Where corrective measures are required on private lands, the work is done by the prefectoral offices under the supervision of the central ministries. The costs are shared five-sixths by the national and prefectoral treasuries and onesixth by the landowner. Property owners are required to cooperate; refusal to do so may result in confiscation of the property involved.

Within the past 40 years, more than 33 million yen have been spent on erosion work carried out on the public lands. This amount has probably been exceeded by the expenditures made through the prefectures and by individuals on private lands. The costs for this type of work have been an important item in the budget of the Government. The expenditures are more than justified in safeguarding the valuable rice fields by regulating the flow of water down to the fields and thereby reducing the overwash of eroded materials, as silt and debris, which would damage the terraced rice paddies and interfere with the control of high stages of run-off water in the streams, thus to endanger adjoining agricultural land.

The great emphasis placed on the need for erosion control is indicated by the large amounts the Japanese Government has found it desirable to spend, even on relatively small areas. Expenditures of more than 10 times the value of eroding land are made where necessary in order to protect lower-lying valuable agricultural lands. Erosion control is considered a necessity by the Japanese people, regardless of its cost. To them land is considered the most precious and indispensable of all resources. Whatever the cost of controlling the evil the Japanese Government believes that it pays in the long run and constitutes a vital part in the national economy of the Empire.

EROSION CONTROL IN PERU

Long before the conquest of America the Peruvian Indians had developed methods of erosion control probably as effective as any yet developed by modern civilization. Vast outlays in labor were made by the Inca Empire in controlling erosion. The cost of this work, if translated from labor into present-day dollars, would be staggering. Even today, after 700 years, many of these ancient erosion-control works still maintain their effectiveness, and where maintained the land probably is as productive today as it ever was. Expenditure of European countries for soil conservation compared with their total agricultural budget

What the United States would spend for soil-conservation work if expenditures were proportionate to those of other countries

[Figures are given separately on basis of comparative populations, areas, and total agricultural budgets;

1 United States of America budget figures are taken from page A-39 1937 printed budget estimates and do not include emergency or A. A. A. expenditures.

EROSION-CONTROL METHODS IN BRITISH MALAY STATES AND IN SOUTH

AFRICA

Dr. LOWDERMILK. In the British Malay States, within the region of rubber plantations, I am informed it is the practice of the Government to have silt samples taken regularly from the rivers, and when it is found that the silt content rises above a certain point officials go up the drainage system to find where the erosion is coming from. When the eroding area is found, the owner of the_land is required to stop the excessive erosion. In South Africa, I am informed, when a gully starts, the Government notifies the landowner to stop the gully. If he does not do it at his own expense, the Government does it and charges the cost of the work against the land.

In the Union of South Africa, according to the understanding I have, the procedure is more like our own, in that the Government is encouraging erosion control on a very large scale. They are paying seven-eighths of the cost and will make a loan to cover the other one-eighth of the cost without charging interest where unemployed Europeans are used on the jobs, and they are paying or advancing 25 percent of the total cost where natives are used on the jobs.

Mr. CANNON. Do they maintain demonstration areas for erosion control?

Dr. BENNETT. I do not think they do in the Union of South Africa, but they do in some other countries of Africa. We have a

lot of bulletins that briefly describe their operations. It is nothing on the scale that we have. In Indian they are trying to do something, but they have great difficulty, especially in the regions where the erosion is due to overgrazing, in centers near the Himalayan Mountains. I was talking to an Englishman from there a few months ago, and he told of the difficulties they were having. I told him of the difficulties we were having in our work on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. The Indians down there, I told him, do not speak English generally. They have lived there by themselves pretty much and do not know the white man's ways. At first we had considerable difficulty with them, but we gradually overcame it and are now getting along very nicely.

I told the Englishman about that, and he said, "We have those difficulties in the countries where I am supposed to control erosion, but we have another one. They have a religion whereby a majority of the people will not eat the meat of cattle and will not permit cattle to be sold to be eaten by others. Therefore", he said "stock runs wild everywhere, overgrazing the country; and when I go to the officials of the English Government and ask them to do something to educate the people about this fallacy of theirs with respect to livestock, or the program will not get anywhere, they tell me", he said, "We cannot do that; you must find other ways of meeting the difficulty. We cannot change the religion of the country."

GENERAL ADMINISTRATIVE EXPENSES

Mr. CANNON. Under your item for "General administrative expenses" you are expending this year out of emergency funds $51,822, from P. W. A. and N. R. A. funds, and $562,178 from the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. That made $614,000. Next year you propose an appropriation of $501,250. This is a new activity. Who planned this set-up, Mr. Abbot?

Mr. ABBOT. It was in the Forest Service. There was an expansion of the work. It was originally a small program.

ORGANIZATION AND EXPANSION OF SOIL-CONSERVATION ACTIVITY

Mr. CANNON. You have 140,000 people engaged in it now. Mr. Bennett, will you give the history of the organization of this work?

