CONTINGENT EXPENSES.

The CHAIRMAN. The next proposed amendment is at the bottom of page 66, under "Contingent expenses," to add after the word "dollars" on line 25 the following:

Provided, That hereafter the Secretary of Agriculture may purchase stationery, supplies, furniture, and miscellaneous materials from this appropriation and transfer the same at actual cost to the various bureaus, divisions, and offices of the Department of Agriculture in the city of Washington, reimbursement therefor to be made to this appropriation by said bureaus, divisions, and offices from their lump-fund appropriations by transfer settlements through the Treasury Department.

Secretary WILSON. That is to permit us to furnish supplies to the big bureaus instead of having each bureau buy for itself. I think it would be a measure of economy to do it.

Senator CHAMBERLAIN. Is there not an awarding board that awards the supplies for contracts for all the departments?

Secretary WILSON. We have our own awarding boards.

Mr. ZAPPONE. They do not have anything to do with the purchase of supplies.

Senator WARREN. Is that board the same that makes recommendations to all the departments?

Secretary WILSON. I am inclined to think so.

Mr. ZAPPONE. The practice in the department for a number of years was for the chief of the supply division to purchase the ordinary articles of stationery that are commonly used by the different bureaus and sell to the bureaus as they required these items and then have the bureaus reimburse the contingent fund at the end of each quarter, but within the past year-beginning with the first of last July-the Comptroller of the Treasury held that it was illegal; that Congress had appropriated the money for the various bureaus to purchase their own supplies, and such purchases should be made direct by the bureaus. So we stopped it at that time, and stopped a good business arrangement. I think the method of having a central office for the purchase of supplies and the sale of those supplies to the various bureaus, particularly in cases of emergency, would do away with the making of so many small orders on dealers as now has to be done, and it would also enable the bureaus to get such supplies immediately. However, I am quite sure the Secretary will be willing to get along without it if there is any objection to it on the part of the committee. I merely refer to it as a good business arrangement. I think the Interior Department has probably recommended the same thing.

Senator WARREN. They have recommended it heretofore and it has failed once or twice. I think it has been adopted, however, in the Treasury Department. Do you happen to know about that?

Mr. ZAPPONE. It could not without legislation.

Senator WARREN. I think we legislated two or three years ago; I am not certain about it. I know we failed to legislate for the Interior Department.

Mr. ZAPPONE. That may be true; and if so, they are enabled to buy supplies and sell to their bureaus. I think it is an arrangement that any large private corporation would adopt.

OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS.

IRRIGATION INVESTIGATION.

The CHAIRMAN. The next amendment I notice is on page 71, line 14, to strike out the word "twelve" and insert "sixteen." That is for nutrition investigations.

Secretary WILSON. That is our calorimeter work.

The CHAIRMAN. What is that?

Secretary WILSON. It would be interesting to you gentlemen to come down and see it.

We have a little room there and put a man in it and keep him a week or 10 days.

Senator CHAMBERLAIN. You experiment on him?

Secretary WILSON. Yes.

Senator WARREN. You have your machinery in there?

Secretary WILSON. Yes, sir. The last work we did was with regard to cheese.

The CHAIRMAN. Is that work continuous ? Secretary WILSON. Yes, sir; it goes on. We test the food in there. Senator CHAMBERLAIN. Do you find any difficulty in getting subjects?

Secretary WILSON. No; the man has everything he wants. Everything that goes in we know, and everything that comes away from him we know. We know how he is digesting. It is exceedingly interesting. And this is the only one in America that I know of.

Senator CHAMBERLAIN. Do you publish the results?

Secretary WILSON. Yes, sir. We estimated for $20,000. The House committee cut it down to $12,000 and we are asking you to make it $16,000. We found there sometime ago, if you remember, that the cheap cuts of beef are as nutritious as the dearer cuts of beef, and the very last work, that cheese work, showed that new cheese knocked all my education along that line endwise, because I believed the old cheese was the more easily digested; but we found in both cases that the new cheese was just as easily digested as the old.

