(Witnesses: Hill, Zappone.)

Meaning the fiscal year 1907—

There being, therefore, no surplus available, and the appropriation for the current fiscal year 1907 being no larger than formerly, the number available for each Congressman will this year be greatly reduced. I have therefore felt obliged to include provision for an increase in the number of these bulletins in my estimate for the ensuing year 1908. The number of copies of Farmers' Bulletins distributed during the past year on Congressional orders aggregated 5,279,476.

This will explain the necessity for the increase mentioned by Mr. Hill.

Mr. SAMUEL. Do you recognize requests not indorsed by Congressmen or Senators?

Mr. HILL. Oh, yes.

Mr. SAMUEL. Åre they charged to the Congressman's quota?

Mr. HILL. No, sir; we charge nothing to a Congressman's quota that is not ordered over his own signature. That goes out of the 20 per cent reserve for the Department. We get a great many demands from our own people. They are very handy things to use in correspondence. For instance, the Pomologist gets a letter inquiring about something in regard to apples, or something of that sort. Instead of writing a letter of four or five pages of typewritten matter, he writes a brief letter and sends a copy of the Farmers' Bulletin, marking the page. It being published at a cost of a fraction over a cent and a half, it is a great deal better to do that than to spend time writing a long letter. We use a great many in that way.

Mr. SAMUEL. How does the percentage of the requests from outsiders compare with those made by Congressmen and Senators?

Mr. HILL. Of our 20 per cent, 15, or three-fourth, will be distributed in accordance with miscellaneous demands, and the Members of Congress, as I say, are asking for their entire 80 per cent now. They have a very great many ways of distributing them. I can not say how many are in response to direct demands, but some of the Members have a very carefully worked out system for distribution without waiting for applications, while others, I think, simply send them out as asked for, while others send them out through granges and various institutions.

Mr. ZAPPONE. There are also quite a number of publications sold to the public through the Superintendent of Public Documents, and I would suggest that Mr. Hill explain that.

Mr. HILL. Departmental publications are the only ones that I have spoken of, those provided for by statutory law, and those, such as Farmers' Bulletins, issued by the Department as a whole.

Mr. FLOOD. Before you get through you might suggest any changes you think of which ought to be made with respect to the publications you have referred to.

Mr. HILL. An increase in the number of Yearbooks and an increase in the number of Farmers' Bulletins are the only things that I would recommend at present.

Mr. FLOOD. And a decrease in what?

Mr. HILL. We have actually made a decrease in the bound volumes of the report of the Bureau of Soils and Field Operations.

Mr. SAMUEL. You also recommend a decrease in the report of the Weather Bureau!

(Witness: Hill.)

Mr. HILL. Professor Moore interjected a recommendation for a decrease from 4,000 to 2,000 in the report of the Weather Bureau. I wanted to say in regard to the general accumulation, and in speaking of the Department publications generally, that is, the Bureau publications, as we call them, which are issued in each bureau, as its own series-bulletins and circulars generally-that they are of a less popular character than the Farmers' Bulletins. They are reports on their investigations, and are issued in comparatively small editions. It is, of course, necessary, when these men make investigations, that they shall report the results, and those results have to be reported in a more or less technical manner in order to satisfy the people engaged in the same line of work, mostly scientific men who are interested in the departmental work and want to know what methods are pursued in arriving at certain conclusions in order to test their value. So it is necessary now with respect to those publications to be a little more technical than with the Farmers' Bulletins or the Yearbook. Consequently, while they are not all technical, the technical publications are all issued as bulletins of the several departments. The technical reports appear in the bureau series. Now, when I first came here, we used to issue those in very large editions, and I found a tremendous accumulation of undistributed publications. It was a natural thing that a man who had conducted an investigation during two or three years, which to him seemed to be of great importance, and by which he had arrived at results which seemed to him extremely valuable, would anticipate a tremendous demand for them, and before my office was established each bureau made out its own requisitions, and I think they were initialed or something by the chief clerk, who had but little time to look into the matter. The result was that they would ask for an edition of fifteen or twenty thousand where three to five thousand would have been sufficient.

