(Witnesses: Hill, Zappone.)

proved to be a stenographer and we have given her work of that kind to do.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Do they also do typewriting work?

Mr. HILL. Yes; all of our stenographers do typewriting, but not all of our typewriters do stenographic work.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. How many typewriters have you?
Mr. HILL. I have seven or eight that do typewriting.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. How do you make your requisitions for supplies?

Mr. HILL. The requisitions all come to me through my chief clerk. The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Describe the procedure of that requisition from its beginning until it reaches you.

Mr. HILL. We will take a concrete case: Mr. Handy, who has charge of the document section, will write that he is out of a certain size and quality of envelope, and will recommend that we order 150,000. We generally order enough to last six months; that is our idea. The chief clerk, Mr. Mudd, will make out a requisition, where it is a thing that is on the contract book-you understand what I mean by that, where there will be no difficulty about the price-and it goes in to the supply clerk and from the supply clerk, I understand, to the disbursing officer.

Mr. ZAPPONE. That is to see whether it is in conformity with law and the fiscal regulations.

Mr. HILL. Exactly-if we are legally entitled to pay out of that fund for this purpose, and it is not authorized by the Secretary until the disbursing clerk has passed upon it and said that it is all right. The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Who passes judgment upon the necessity of that supply?

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Mr. HILL. The chief clerk and myself. For instance, if I saw that a thousand cards were wanted, I would probably send for the chief clerk, and say: What do we want with a thousand of these cards? How long will they last us?" If he should show me that the use of them would probably absorb that number in six months, that we used 800 in the past six months, and that their use is increasing, I would let it pass. But I am responsible myself, personally, on his statement.

For instance, if some new device is needed in the mailing, as there was some years ago, a method of addressing with a sort of stencil arrangement, that, of course, was made the matter of very considerable consultation, and one of the machines was placed in our hands for a month or two for trial, and when we were perfectly satisfied that it was the thing we wanted we made a requisition for it, accompanied by a letter stating the reasons why, and why we had to get it from these people, and that the price was the lowest that we could get anywhere.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Does any person make an examination of the supplies on hand to corroborate the request of the person originally making the request?

Mr. HILL. No, sir; I take the word of the chief of the division that he is out when he says he is out.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Would there be a possibility of ordering when they were not out?

(Witness: Hill.)

Mr. HILL. Yes; there would be a possibility, but from the nature of our supplies I do not see that anybody would benefit by it.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. There would be no possibility of anyone benefiting by an oversupply of any particular article?

Mr. HILL. No. A messenger might steal a few pencils, perhaps, but the cost of keeping a check upon pencils would be far greater than the total loss of pencils would amount to.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Would the same thing apply to other supplies?

Mr. HILL. The other supplies are of a nature that could hardly be used. That is the only thing I can think of.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Take the case of envelopes.

Mr. HILL. All our envelopes are printed, you know, and there is a penalty of $300 for their use by private parties. A penalty slip is printed on them. I do not see how, with that penalty slip, there could be any private use of envelopes.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Are there any of the supplies that it would be advantageous for a person to order, when there was no necessity for them, for his personal use?

Mr. HILL. I should say not unless a man was an extraordinary mean man, in which case he might sneak a pair of scissors once in a while a pair of shears or something of that kind. But I have entire confidence in each of these gentlemen. We have a good, responsible person in charge of each room, you will understand, Mr. Chairman. In one room we have the foreman; in another room we have the chief of the document section; in another room we have the first assistant, who is a thoroughly responsible man; in another room we have a forewoman. We have two forewomen practically. The document clerk is in charge of another room. These are all thoroughly responsible people, and they are responsible for the proper use of the supplies, and there are none of our supplies that are intrinsically very valuable. In order to make a haul worth taking away they would have to load themselves with a waste-paper basket chock-full of stuff.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. How many Yearbooks are published annually?

Mr. HILL. Five hundred thousand were published until this year. This year there will be less published. I believe the Printing Čommittee under the new law decides upon a limited number. It is not required to print the whole number authorized by law at one time. The ACTING CHAIRMAN. What occasioned that decrease?