The CHAIRMAN. Did I understand you to say that that amount on line 14, page 71, was estimated for?

Secretary WILSON. Yes. We have $15,000 under the present law, and we estimated $20,000. They have made it $12,000, and we would... like to have $16,000.

DRAINAGE INVESTIGATIONS.

The CHAIRMAN. The next proposed amendment is on page 72, line 10, after the word "Washington," to insert "and elsewhere, rent outside of the District of Columbia."

Mr. ZAPPONE. That is simply a verbal change. It restores the language that went out on the floor through mistake.

The CHAIRMAN. That is the same language that has appeared before?

Mr. ZAPPONE. It has always appeared, and if it does not go back it will prevent the employment of labor outside of the city of Washington or the renting of any buildings for their work in the field.

Secretary WILSON. Yes; and we do drainage in New England and the far West as we do in the extreme South. You can not get laborers

to go there from Washington profitably.

Senator CHAMBERLAIN. That probably ought to go back.

Senator WARREN. This provides that if you want a room or two for your headquarters outside of Washington you can rent it; otherwise you would be confined to Washington, perhaps?

Secretary WILSON. Yes.

OFFICE OF PUBLIC ROADS.

The CHAIRMAN. The next proposed amendment is, on page 74, to insert between lines 6 and 7 the following:

For conducting field experiments and various methods of road construction and maintenance, and investigations concerning various road materials and preparations; for investigating and developing equipment intended for the preparation and application of bituminous and other binders; for the purchase of materials and equipment; for the employment of assistants and labor; for the erection of buildings; such experimental work to be confined as nearly as possible to one point during the fiscal year, twenty thousand dollars.

Senator WARREN. You consider that necessary in addition to what you have been having in the way of road building, both as to language and as to funds, do you?

Mr. ZAPPONE. We estimated for $30,000. The House committee passed it for $20,000, but it went out on a point of order on the House floor.

Senator WARREN. I was alluding to the top of the page where it says "for investigations of the best methods of road making and the best kinds of road-making material, and for furnishing expert service on road building and maintenance, seventy-five thousand dollars." Then there is this:

For investigations of the chemical and physical character of road materials, twentyfive thousand dollars.

Then there is this:

For general administrative expenses connected with the above-mentioned lines of investigations and experiments, ten thousand one hundred dollars.

Now you come in and want $20,000 more?

Secretary WILSON. Those paragraphs that you have been reading apply to the whole United States, helping work along these roadmaking lines.

Senator WARREN. Was none of it available for use in Washington. Secretary WILSON. Oh, it could be; but we have been conducting experimentation along road building where in one piece of road we use the different materials available. There are quite a number of them different binders, etc. We built a piece of road of that kind up here in the Chevy Chase neighborhood. You can see it by riding up there. That is what this is for-to study the relative merits of the different types of road construction.

Senator WARREN. Is this for some particular place?

Secretary WILSON. I do not think there is any place selected, but merely to conduct that kind of investigations.

Senator WARREN. And the result of your investigations leaves a road ready-made, as far as you go?

Secretary WILSON. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. There is a road already constructed?

Secretary WILSON. There is a piece of road constructed out there in just that very way.

Senator GUGGENHEIM. And you want to continue it?

Senator WARREN. You would not consider it competent with this money to go out and add another mile or two if you did demonstrate what you want; in other words, you do not propose to go into roadmaking for the sake of having roads that you want to utilize for a built road and for its use, whatever you may do in the way of using different materials, as I understand it?

Secretary WILSON. That is it.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, just below, between lines 13 and 14, you have a 10 per cent item-not to exceed 10 per cent. It is proposed to add at the end of line 13 the following:

And not to exceed ten per centum of the foregoing amounts for the miscellaneous expenses of the work of any bureau, division, or office herein provided for shall be available interchangeably for expenditures on the objects included within the general expenses of such bureau, division, or office; but no more than ten per centum shall be added to any one item of appropriation except in cases of extraordinary emergency, and then only upon the written order of the Secretary of Agriculture.