We have changed all of that; we began to change it at once, and by keeping the plates on hand, if the demand grows beyond their anticipations, then an edition is issued to satisfy them. Take a bulletin of 60, 70, or 80 pages. The requisition is received at my office, itself accompanied by a scheme of distribution in which the chief of the bureau asking for the publication indicates just what he wants to do with it, and how many it will take for such purpose. The edition generally runs from three to five or six thousand, and when the edition is exhausted if the demand continues, and it is a demand which it seems proper to be met, it is a very easy thing, as the plates are in existence, to order a reprint, which will be ready in a few weeks, and in that way we avoid a great accumulation. But in spite of everything we can do we carry a tremendous lot of publications on hand, because we issue so many. I simply want to assure the committee that we do all we can to avoid an accumulation of publications for which there is no particular demand.

Mr. DAVIS. What ultimately becomes of this accumulation?

Mr. HILL. The law provides that we shall turn it over to the superintendent of documents, and I will say in the early days I made him some very handsome presents, for which he did not seem to be very grateful.

Mr. DAVIS. What does he do with them?

(Witness: Hill.)

Mr. HILL. I don't know, but he carries them on both shoulders, and pays a pretty good rent for storage.

Mr. DAVIS. The Government provides storage.

Mr. HILL. I think there should be some arrangement by which a departmental committee should be charged, in connection with the superintendent of documents and the Public Printer, with things like that, who should have the authority to destroy them or sell them for waste paper.

Mr. DAVIS. Or turn them over to some one who would like to have them.

Mr. HILL. They do that now. The superintendent of documents tells me that he has sent circulars to libraries with lists of what he has, offering these publications in the most seductive terms, and free of expense, if they will only indicate their willingness to receive

them.

Mr. DAVIS. It might decrease the deficiency in the postal service if they were not sent.

Mr. HILL. But anything is better than paying rent for their storage if they are worth nothing.

Mr. FLOOD. They seem to be stored by the Public Printer.

Mr. HILL. Yes. By adopting the methods I have described we have reduced our accumulations of actual departmental publications very much indeed.

Mr. DAVIS. Then you think, Mr. Hill, that a committee to investigate what should be done with these surplus publications would be advisable?

Mr. HILL. I think it would be a very good idea, because naturally a man, if he has a certain number of publications which have become obsolete or useless, would hesitate to destroy them without some kind of formal authority, and would not like to be caught in the act of selling them for waste paper or burning them.

Mr. SAMUEL. Is it not a fact that they are doing that now?

Mr. HILL. I don't know.

Mr. FLOOD. They only do that at the Printing Office.

Mr. HILL. I do not know what the law says about that.

Mr. SAMUEL. Are you through with departmental publications? Mr. HILL. There is one thing that I wanted to call attention to, and that is the sale of publications. That is something that I have been hammering at a good many years, and it is only in recent years that the superintendent of documents since 1895-has been able to dispose of documents by sale. In issuing each particular publication, which we do for the information of the public, we divide them between those that are distributed gratuitously, like the Farmers' Bulletins and Circulars of Information and those to which prices are affixed, and we put in a note upon those to which prices are affixed that they are for sale by the superintendent of documents. It has not progressed very rapidly, but still satisfactorily, I think. It is only a few years ago that we thought he did a big thing when he sold five or six thousand copies of our publications. Last year he informed me that he sold 47,744 of the total publications of the Department out of a total of something over 75,000, showing that more than half of the publications sold were publications of this Department. At the same time our publications are of a very much cheaper

(Witness: Hill.)

grade than those sold by other Departments, because our 47,000 copies yielded only $5,388, while the others amounted to 28,000 copies and vielded $11,000.

Mr. DAVIS. Do you sell those at a price that compensates the Government for printing?

Mr. HILL. It does that at least, and I think it does more. I do not think we ought to ask more. I think the price they should be sold at should be the actual cost of producing the extra copies. For instance, I regard it as the part of the proper duty of the Government to publish its reports with a certain number of copies to satisfy certain demands, and then I think extra copies ought to be sold at as much as it costs per thousand to print them. I do not think we ought to try to make a profit out of the publication of them, although, perhaps, 10 per cent might be added for the handling of the matter by the superintendent of documents. They still sell some Yearbooks, and they have sold them as low as 65 cents apiece. I think now they are holding them at $1.

