Mr. POST. Yes. (Witness: Post.) The CHAIRMAN. Relating to that particular document? Mr. POST. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. And when only 1,854 are printed, they are all accounted for by a distribution under the subhead of "up number and bound?" Mr. POST. Yes-" up number and reserve.' The CHAIRMAN. "Up-number and reserve "-yes. Mr. PosT. Yes. The CHAIRMAN. And in such a case they are left for sale by the Department-that is, by your office? Mr. PosT. No; none are left. They are all accounted for in here. Of course, there are over-copies which have gradually come in to us from these various designated depositories, you might say. These people return to us their over-copies for sale when they do not want them. That is where the great trouble lies in our division, because we are constantly being the recipients of donations of old things that we can not get rid of. The total number here of the usual number is too large, in my opinion. The CHAIRMAN. The total number of House documents is too large? Mr. POST. One thousand eight hundred and fifty-four is too manythat is, for practical use. The CHAIRMAN. By how much could that be reduced? Mr. POST. One thousand three hundred and fifty, I think, would give a liberal allowance to all of the designees, and still not leave such a surplus to be dumped onto the superintendent of documents when he has no use for them. Mr. SAMUEL. Can not that surplus be condemned? Mr. POST. We have to hold it there and give it storage room. There is no law that allows us to condemn it. The CHAIRMAN. How many public documents have you got stored under those circumstances? Mr. POST. I should think something near 4,000,000; pretty near 3,500 tons of stuff. The CHAIRMAN. Of what value, taking into account the raw material value? Mr. POST. Three hundred thousand dollars, I should say, simply as an approximation, would be its book value; as to the value as waste paper I would judge one-tenth that sum a liberal estimate. The CHAIRMAN. Is that what it cost to print it? Mr. POST. Oh, my, no. Mr. FLOOD. That is what the paper is worth? Mr. POST. That is what we could get out of it, I should think, if we should sell it for waste. The CHAIRMAN. How long has it been accumulating? Mr. POST. Ever since they have been printing. We have been gathering in, all the while, the accumulation from the various document rooms at the Capitol here. They are gathered from the document rooms and the folding rooms of the House and Senate, and from the storerooms of the various Executive Departments. The CHAIRMAN. They are those that have been undistributed? (Witness: Post.) The CHAIRMAN. Under the provisions of the law, and for which there appears to be no call from anybody? Mr. POST. None whatever. The CHAIRMAN. And the paper alone would be of the value of something like $30,000. Mr. POST. I should judge so. Of course, that is a guess. The CHAIRMAN. Yes; that is, roughly speaking. And about how much has it, in your judgment, cost the Government to print and publish that material, taking into account the cost of composition and printing, and the paper, roughly speaking? Mr. PosT. I do not believe I could give a very good idea. The CHAIRMAN. Could you approximate it within $100,000--just roughly? Mr. POST. Well, I should say that surely it was three or four times the figure given for the book value. The CHAIRMAN. Then this accumulation of material that seems to be of no value except a raw material value, a paper value, has cost the Government in the aggregate approximately, you would say, something like $1,250,000? Mr. Post. I should think so. The CHAIRMAN. And it is being held and stored there now by the Printing Department, under the provision of some law? Mr. Posт. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. That is, the Printing Department has no power or authority under existing legislation to dispose of that accumulation? Mr. POST. Only by sale or distribution. The CHAIRMAN. Why do they not sell it? Mr. POST. Nobody will buy it. The CHAIRMAN. Could you not sell it for waste paper?- Mr. POST. Well, that is not the intent of the law. We can only sell it as documents because the law provides that the superintendent of documents shall report annually the number of each and every document sold, and the price of it, making an itemized report, so that he could not sell it as waste paper because, then, he could not do that. The CHAIRMAN. No. You have no authority under the present statute to dispose of this vast accumulation of material? Mr. POST. None whatever. The CHAIRMAN. And a great deal of that material must consist of duplicates that is, reports of the same character from year to year? Mr. POST. And there are hundreds of copies of the same report. The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Mr. Posт. For instance, we have thousands of copies of Congressional directories that are not worth anything to anyone except for their historical value. The CHAIRMAN. And under the provisions of the law you can not sell them for waste paper? Mr. POST. No, sir. The CHAIRMAN. But you have to store them? Mr. Posт. We have to go to the expense of handling and storing them; yes. The CHAIRMAN. Where do you store this accumulation of more or less valuable material? (Witness: Post.) Mr. POST. Nearly the entire old building of the Government Printing Office is taken up now with the storage of this matter. The CHAIRMAN. What is the annual value of that storage capacity? Could you tell somewhere near what it is? Mr. PosT. No: I could not. I do not know. The CHAIRMAN. In a short time, I suppose, the capacity of that building will be exceeded? Mr. Posт. It is now so that we are refusing to receive from the designated depositories any return of documents, and we are constantly calling upon the Executive Departments to hold their surplus, as we have not any place in which to put it. The CHAIRMAN. What are they doing with it now; simply accumulating it in other storage places? Mr. POST. Yes. The provisions of this resolution of the Joint Committee on Printing will reduce that surplus. We will never have again the surplus that we have had heretofore. The CHAIRMAN. Yes; but have the committee made any provision for disposing of the existing surplus? Mr. POST. No; I understand they are going to take some steps at this Congress. It will have to be in the form of legislation, though. The CHAIRMAN. Out of this immense aggregate of 4,000,000 copies of documents how many calls would you say, approximately speaking, the Printing Office has for the documents comprising that accumulation? Mr. PosT. We are selling out of that accumulation at the rate of, I should say, an average of $145 a day; but the greater part of that would be current publications of the Department