Secretary WILSON. That went out on a point of order. It had been in the law for several years-"and not to exceed 10 per cent of the foregoing amounts for the miscellaneous expenses of the work of any bureau, division, or office herein provided for shall be available interchangeably." That leaves it in the power of the Secretary, where one line of work is running short in the same bureau, to take 10 per cent of the moneys that can be used inside that bureau for that general purpose and use them interchangeably. In the Forestry Service, for example, if a fire comes on and money runs scarce we go to any appropriation in the Forestry Service and take 10 per cent and use it for putting out that fire.

The CHAIRMAN. Does that mean an increase in the appropriation? Secretary WILSON. Oh, no; it is just to divert from one use to another within the same line of work. There is no increase.

MISCELLANEOUS.

The CHAIRMAN. There is a proposed amendment on page 75, line 13. It increases the appropriation for fighting forest fires in cases of extraordinary emergency to $500,000.

Senator WARREN. Did that go out in the House or in Committee of the Whole?

The CHAIRMAN. In Committee of the Whole.

Senator GUGGENHEIM. They cut it down $300,000.

Senator CHAMBERLAIN. How much was it last year?

Secretary WILSON. A million.

Senator CHAMBERLAIN. Ought it not to be that much this year? Secretary WILSON. We thought so.

Senator WARREN. They seem to feel that in an emergency they would go on and do it anyway and it would be fixed up in a deficiency. I conclude that was their idea from the debate.

Secretary WILSON. I think so.

Senator WARREN. And the way they expressed it was that they did not want to tie up a million dollars when the country would all

stand by the Secretary and probably he would go on and quench the fires, etc.

Secretary WILSON. I would break the law and go and take the first money I could get hold of and fight the fire, and take my chances on impeachment.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you regard the $500,000 as sufficient?

Secretary WILSON. Last year we did not use any of it. The year before we used more than a million dollars.

Senator WARREN. When was it that we gave you that big deficiency-the year before, was it not?

Secretary WILSON. Yes, sir; we put in the bills for it, and you put in a million dollars for emergencies, and we did not use it last year. Now, here is a matter coming in here

Senator CHAMBERLAIN. Before you pass from that, Mr. Secretary, do you not think that you ought to have a million dollars available, and if you do not use it-if you act as you did last year and only use $20,000 or $25,000-the Government is not out anything?

Secretary WILSON. That was in our estimates, but the House did not look at it that way.

The CHAIRMAN. The amount that was spent for fires in 1910 was over $900,000.

Secretary WILSON. That is right.

Senator CHAMBERLAIN. Have you any idea as to how much property you saved by the expenditure of the $500,000?

Secretary WILSON. That would be guesswork. We saved enormously. We stopped fires from going where they would have gone, and you would have been paying for the lives of people who were burned to death.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Secretary, I would like, if you feel disposed, to have you give us your judgment with regard to that amount. Secretary WILSON. I will give it to you. I am having estimates made and will send to you later.

The statement submitted is as follows:

FOREST FIRES IN 1910.

There were over 5,000 fires on the national forests in 1910. The majority of the fires were extinguished with little loss, but about 15 per cent developed into great conflagrations with extensive loss. The greatest damage occurred in the fires of northern Idaho and north western Montana. The total area burned over during 1910 in all the national forests was about 3,000,000 acres. About six and one-half billion feet of merchantable timber were destroyed, having a value of something over $14,000,000. This does not include the damage to young timber and reproduction and to forage. In dealing with the situation in 1910, 78 fire fighters in the employment of the Government were killed. The total expenditures for fighting fires was over $1,050,000. If heroic measures had not been taken and this money expended the total damage to timber owned by the Government would certainly have equaled $100,000,000, and probably a great deal more. The saving of private property is incalculable.

Senator WARREN. You appropriated it for spoiled clothing of the soldiers.

Senator CHAMBERLAIN. We could not compensate for the human life that would be lost.

Secretary WILSON. No; but you can do something to compensate the poor family that loses its breadwinner.

The CHAIRMAN. We started in with one of these slips containing a proposed amendment. Perhaps you had better go into that, with regard to railroad fares.