Mr. HILL. They agreed, as I understand, to publish 330,000, which, with the 30,000 ordered for our Department, will make 360.000. Now, I do not understand that they restrict the Members' quota at all. The Members will get the same quota, and if all the Members should draw them, of course eventually they would have to print more; but they are not going to print them until they need them. They are going to put a limit upon all these Congressional publications, I understand, in that way. All that we handle are the 30,000 of the Yearbooks that

come to us.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Is that number of 30,000 sufficient to meet the demands of your Department?

Mr. HILL. Not by any means; not by any means.

(Witness: Hill.)

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. How many do you estimate would be required to meet the demands of your Department?

Mr. HILL. I have asked two or three times for 50,000. I consulted the Secretary first, and satisfied him that we needed them. The Secretary is very conservative about asking for anything. He makes us satisfy him very thoroughly that we need things before he will permit us to even ask for them.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. What is your opinion as to the value of that publication?

Mr. HILL. I think it is a very valuable publication, sir.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. There is a great demand for it, is there? Mr. HILL. There is a great demand for it. There are a great many people besides the farmers that ask for these Yearbooks. There have been one or two propositions in the House to furnish it to all the students in agriculture at the agricultural colleges.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Do you approve of that?

Mr. HILL. I think that would be a very good idea; but I would like to see it done by giving us such additional allotment as would be needed, with a proviso that the Secretary should furnish one of the Yearbooks to each student taking the agricultural course in each agricultural college.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. How many copies of the Secretary's annual report are published each year?

Mr. HILL. The report is published, by law, in two editions one as a part of the reports, published and bound with the reports of his chiefs, making up the annual report of the Department, or the business report-Part 1, as it is called in the law. Part 2 is the Yearbook. It is reprinted in the Yearbook, because the law says that the Yearbook shall contain a succinct account of the operations of the Department for the year, and the most succinct account we have is the Secretary's report. Then it is published separately to the number of 5,000, which is also provided for by statute law. But we do not begin, with these publications, to have enough to satisfy the demand, and we republish it as a report of the Secretary's office, a bulletin of the Secretary's office, in an edition of about 50,000. The ACTING CHAIRMAN. That is Part 1?

Mr. HILL. No; that is only the Secretary's own report. It is about 100 pages. Part 1 includes the reports of the chiefs to the Secretary, as well as the Secretary's report to the President, and it is printed in an edition of 6,000. That is provided for by statute.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Will you give, in your own way, your opinion as to the general value of the publications of your department?

Mr. HILL. I think that under the present system there are very, very few of them that are not valuable and none that are not worth what it costs to issue them. With prudence as to the size of the editions, care to avoid redundancy, and scrutiny to prevent undue and extravagant illustration, I think every bulletin may be said to be worth at least what it costs, and the great majority of them worth a great deal more.

As a matter of fact, the publications of the Department are the ultimate expression of its service in acquiring useful information. The organic law of the Department says that it shall be the duty of its

(Witness: Hill.)

head to acquire and to diffuse by all the means at his command information useful to agriculture in the broadest and most comprehensive sense of that term; and the most obvious way he has of diffusing the information that he acquires through his investigators is by publication.

The publications are subdivided now so as to reach nearly all classes. With the Farmers' Bulletins, and circulars, and extracts from the Yearbook we reach the masses of the practical farmers of the country. The technical and scientific bulletins are designed for a somewhat different class. They are designed for students who are studying agricultural science, for the professors and experimenters at the agricultural colleges and experiment stations, and for scientific men generally, who have a right to be informed as to the methods pursued by our own investigators in conducting their scientific investigations. They can not test the value of their conclusions without knowing something as to the nature and character of their investigations. Consequently we permit in these bulletins a somewhat more scientific style than we do in the popular bulletins, because their circulation is large and among a class of people of more than average education.

(At this point Mr. Littlefield resumed the chair.)

