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Show LAST LEGISLATIVE FIGHT 271 out the necessary funds to operate and maintain the canal, the Bureau had no alternative but to comply with the contract. There was to be no letup in the attack on the Bureau. Rep. Poulson added his own voice to the spring offensive of 1952, by informing Congress: 391 "Although Hoover Dam was completed more than sixteen years ago, the Bureau of Reclamation still maintains a staff of approxi- mately 350 employees at the dam." He considered this a "disgraceful example of payroll padding," for the responsibility for generating, delivering and maintaining the power output of the dam rested on the two agencies which were the chief purchasers of the energy. These were the Southern California Edison Company and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. They did the work, yet they found it necessary to employ only 25 and 125 employees, respectively. "What do the 350 employees of the Bureau do at Hoover Dam?" asked Poulson. "Are they there to check each morning to see if the dam is still standing?" Congress expressed an interest in the question. Straus didn't cut his payroll, but he found reasons for trans- ferring some employees from Hoover Dam to other projects. Plainly Straus didn't like the outlook from Capitol Hill, and bluntly he told Congress that unless more money was forthcoming for the Bureau it would go out of business by 1956, and such a thing would be dis- astrous for the West. Rep. Bow of Ohio had another view of the matter, and he told Washington correspondents: 392 "If the Bureau is in any danger of going out of business by 1956, the fault lies directly on the shoulders of Mr. |