(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

(Witness: Post.)

Mr. POST. None whatever.

The CHAIRMAN. No calls are being made for it?

Mr. Posт. 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. Posт. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Anything within two or three years of the present time, I suppose?

Mr. PosT. 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. Posт. 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

(Witnesses: Post, Zappone, Moore.)

502 sets were bound in sheep, making a total expenditure for depository libraries of $282,952.30. In a good grade of cloth these same books could have been supplied at a saving of two-thirds of the expense, or $188,634.86. I believe this is a conservative estimate of the saving. Of course these figures do not include the cost of composition, as the estimates are figured in printing from stereotype plates.

The CHAIRMAN. About what would be the extra cost per copy of such a document as House Document No. 448 of the Fifty-ninth Congress, first session? That would include, of course, the presswork and the material, mainly, because, of course, the same composition does for the whole work.

Mr. POST. Yes. I am guessing now, of course.

The CHAIRMAN. Certainly.

Mr. POST. I should say 20 cents a copy. Perhaps that is too high. I may be thinking of the selling price rather than the cost price. I do not handle anything but the selling price--not the cost price. The CHAIRMAN. Suppose you look that up for us and advise us. Mr. POST. Yes; we can give you that exactly.

The CHAIRMAN. And put it on the basis of the page.

Mr. POST. I find 32 cents a fair estimate for each copy on a basis of 1,000 copies.

Mr. SAMUEL. And then just give the committee the difference in cost between the volume known as the "Expenditures of the Department of Agriculture for the Fiscal Year ending June 30, 1906," and House Document No. 448, Fifty-ninth Congress, first session.

Mr. ZAPPONE. The estimated price of the volume that you are now discussing was $2,500 rather high, to my mind. I think the actual cost will be very much less.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, Mr. Post will give us that.

Mr. ZAPPONE. And the cost of the other is just about twice that sum, or $5,000.

Mr. FLOOD. That was in accordance with the figures you had$4,700?

The CHAIRMAN. Yes; somewhere in that neighborhood; yes.

Mr. MOORE. That is the cost of the printing, not of the compiling, is it?

Mr. POST. Not the compiling. The estimated cost of the "Expenditures of the Department of Agriculture for 1906," on the basis of 500 copies, would be about $2,260; that of House Document 448, Fifty-ninth Congress, first session, on the same basis would be about twice that figure.

The CHAIRMAN. Has the fact that there have been on hand here for a number of years about 3,300,000 of public documents, being stored by the Government at its expense, been called to the attention of any of the committees, or any of the Departments?

Mr. POST. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. When, and to whose attention?

Mr. POST. The Committee on Printing have known of it for several years. Nothing could be done to dispose of it until it could be segregated and classified in some way, and that is now being done. The CHAIRMAN. When did they begin to segregate and classify? Mr. PosT. Just about a year ago.

(Witness: Post.)

The CHAIRMAN. And how long before that had the attention of any of the committees been called to that condition of congestion—if I may put it that way-of useless material?

Mr. POST. I could not say, as I have been in office only since February 8th of last year.

The CHAIRMAN. Oh, I see.

Mr. PosT. And it was at that time that the committee's attention was called to it. This, of course, represents only the accumulation of documents at the superintendent of documents' office. It has nothing to do with the vast accumulation in the folding rooms.

The CHAIRMAN. Will you furnish us with an estimate of what it is costing the Government for rental to store these useless 3,300,000 copies that are under the charge of the printing department?

Mr. Posт. Yes, sir. On the basis of $5,000 paid for rental of the L street warehouse, I should think the space we occupy would be worth at least $10,000 a year for storage purposes.

The CHAIRMAN. As I understand the fact, the Government is now losing the use of practically $30.000, the material value for old paper of this accumulation, and in addition to that is losing the rental of the property where it is stored? That represents the actual loss to the Government for continuing this accumulation?

Mr. Posт. Yes, sir.

Mr. SAMUEL. That room could be utilized for other purposes, could it not?

Mr. PosT. Yes; it is in the old Government Printing Office building.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, property is valuable here, and it could be rented for all kinds of things.

Mr. FLOOD. I understood Mr. Grayson to say that the surplus left over at the House document room and the Senate document room was sold for waste paper, and I understood you to say that it was sent back to the Printing Office.

Mr. POST. Well, yes; that is true. It is the folding room surplus that we get.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have any idea how much surplus there is now in the folding room, which will be in addition to the sum you have given us as now being stored by the Printing Office?

Mr. POST. I think the report of the Congressional Printing Investigation Commission gives the figures. I could not give them offhand. They made an estimate in tons. They could not count the books, but they estimated it in tons. At the time I took some men and went over there and measured for them the piles of books and gave an estimate of the number of tons of stuff on hand, and I think that is printed in their report.

Mr. SAMUEL. Do you get the accumulations from the folding room?

Mr. POST. Yes, sir.

Mr. SAMUEL. Do you get the Yearbooks?

Mr. POST. That is something that we never get. We never get anything that is of any value. The accumulation of horse books and Yearbooks in the folding rooms could be sold to great advantage if we could get hold of them.

The CHAIRMAN. The bulletins of the Department of Agriculture