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ALIEN PROPERTY.

COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE AND FOREIGN COMMERCE,
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Thursday, December 21, 1922.

The committee met at 10.25 o'clock a. m., Hon. Samuel E. Winslow (chairman) presiding.

There were also present Mr. Thomas W. Miller, Alien Property Custodian; Mr. W. W. Wilson, chief counsel for the Alien Property Custodian; Mr. George E. Williams, managing director; and Mr. C. H. LeFevre.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will please come to order. This meeting has been called for the purpose of taking up H. R. 13496, which is a bill introduced on the 19th of December, and is partly the same bill, in most respects, as House Joint Resolution 364. The bill was introduced to simplify and clarify and perfect some features of House Joint Resolution 364. So we will give our attention, if you please, to the consideration of H. R. 13496.

(The bill, H. R. 13496, is as follows:)

[H. R. 13496, Sixty-seventh Congress, fourth session.]

A BILL Supplemental to the trading with the enemy act.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That section 9 of an act entitled “An act to define, regulate, and punish trading with the enemy, and for other purposes, approved October 6, 1917, as amended, be, and hereby is, amended so as to read as follows:

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"SEC. 9. (a) That any person not an enemy or ally of enemy claiming any interest, right, or title in any money or other property which may have been conveyed, transferred, assigned, delivered, or paid to the Alien Property Custodian or seized by him hereunder and held by him or by the Treasurer of the United States, or to whom any debt may be owing from an enemy or ally of enemy whose property or any part thereof shall have been conveyed, transferred, assigned, delivered, or paid to the Alien Property Custodian or seized by him hereunder and held by him or by the Treasurer of the United States may file with the said custodian a notice of his claim under oath and in such form and containing such particulars as the said custodian shall require; and the President, if application is made therefor by the claimant, may order the payment, conveyance, transfer, assignment, or delivery to said claimant of the money or other property so held by the Alien Property Custodian or by the Treasurer of the United States, or of the interest therein to which the President shall determine said claimant is entitled: Provided, That no such order by the President shall bar any person from the prosecution of any suit at law or in equity against the claimant to establish any right, title, or interest which he may have in such money or other property. If the President shall not so order within sixty days after the filing of such application or if the claimant shall have filed the notice as above required and shall have made no application to the President, said claimant may, at any time before the expiration of thirty months after the end of the war institute a suit in equity in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia or in the district court of the United States for the district in which such claimant resides, or, if a corporation, where it has its principal place of business (to which suit the Alien Property Custodian or the Treasurer of the United States, as the case may be, shall be made a party defendant), to establish the interest, right, title, or debt so claimed, and if so established the court shall order the payment, conveyance, transfer, assignment, or delivery to said claimant of the money or other property so held by the Alien Property Custodian or by the Treasurer of the United States or the interest therein to which the court shall determine said claimant is entitled. If suit shall be so instituted, then such money or property shall be retained in the custody of the Alien Property Custodian, or in the Treasury of the United States, as provided in this act, and until any final judgment or decree which shall be entered in favor of the claimant shall be fully satisfied by payment or conveyance, transfer, assignment, or delivery by the defendant, or by the Alien Property Custodian, or Treasurer of the United States on order of the court, or

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