his character, and of tapping the telephone wire of his firm (Surplus Liquidators, Inc., which held a contract to sell some $750,000 worth of Defense Plant Corp. surpluses to the public). Without pausing for breath, he also charged that the Senate's Committee was wasting millions in its investigation of Government surplus property disposal methods.

The Committee was understandably astonished. Previous testimony had made many an unsavory anti-Goldberg point: 1) that Goldberg had sold DPC surpluses at knock-down prices, but had later, and privately, tapped purchasers for an additional 20%; 2) that he had favored certain buyers by use of signals rather than voice bids; 3) that he had offered a DPC official a $20,000-a-year job to promote Goldberg good will within DPC.

The Mayor, His Testimony. Witness Fiorello H. LaGuardia, who enthusiastically fell in with the Committee's desire to have a look at Goldberg, had frothed on the stand at the mention of Goldberg and Surplus Liquidators, Inc. Reading from a report, the Mayor declared that, as an auctioneer, Goldberg was "unethical, tyrannical and unfair . . . and to say the least stupid and arrogant." He was also, grimaced The Hat, a distributor of toilet seats. To punctuate his testimony, Witness LaGuardia had shrilly mimicked an auctioneer's babble, yelling an occasional, gleeful "sold!" But Auctioneer Goldberg, who heard all this and more, too, had stubbornly refused to wilt.

He had reasons. One of them was a conclusion any oldtime dealer in Government material could reach if he took the long view: the Goldberg affair was only a small, noisy example of the confusion to come, as surpluses are worked off through private contractors. Another was that the Mead Committee hearings had proved that the real surplus disposal trouble lies not so much with small potatoes like Surplus Liquidators, Inc. as with the Government itself. Investigators have found repeated indications of the same offhanded waste in disposal as there was and is in the procurement of war goods. They have also found a startling lack of working liaison between Government agencies with goods to sell, and agencies trying desperately to buy the same kind of goods. But civilian buyers seem to have been alert:

P: One professional bidder bought five $300 Army searchlights at auction for $31 apiece. Later, he resold them to a Government contractor (working for the Navy) for $205 each.

P: A woman buyer snapped up some large strainers for $3.25 each, sold them back to a Government ship-repairer for $12 each.

Other, almost incredible, examples crowded the Committee's reports. While one arm of the Government tried to dispose of 31,000,000 surgical dressings recently, another agency called loudly for 47,000,000 of the same dressings. Unfortunately, they could not hear each other. Spurred to crackdown action last week, the Mead Committee wanted to know why. Said Chairman Mead, warning agencies to get their faces ready for future, painful scrutiny:

"This is the first auction of real size to come to the attention of this committee. . . . We hope that every agency of the Government has a representative in this room, that they will digest the [Goldberg] hearings, and that there will be no repetition of what happened in the last war. . . . If there is, we hope to worry them constantly . . . and ultimately to bring an end to it. . . ."

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