(Witness: Halvorsen.)

The CHAIRMAN. Every little while we get an installment of books, bound up, that we never have heard from before. I suppose that is the result of an effort on the part of somebody to get rid of this congestion, is it not-to bind the material and get it out?

Mr. HALVORSEN. No; we only handle the books that come to us for Members' credit. That is all.

The CHAIRMAN. Everything that you have in the folding room either is now or has been subject to the order of some Congressman? Mr. HALVORSEN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. The rule is, I suppose, where a Congressman goes out and another Congressman comes in from the same district, to put on to his quota whatever has not been exhausted by the previous Congressman?

Mr. HALVORSEN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. So that theoretically, at least, every Member of the House ought to have at his disposal his proportion that has not been exhausted of this vast accumulation?

Mr. HALVORSEN. The documents are considered to belong to his respective district, and are at his disposal.

The CHAIRMAN. The Member representing the district for the time being?

Mr. HALVORSEN. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. I think that covers everything I wish to ask. Mr. SAMUEL. Have you an accumulation of yearbooks and horse books?

Mr. HALVORSEN. Yes; we have an accumulation of both, though we are getting rid of the old yearbooks very well, and could get rid of more if we only had the authority to dispose of them or could be delegated the authority to dispose of them. Some Members want yearbooks, and some Members are in want of horse books, and have none to credit. The only way we can help him is to say frankly that, "If you will apply to some of the older Members, they may possibly help you." We do not intend to impose upon the Members by giving the names of Members having some to credit. We simply say. Apply to some of the older Members, and see if you can get them from them."

Mr. SAMUEL. There is no way, then, in which a Member can get an old document, except in that way?

Mr. HALVORSEN. No, sir.

Mr. SAMUEL. Unless it happens to be in his quota?

Mr. HALVORSEN. No. We do not give information in our department directly, as to whom of the Members have these books, without Members' consent.

Mr. SAMUEL. You say that long ago they were credited to the district?

Mr. HALVORSEN. Yes, sir; they were credited to the district.

Mr. SAMUEL. If there were any documents that were not distributed by any of the Member's predecessors, he could have those books to his credit, could he?

Mr. HALVORSEN. The present Member has the books to his credit. The account is transferred from one Congress to another, in a new set of books; and at the head of each account, followed by the dis

23848-07- 4

(Witnesses: Halvorsen, Zappone, Hill.)

trict, is the name of the Member representing that district; so whatever has been left by his predecessor is at his disposal.

Mr. SAMUEL. Does that only apply to the immediate predecessor, or to previous ones?

Mr. HALVORSEN. To any present Member to whom they may be handed down.

Mr. SAMUEL. How does a Member ascertain what is to his credit? By going to the folding room?

Mr. HALVORSEN. You may have a statement every sixty days showing all the credits upon request.

Mr. SAMUEL. That statement as sent from the folding room covers all credits in the folding room?

Mr. HALVORSEN. It covers all credits at the time.

Mr. ZAPPONE. Mr. Chairman, before closing the record on the subject of the printing of public documents pertaining to the Department of Agriculture, I would like to suggest that you send for the Chief of the Division of Publications of the Department of Agriculture. He has had probably twenty years' experience, and I think he can answer many of the questions that you have asked that have not been answered satisfactorily.

The CHAIRMAN. That is a first-rate suggestion. We will be very glad to do that.

Mr. ZAPPONE. And he can also give you the cost of these various publications, and their value to the public.

(It was ordered that the gentleman referred to, Mr. George Wm. Hill, Chief of the Division of Publications, should be sent for.)

COMMITTEE ON EXPENDITURES IN THE
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE,
Monday, January 7, 1907.

Committee called to order at 10 o'clock a. m.

Present: Hon. Charles E. Littlefield (chairman); Hon. Charles R. Davis, Hon. Edmund W. Samuel, Hon. Henry B. Flood, Hon. Ezekiel S. Candler, jr., and Hon. Robert C. Davey.