of Agriculture. The CHAIRMAN. Oh, current publications of the Department of Agriculture? Mr. PosT. That is, the majority of those sales. The CHAIRMAN. What proportion of that $145 a day would be current publications? Mr. POST. Oh, 90 per cent would be current publications. The CHAIRMAN. How long do they continue to call for a document? For instance, would a document four years old be called for, or would a document ten years old be called for? Mr. POST. Oh, yes; forty years old; they call for them away back. We have to keep on hand (in stock, as we call it) 10 copies of nearly everything, because we do not know what is going to be called for. The CHAIRMAN. Then do you have 10 copies of everything in addition to this 4,000,000 accumulation? Mr. POST. No; that is included in that. The CHAIRMAN. That is a part of it? Mr. POST. What we call stock at the office would aggregate, I should judge, 700,000 books. The CHAIRMAN. That is, that would be approximately 10 volumes a year of each document, roughly speaking? Mr. PosT. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. And the balance of the 3,300,000 copies are practically not called for at all, and not estimated by you in the stock? Mr. POST. We call it dead stock. The CHAIRMAN. You call it dead stock because it has no market value? (Witness: Post.) Mr. POST. None whatever. The CHAIRMAN. No calls are being made for it? Mr. POST. No, sir. The CHAIRMAN. And the Government is simply keeping it on hand and storing it? Mr. POST. That is true. Mr. SAMUEL. What do you mean by the term "current publications? Do you mean those published each year? Mr. POST. When I say "current" it would mean this year's publi cations. The CHAIRMAN. Up-to-date publications? Mr. POST. You see, the Department of Agriculture issues bulletins every day. The CHAIRMAN. For instance, would you call a 1906 publication a current publication, or one issued in 1905? Mr. PosT. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Anything within two or three years of the present time, I suppose? Mr. Posт. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Would it be possible for your department to furnish Congress a schedule that would result in the publication of something approximately near what the real demand for the documents would be and prevent this tremendous accumulation, or is that something that the Printing Committee have on hand now and are investigating? Mr. PosT. I am attempting now to make up a list of the publications on hand, to show, as an object lesson, the overprinting that has already been done. The CHAIRMAN. Yes. Mr. POST. That is the reason why we have made every effort to gather from all these depository sources their surplus, so as to be able to have it there, and show by this object lesson what an enormous amount of overprinting has already been done. The CHAIRMAN. Is it practicable to differentiate between practically worthless publications for general use and valuable publications for general use? Mr. PosT. Yes; I think so. The CHAIRMAN. Are you making an effort to do that? Mr. POST. We are, through the medium of our depository libraries, which represent, as a rule, the very best library in the Congressional district of the Representative, and they would know, of course, by the calls that they have for the different publications which were valuable and which were not. We are now compiling statistics to that effect, to find out what publications of the Government are used and what are never used. But such statistics will not be complete in this way: That the facilities for digging out of the sheepbound reserve, for instance, the valuable publications and separating them from those that are not valuable are so meager that half the libraries, and certainly very few of the general public, know what is contained in that sheep-bound set. The CHAIRMAN. Yes; I suppose that is true. But take it in the case, for instance, of the document we are particularly interested in (Witness: Post.) here the report of the expenditures of the Department of Agriculture. Mr. PosT. Yes, sir. The CHAIRMAN. Which must be of exceedingly trifling value to the general public. Mr. PosT. I should think it was of very little value. The CHAIRMAN. Extremely. Mr. POST. But it would be bound up, Mr. Littlefield, with perhaps a great many publications that were of great value. The CHAIRMAN. You mean put into the same volume? Mr. PosT. Put into the same volume, because its numerical position would bring it in a certain volume. The CHAIRMAN. But why should not a method be adopted that would simply result in a distribution of the documents these people desire and want and then publish the practically valueless documents by themselves? That is, why not bind up documents of the same character in the same volume, instead of combining the valuable documents and the valueless documents in the same volume? Mr. POST. We have attempted to do that by getting legislation authorizing us to have the documents bound in some high-grade cloth, instead of in sheep, and the saving to the Government would be two-thirds of what is now the expense of distributing these books. The CHAIRMAN. That is, it costs about two-thirds less to bind in cloth than it does to bind in sheep? Mr. PoST. Just about; and it provides a very much better binding in the end than the sheep binding. The CHAIRMAN. That is, it does not deteriorate so rapidly? Mr. PosT. No; it is more acceptable to the libraries; they would rather have it; but it always meets with opposition. I do not know that I should state this. The CHAIRMAN. State whatever the facts are, and give your own opinion about it, too. Mr. PosT. I have no objection to giving my own opinion, but I do not want to encroach upon the Public Printer's business. The fact is that the bookbinders' unions are, of course, violently opposed to having sheep-bound documents dispensed with, and that is the only reason. The CHAIRMAN. And for what reason are they opposed to it? Mr. POST. Because it takes away from their work. The CHAIRMAN. It means so much less employment? Mr. POST. Yes, sir. That is the only reason I know of that we have not had legislation heretofore to do away with the binding of this reserve in sheep and substituting cloth. The CHAIRMAN. In the case of that reserve that could be bound in cloth, and by such binding have fully as much utility or value, or more, as if it were bound in sheep, about how much, in your judgment, would it save the Government every year if that change were made? Mr. PosT. One-third of the expense of that reserve. The CHAIRMAN. About how much would that be in dollars and cents, roughly speaking? Mr. POST. There were 329 volumes of documents in a set of the Fifty-seventh Congress, costing $563.65 for the set. Under the law |