that were to be abandoned indicate that this is a camp which should have been retained. Regarding the first reason given, this was not an old camp which had completed its work, but, on the contrary, it was a new camp which had just been installed.

It was then, as you said, a highly eroded area, and it had camp contracts which had either been entered into, or were pending, for the treatment of 27,000 acres of land. It was in an area where tremendous interest had been excited on the part of the local farm population, and for all those reasons and others which I could cite, if necessary, it appears to me that somebody made a tremendous blunder in abandoning this camp on which work had been done at the cost of many thousands of dollars. I simply want to find out, if I can, what reasons actuated the officials who are responsible for the abandonment of this newly installed work at such a tremendous loss to the Government under those circumstances.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. Lindley, may I ask you to give any additional details in regard to this that you may have?

Mr. LINDLEY. It is a very unfortunate condition, and one which is not at all peculiar to the Casville camp. The C. C. C. camp was set up on a program of taking care of 600,000 men, and it was specified that these men had to be taken off relief. The Department of Labor, as I understand, took the stand that they could not possibly ever reach 600,000 men if the relief feature was kept in it.

The President then ordered that the camps be reduced to take care of 500,000 men and then reduced down to 300,000. Under this definite order, camps that have been built not only at Cassville, Ga., but at hundreds of other locations, not only under the Soil Conservation Service but under the Forest Service and in the State parks, have been closed down. It is an unfortunate thing, but it has been found necessary.

Mr. TARVER. But this camp at Cassville had been equipped. Mr. LINDLEY. Some of them have been and some have not. Mr. TARVER. Since hundreds have not been occupied, why should not those which have not been occupied have been dropped first? Mr. LINDLEY. That is a fact, that those that were not occupied were definitely out of the picture.

Mr. TARVER. Why should not the rule as stated by Mr. Bennett for the abandonment of camps, to the effect that those camps which were oldest in point of service and had more nearly completed their work were to be abandoned first-why should not that rule have been applied?

Mr. LINDLEY. That matter was not mandatory. It was left up to the best judgment of the services which had the camps, but, other things being equal, those camps would be taken out first. For instance, there were two camps in Missouri and one in Iowa where we had more than one camp close to a project. Although the work was not completed, it would cause less disruption and less discontentment in that area where we had agreements signed with the farmers, because we could continue to use labor by relief work from the project. In Georgia we only had one camp.

Mr. TARVER. Did you have an engineer by the name of Hardisty down there in connection with this service at Athens, Ga.? Mr. LINDLEY. Yes, there is one there by that name.

Mr. TARVER. He is the man who attended to this limestone purchase, is he not?

Mr. LINDLEY. I understand he was handling local purchases.

Mr. TARVER. What did he have to do with this recommendation about abandonment of that camp?

Mr. LINDLEY. He had nothing to do with it.

Mr. TARVER. Are you sure about that?

Mr. LINDLEY. Mr. Rast gave us a list of them. We asked Mr. Rast what camps he could get along best without, and he named the Cassville camp and one other camp. I asked him if he wanted to relocate the Cassville camp, and he said, yes, there was lots of erosion there, but he did not have many contracts signed with the people for that work.

MI. TARVER. Do you know what Mr. Hardisty had to do with influencing the definite decision of Mr. Rast in that respect?

Mr. LINDLEY. No, I do not know.

Mr. TARVER. Then why did you answer so promptly a moment ago that he had nothing to do with the recommendation of Mr. Rast on the abandonment of this camp?

Mr. LINDLEY. I said he had made no recommendation, but dealt with Mr. Rast.

Mr. TARVER. I have this information in regard to this matter from a man whose name I will not disclose, because it would not be of any benefit to him, and it might do him some injury, but it is information upon which I feel justified in relying. That information is that your man Hardisty became incensed because of local complaints concerning the handling of purchase of these supplies, and, by way of revenge, on account of his antagonism toward the local people. because they had complained of his utterly unjustifiable conduct in that particular, he brought about the abandonment of the camp as a matter of revenge.