STATEMENT OF MR. GEORGE W. HILL, DEPARTMENT EDITOR AND CHIEF OF THE DIVISION OF PUBLICATIONS, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE.

(Mr. Hill was sworn by the chairman.)

The CHAIRMAN. What is your position, Mr. Hill?

Mr. HILL. I am the Department editor and chief of the division of publications.

The CHAIRMAN. What are the principal documents that are issued by the Department under your supervision?

Mr. HILL. The principal documents are, first, those that are printed by law which may be required either by statute or Congressional resolution. In the first case, the annual report of the Department, which consists of two parts, and printed under a law which was approved January 12, 1895. One part is the business report and is printed in an edition of 6,000. The other part is what we call the Yearbook. The law provides that the Yearbook shall be complete in itself, and

(Witnesses: Hill, Zappone.)

it has hitherto been published in an edition of 500.000, there being special provision made for $300.000 for the expense. That is probably the most important publication from the point of view of size and cost that we issue. Then there are seven or eight publications, among which may be mentioned the annual report of the Bureau of Animal Industry, the annual report of the Weather Bureau, the annual report of the Field Operations of the Bureau of Soils, the annual report of the Office of Experiment Stations, and some of these that are provided for statutorily.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you print a uniform number?

Mr. HILL. The Yearbook hitherto has been printed in an edition of 500,000, but the Committee on Printing had an amendment made to the law last year so that this year it may be printed in different editions.

The CHAIRMAN. That is, the successive editions as may be called for?

Mr. HILL. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. What was the occasion of that?

Mr. HILL. To prevent the immense accumulation. It was found that a great many Yearbooks, of which each Member has about a thousand copies to his credit, in round numbers, were left undistributed, and I believe a year after the Yearbook was issued they found as many as 150,000 or 160,000 copies in the folding rooms of the Senate and House.

The CHAIRMAN. Are we to understand that heretofore, under an edition of 500,000, that there has been substantially a surplus of 150,000 to 160,000 each year, approximately?

Mr. HILL. I mean that probably twelve months afterwards there would be that many undistributed and twelve months later there would be some more of them undistributed. It meant that there was for immediate demand a large surplus. In other words, something like 350,000 volumes were probably adequate to the immediate demand.

Mr. FLOOD. What are the publications that you issue, if you will kindly repeat that again?

Mr. HILL. We issue the annual report of the sugar-beet industry in addition to those that I have mentioned, but without looking it up I can not always determine those that are provided for in the statute and those that are provided for by resolution.

Mr. SAMUEL. Have you charge of the issue of the farmers' bulle

tins?

Mr. HILL. I have charge of all publications of the Department. Mr. ZAPPONE. The report made by the appointment clerk to Congress-is not that an annual report?

Mr. HILL. The publication of that is not provided for statutorily. Mr. ZAPPONE. You are differentiating between what is paid for by the Department and what is paid for by Congress?

Mr. HILL. Exactly. There is a certain distinction. Under the present law everything is paid for by our Department. I was referring to the year 1906. The law expressly provides that the Secretary's report shall be a report of the business transacted in the several bureaus.

(Witness: Hill.)

Mr. SAMUEL. Suppose we take up each report, the Secretary's report first.

Mr. HILL. Very well. The first report is that of the Secretary himself, which is published as part 1 of the annual report of the Department. It is a document by itself, of which the statute provides for 5,000 copies. We reprint that in different forms because it is not nearly enough for us. We reprint that in an edition of 50,000 copies as a special report of the Secretary's office.

Mr. FLOOD. What is done with the report?

Mr. HILL. It goes mainly and very largely to the crop correspondents-about 40,000 to the crop correspondents of the Bureau of Statistics.

Mr. FLOOD. What disposition do you make of the 5,000 copiesthe first edition?

Mr. HILL. First of all they go to colleges and stations, and a certain number go to representatives of the Weather Bureau and representatives of the Bureau of Animal Industry and several other large bureaus. The special county correspondents get them-that is, about 2,800-and it takes about 2.000 to satisfy the others. It is gone as soon as it is issued.

Mr. FLOOD. Under existing law you do not think enough copies of the Secretary's report are printed?