Mr. FLOOD. How do they get them to sell?

Mr. HILL. I do not know. The superintendent of documents quotes them, and I suppose that in the division of the total edition between Congressmen there are leftovers. I only know that he does quote them, and his report shows that he has sold a few copies.

Mr. FLOOD. What becomes of the proceeds?

Mr. HILL. The proceeds go to the Treasury; but we have an amendment to the law introduced a year or two ago enabling the superintendent of documents to utilize sums received from publications in reprinting other particular publications with the consent of the Secretary, and he is printing quite a number. I think it is stated here that he reprinted 43 publications during the year, paid for out of the funds received for other publications.

Mr. FLOOD. Do you see how the superintendent of documents can have any Yearbooks for sale?

Mr. HILL. The only way I could suggest is that I presume in the distribution there are some that are left over. That is the only way I can think of. I infer that he got a few copies each year left over in the hands of the Public Printer.

Mr. DAVIS. Is not a certain percentage of all documents left in the hands of the Department itself for distribution as occasion may require?

Mr. HILL. Oh, yes.

Mr. DAVIS. Isn't it possible, then, that some of those documents that the superintendent now has are the accumulation or surplus of documents not disposed of by the Department?

Mr. HILL. I can not conceive of his getting any Yearbooks from us, because we never have enough. But if there is by chance any surplus of other publications we are privileged to turn them over to him.

Mr. DAVIS. I can not imagine how he can get them to sell, because I could distribute a great many more than I have.

Mr. HILL. I fancy it must be as I have suggested, that in a division which gives so many to each Member of Congress there are a few hundred copies left over, and if there are less than enough to give one extra copy to each Member I presume they would remain in the

(Witnesses: Hill, Ashion.)

hands of the Public Printer. But still I do not fancy that he sells over 50 or 60 copies a year.

Mr. SAMUEL. Will you now explain with respect to any of the other publications that you have referred to?

Mr. HILL. I have said all that I think will interest the members of the committee in regard to that.

I wanted to call attention to the fact that there was another class of publication that is handled in such a way as to prevent accumulation. Our aim is to publish just enough to satisfy the demands that the chief sees he must have for immediate use and leave a few hundred copies over for miscellaneous demand, and then reprint as occasion may require.

Mr. SAMUEL. I suppose that will be all, so far as Mr. Hill is concerned, and we will reserve the examination of Mr. Hill in reference to the expense of his office until later.

JANUARY 12, 1907.

(Part of testimony given on above date before Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Agriculture.)

STATEMENT OF MR. H. F. ASHION, ASSISTANT INSPECTOR AND FOREMAN OF BINDING, GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.

(The witness was duly sworn by the chairman.)

The CHAIRMAN. You are the foreman of binding?

Mr. ASHION. I am the assistant inspector, and acting foreman of binding at present.

The CHAIRMAN. How long have you held that place?

Mr. ASHION. About six months.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you practical knowledge of the work of the department so that you can state to the committee the cost of the various characters of bindings-for instance, sheep, cloth, and buckram?

Mr. ASHION. Yes, sir. If I had known what the committee wanted I should have brought some samples. The price varies according to the style of binding.

The CHAIRMAN. That would go into details that we would not care about. I would like to have you state, if you can take the average public document that may be bound in sheep or cloth or buckram, and state, if you can, the cost of each binding. What we want is to get the difference between the two or three bindings.

Mr. ASHION. It all depends on the number of pages contained in the volume, the style of binding, and the workmanship.

The CHAIRMAN. This volume that I have here contains about 700 pages, and that would cost to bind from 70 cents to $1.50?

Mr. ASHION. Well, a 700-page book, bound in sheep, would cost 75 cents.

The CHAIRMAN. In sheep?

Mr. ASHION. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. The cost varying largely with the lettering?

Mr. ASHION. With the lettering and the special work.

The CHAIRMAN. What would it cost to bind such a volume in good cloth? Your statement is that it would cost from 70 cents to $1.50 for the sheep binding.