The CHAIRMAN. They are largely technical in their character? Mr. HILL. They are more or less technical in their character. The man who works in the laboratory investigating a problem in scientific agriculture, whether it be bacteriological, chemical, physical, or pathological, has to tell his colleagues and has to tell the public at large what his conclusions are. The Farmers' Bulletins exist for giving the things that are not contributions to science, but that are accepted, that are positive, that may be stated didactically, for the instruction and information of the farmers; and they have to be expressed in the plainest, simplest language possible. But the report of a man's investigations and of his laboratory work we can afford to allow him to make in a somewhat less popular form. In other words, he has to use something of the language that pertains to his calling.

The CHAIRMAN. That is, he must couch his paper in that terminology?

Mr. HILL. He has to, for exactness.

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; to get accurate expression.

Mr. HILL. To get accurate expression.

Mr. SAMUEL. Is the demand for those publications increasing? Mr. HILL. It is increasing to such an extent that I do think that daily we have to decline (because we have not got them) sending more publications than we actually are able to send out.

Mr. SAMUEL. Do you decline or simply ask the applicants to wait until you have a reprint?

Mr. HILL. That depends upon whether a reprint is contemplated or not. Lately we have been referring them to the superintendent of documents, and telling them they will have to purchase the documents desired. We are practically reduced now, owing to the enormous publication work of the Department without a very adequate corresponding increase in the appropriation, to publishing for gratuitous distribution Farmers' Bulletins and circulars only. Then of the

(Witness: Hill.)

more or less technical bulletins-the bureau bulletins we publish enough to supply the libraries and the agricultural colleges and other institutions of learning, foreign exchanges, and people that may best. be described as correspondents actively cooperating in the work of the Department-people who render service to the Department, and who in that way earn the right to apply to us for such bulletins as they want. In fact, that is the most economical way that these men can possibly be remunerated, because their remuneration for services rendered, if it was put in dollars and cents, would be more or less considerable, and the publications that they ask for will probably cost the Government only $3 or $4 to print. But the miscellaneous requests from Tom, Dick, and Harry for these publications we refer to the superintendent of documents, where most of them can be purchased for from 5 to 25 cents apiece-an average of less than 15 cents, I think.

The CHAIRMAN. Does the Government get any revenue of any consequence out of that sale, as a commercial proposition?

Mr. HILL. I think the superintendent of documents is beginning to. I think he sold about $17,000 worth last year.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you get any inquiries from the public to whom these documents are distributed, indicating that they have examined the works and have had suggested to them new and interesting lines of inquiry, and are therefore getting a beneficial use from the literature?

Mr. HILL. The only inquiries that would reach my office that would indicate anything of that sort would be requests for more publications, stating, as they very frequently do, that we sent them a publication on thus and so, and that they were very much interested in it, and they want to know if we have published anything on this subject or anything on that subject. We get a great many such letters. The CHAIRMAN. Those are undoubtedly induced by the circulation of your literature?

Mr. HILL. Undoubtedly. In the case of a work that would induce a man to write on a subject that he had read of-we will say alfalfa, or diseases of poultry, or something of that sort-where he would write for further information, or for some details that he thought were not given clearly enough in the bulletin, that letter would not come to me. It would go to the Bureau of Plant Industry if it referred to alfalfa, and would be referred from the central office there to the expert on forage plants, and he would answer the letter. But we get a great many letters asking for publications, and referring to the fact that we had sent them something previously which they had found very useful and very practical, and saying that they want something more. We send out monthly lists of publications. I would like to put in a word about salaries, if I may. The CHAIRMAN. Certainly.

Mr. HILL. I think that it is noteworthy, and I am pretty sure I am safe when I say that, taking my own salary and the salaries of all the force, beginning with myself and going down to the lowest, that we will average one or two hundred dollars less than the average salaries of any other bureau or division in the Department. I am speaking now of the statutory roll, but that includes in my case all the highestpriced men I have. The lump fund includes only very, very low