Mr. HILL. We have hard work to supply the demand for the Secretary's report. It is reprinted in the Yearbook under a provision of law which says that the Yearbook of the Department shall contain a succinct account of the operations of the Department for the year, and the most succinct account of the general operations of the Department that we can find is the Secretary's annual report, and it is printed in the Yearbook.

Mr. SAMUEL. Then it is printed twice?

Mr. HILL. It is printed three times. So far as the total number of Yearbooks at our disposal is concerned, that 500,000 copies that were provided by law-somewhat reduced by this recent law permitting them to be published in successive editions-of that number we only get 30,000, no more than we got eighteen or nineten years ago, when I first came in. We do not get enough, and we sometimes have to send round a begging letter to the different Members of Congress and Senators asking them, if they are not going to use them, if they will let us have some of their yearly quota for our use.

Mr. SAMUEL. About how many do you estimate will be required? Mr. HILL. Fifty thousand will be needed for the Department use. We employ a very large number of persons in gratuitous work. Professor Moore has more than 3,000-about 4,000-voluntary observers. These men render a great deal of useful service during the year, and they can not understand when they write to us for a Yearbook why it is we say to them that they should apply to their Member of Congress. It is the same way with the crop correspondents of the Bureau of Statistics, who have also a number of men who render a good deal of very tangible service by active cooperation with the Department. Really there is not a bureau that has not several hundred, and there are several thousand required in the Bureau of Statistics. Their active correspondents for special service get information for the Department, sometimes requiring them to get a

(Witnesses: Hill, Zappone.)

buggy and drive around for half a day, and perhaps they will take with them one of our own men and spend a couple of days with him working on a special line of inquiry. We feel that the least we can do for that man is to send him one of the Yearbooks of the Department, which is our biggest and best book, but we do not have enough to satisfy that class of people.

Mr. SAMUEL. The annual report of the Secretary is a statutory report?

Mr. HILL. Yes, sir.

Mr. SAMUEL. By publishing that in the Yearbook do you think it is necessary to publish it separately too?

Mr. HILL. Well, yes; you see we don't send them to the same people. The people who get the Yearbook do not get the annual report. We send the annual report to a large number of people who never see the Yearbook at all. The Bureau of Statistics really has on its list over 250,000 correspondents, and we do not begin to satisfy anywhere near all of them.

Mr. ZAPPONE. May I make a remark here? Mr. Hill, is not the type kept set up of the Secretary's annual report so that it can be included in the Yearbook, and therefore there is really no additional cost for that part of the work?

Mr. HILL. Yes, sir.

Mr. SAMUEL. Of course, it being a statutory provision we have nothing to say in regard to the matter; but it occurred to me that if they were going to print it in the Yearbook we could send the Yearbook to those getting the report, and they would have a much more valuable book.

Mr. ZAPPONE. Is not the annual report a requirement of law; does it not have to be submitted to the President, and in the same form in which the various reports of the other Cabinet officials are submitted?

Mr. HILL. We report directly to the President, and it forms usually part of the President's message and of the Messages and Papers.

Mr. ZAPPONE. It is a very small volume, you will notice. I have a copy in my hand.

Mr. SAMUEL. How many copies of the first annual report of the Secretary are issued?

Mr. HILL. Five thousand statutorily-the same as of all Cabinet officers.

Mr. SAMUEL. I notice by this printed list that there were 4.854. Mr. FLOOD. How do you get the other edition of 50,000?

Mr. HILL. We publish that as a special report of the Secretary's office.

Mr. FLOOD. Who is that distributed to?

Mr. HILL. To the crop correspondents entirely and to other people who do not get the Yearbook, as a rule.

Mr. SAMUEL. How many crop correspondents do you have?
Mr. HILL. Over 250,000, I think.

Mr. SAMUEL. Are they supposed to receive a copy of that report? Mr. HILL. They are supposed to receive copies of our publications. I can not say of that report, because we haven't enough of them to give them each a copy; but we try to pay them for their services by accommodating them with publications.