Mr. LINDLEY. When he learned that you were so interested in retaining that camp, I put it up to Mr. Fechner and he said he had So many camps that were going out

Mr. TARVER. The trouble about that, Mr. Lindley, is that Mr. Fechner said that he abandoned it solely on the recommendation of the Soil Conservation Service. He told me before it was abandoned, and I so informed you, that if you would change the recommendation he would leave the camp in.

Mr. LINDLEY. He said he would not spend any more money to keep that camp in.

Mr. TARVER. You mean you made a recommendation that the camp be kept?

Mr. LINDLEY. I asked Mr. Fechner if he would pay the $2,600, the minimum expenditure, and he said he did not feel justified in putting any more money in there, when there were other locations where he could establish camps without spending any money.

Mr. TARVER. It is a very unfortunate thing for Emergency Conservation Work if Mr. Fechner's statements to you and to me are so directly at variance. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1936.

NUMBER EMPLOYED AS OF JANUARY 1, 1936

Mr. CANNON. The committee will resume its hearing on the soilconservation estimates. Have you anything to add, Mr. Bennett, to your discussion of yesterday?

Mr. BENNETT. Yes, sir. On January 1 of this year we had approximately 140,000 people at work, almost as many men as there are in the United States Army. That threw upon us a very difficult job. I suspect we made some mistake from time to time. But when we discover that we have made a mistake, we try, with the greatest possible speed, to correct it.

Now, with respect to my general statement, if you will permit, Dr. Lowdermilk might discuss our investigational work, and I might say before he starts that I feel it is absolutely necessary to explore every scientific field that offers any opportunity to develop useful methods in erosion-control work. Any results accruing we shall undertake to get actively into the picture as quickly and as successfully as possible.

INFORMATION ABOUT EROSION MEAGER

We do not know as much as we should know about erosion. The subject has not been taught in any school or college. It has been exceedingly difficult to find specialists who know very much about this job.

Mr. CANNON. To what extent do the agricultural colleges, especially the land-grant colleges, emphasize this subject?

Mr. BENNETT. They are just beginning to do that. They began to put in courses last fall, a few of them, and they are having a difficult time in getting material. There is no book on the subject; there is no bulletin or publication of any kind that discusses the subject in any comprehensive way. We should have started on this job 50 or 75 years ago. We have studied almost every conceivable phase of agriculture relating to the land except this one.

Mr. CANNON. How long has the Department of Agriculture been issuing bulletins on erosion and advising farmers how to control erosion?

Mr. BENNETT. They have been publishing very helpful bulletins for about 20 years, dealing mainly with one phase of the subject. It has been much the same way with the State colleges of agriculture.

These publications have related to terracing, pretty largely. Terracing began to be practiced somewhere in the South-no one knows exactly where probably about 75 or 100 years ago. I think it began in Georgia.

An enormous area has been terraced in the southern Piedmont, in my own State of North Carolina, and from there on south. A great deal of that work did some good at the beginning. On the other hand, a great deal of it, in the long run, perhaps did more harm than good.

Mr. CANNON. That is a rather surprising statement. In what way did it do more harm than good?

DIFFERENT TYPES OF TERRACES

Mr. BENNETT. In this way: It was not known how to build them properly, how to adjust the grades and terrace intervals to the slopes of different soils. We made the mistake, in those early efforts, of trying to cultivate a vast area that was entirely too steep. Much land was cleared and terraced that should have been left in trees. The terraces did some good for a while, and then went to piecesmany of them.

We have in one Southern State approximately 2,000,000 acres of land that have been terraced, but frequently incorrectly terraced. which have been essentially destroyed, according to our surveys.

We have in California, in the citrus district, a type of terrace that was developed pretty largely through the instrumentality of our man in charge of erosion work in California, Mr, Harry Reddick. That is one of the most successful types of terrace we have employed in the United States.

It is entirely different from the general type used in this country. It is an approximation of the European or the Andean type of terrace, and is used very extensively out there now on steep slopes where they use irrigation in their orchards. It is employed rather extensively for citrus fruits-high-priced crops-where they pump the water far up slopes to irrigate the land.

The principle involved is to set the trees on the sloping face between the flat top of the terrace and the shelf of the next bench below. They plow out a benchlike platform. Below that is a sloping face, conforming approximately with the original slope of the hillside. The citrus trees are planted along the center of that face, and then the slope is seeded to grass, Australian salt bush, or other dense crops that will hold that land.

EROSION CONTROL IN CALIFORNIA CITRUS REGIONS

They have their organizations citrus associations-which watch the moisture content of the soil of the citrus orchards. Thus, the association tells the operator when to irrigate and how much water to apply per acre. They are constantly measuring the content of moisture in the orchards, and at a certain stage they inform the grower that he should irrigate, even advising as to the amount of water to apply.

They do a lot of other things for the farmer. They pick his fruit, take it to the packing house, and dispose of it. The farmer has to do the actual planting, cultivating, and irrigating, and he places the boxes for the fruit.

That type of culture represents almost complete control of erosion, and erosion is very severe in that country, on those steep slopes. We have found the highest rate of erosion in that general region, perhaps, that has ever been measured in the world.

In 1934 they had a tremendous rain, of the kind which they called a cloudburst. We measured the results of that rain on 18 farms and found that the acreage losses ran up to 500 tons. That much soil loss meant the devastation of much of the unprotected land. Some of the trees were actually washed out in some of the steeper orchards which had no protection. On unprotected areas devoted to beans there was terrific gulleying and sheet washing.

EROSION PROBLEM WORLD-WIDE

Erosion probably began with the first rain that fell on the earth and will always continue. But with the proper use of grasses and trees on the steeper slopes we can control it to such an extent that the soil will build up from beneath about as rapidly as it goes off from the surface.

Under those conditions where the soil is stabilized by vegetation at the geologic norm of erosion, we are not concerned with the process. It is with the accelerated erosion going on over cultivated areas that we are concerned. Here our first effort is to get more of the steep land, of the C and D slopes, into those crops that provide adequate protection. We are concerned with the enormous soil loss that follows the removal of nature's stabilizers, and the further exposure of the soil to the wrath of the elements by cultivation, which disrupts enormously the structure of the soil. With an undisturbed cover of vegetation erosion is stabilized to the point where the building-up process from beneath replenishes the losses from the surface.

In some of the European countries, through the long periods of their existence, erosion has been well controlled by good land-use practice. Had it not been for that, many areas would have been completely eliminated-the soils would have been completely washed out-as in parts of Spain. In most of France and Germany they have controlled erosion.

Mr. CANNON. Is that not true also in Palestine and Spain? Mr. BENNETT. They are pretty well gone; too many areas, at any rate. There is some land left there, of course.

Mr. CANNON. Are steps being taken in those countries to meet the situation?

Mr. BENNETT. Not yet. Spain has been very slow in that direction. France has stepped out to the front. Italy has waited so long that it may be too late. She is down in Africa now looking for more land, or so the Italians say. She has an enormous reclamation and conservation program under way, but for much land it appears to be too late to save it.

In England they have no serious problem of erosion, except in some parts of Scotland, because of the light character of the rainfall.

In parts of this country, particularly on some of the soils of the Northwestern Pacific States-in the area west of the Cascades— there is very little erosion, because the rain in that section for the most part, is of light or misty character. These light rains saturate the soil but do not seriously erode it.

Mr. CANNON. What about Germany?

Mr. BENNETT. Germany for many generations has been practicing a type of agriculture that has conserved their soils. I have not been in Germany, but I have talked with people who have been there recently. They have been practicing this soil-conserving type of agriculture so long that the people understand that they must protect their land. They have laws relating to the problem, and they respect those laws. They look upon the land as a national resource which must be protected. They handle their forests in the same

manner.