Mr. BENNETT. When we first decided to go into this work, we had an allotment of $5,000,000. We had a meeting of bureau chiefs in the Department of Agriculture, a meeting of the Chief of the Bureau of Plant Industry, the Chief of the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, and the Chief of the Agricultural Engineering Bureau. There was a meeting of those three chiefs, and we discussed for several days the best methods of attacking this problem, or the best possible ways for making use of this money. We reached a tentative conclusion. We appointed subcommittees and selected the areas on which to work.

We really began work in 1930. It took quite a while to select representative areas. Our basic procedure has been directed by the results that had been obtained at those experiment stations, by our general knowledge of the land, and also Dr. Lowdermilk's knowledge of a

number of foreign countries. In other words, we tried to bring together all the information available from whatever source we could get it and apply it to the land in accordance with the needs of the land. With that coordinated idea of attack in mind, we proceeded to get together the best men we could find throughout the country. We first secured four men from the Department of Agriculture who had started the soil-erosion experiment stations, and then we took some men from the States, borrowing them from the colleges of agriculture. The organization grew in that way from s small beginning.

Mr. CANNON. This transfer was made in 1933 from the Department of the Interior to the Agricultural Department. Mr. Eisenhower, what change was made in the organization at the time it was taken over by the Department of Agriculture?

Mr. EISENHOWER. Three days after it was transferred to the Department of Agriculture, the Secretary transferred to what was then called the Soil Erosion Service the erosion-investigational work formerly handled by the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, the Bureau of Agricultural Engineering, and the Bureau of Plant Industry.

All such work was consolidated into one organization. A few days later, the Secretary, at Mr. Bennett's request, appointed an interBureau committee to help fit the Soil Conservation Service permanently into the Department of Agriculture. That committee was composed of Mr. MacDonald, Chief of the Bureau of Public Roads: Mr. Silcox, Chief of the Forest Service; Dr. McCall, Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Plant Industry, and myself. The committee had the assistance of a number of subcommittees; on each of the subcommittees was a representative of the Soil Conservation Service, who subsequently, or at that time, would have considerable responsibility in the phase of the work studied by the subcommittee. The purpose was not only to help the Soil Conservation Service adapt itself to the type of organization we have in the Department of Agriculture, but also to give each official an opportunity immediately to become familiar with the Department's organization, its available facilites. and so on. That work resulted in the preparation of a policy-controlling statement of considerable length which the Secretary approved on June 6, 1935.

In the meantime, the permanent Soil Conservation Act was passed and approved by the President on April 27, 1935, changing the name of the organization to the Soil Conservation Service, and making it a permanent part of the Department of Agriculture. I think it would take too much of the committee's time to go into the details of the report, but the essence of it is this: In the early stages of its development the Soil Conservation Service did not have an intimate relationship to the scientific organizations in the Department of Agriculture. The Department could furnish to the service a great deal of information that could be used in the erosion-control program. Our effort was to secure cooperation between the technical bureaus of the Department and the Soil Conservation Service, so as to avoid duplication of effort and to get the best possible results from the expenditure of the funds. For example, there was necessity of the Soil Conservation Service undertaking plant-breeding work. This work is done by the Bureau of Plant Industry, and all

results derived from such studies are now at the disposal of the Soil Conservation Service. Now, after the inter-Bureau committee completes its work, the Secretary, at Mr. Bennett's request, asked me to help in facilitating the inter-Bureau arrangements and procedures in the Department in order to get the arrangements into actual operation. Cooperative working agreements have been worked out with the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, the Bureau of Plant Industry, the Biological Survey, and so on.

I think there is one other thing that might interest the committee, and I am sure that Mr. Bennett would want to have one of his people discuss it in detail later: Not only do we want to take every advantage of all the resources in the Department, but, also, in the States. Traditionally, the bureaus of the Department have cooperated in all possible ways with State institutions. For example, information developed by the Bureau of Plant Industry or the Bureau of Agricultural Economics is more available to the Extension Service; the Extension Service in each State has this material, as well as supplementary material developed by the State institutions. The same arrangement is necessary in erosion-control work. There was therefore established in each State a State advisory committee, the nucleus of each being the State director of extension, the State director of experiment stations, and a Soil Conservation Service representative. In some States there are a few additional members. Mr. CANNON. Are those State or Federal officers?

Mr. EISENHOWER. Two are State officers and one is a Federal officer. The effort is to take advantage of all the research work done by the State experiment stations and also to take advantage of the educational channels of the State Extension Services.

Mr. UMSTEAD. The State advisory committees, in many instances, had been set up before the transfer of this Bureau to the Department of Agriculture, had they not?

Mr. EISENHOWER. In some States that was true. I do not know offhand in how many, but, in order to get a uniform set-up in all the States, the old advisory committees went out of existence and new uniform committees were set-up in all the States.

When the Soil Conservation Service was transferred to the Department of Agriculture, it had 42 demonstration projects in 32 States; by the end of the current fiscal year the work will have grown to 141 demonstrational projects. When the service came to the Department, it had but few C. C. C. projects; now there are 455. I believe that, when you consider the magnitude of the task, Mr. Bennett and his organization have done one of the most efficient jobs we have ever seen in the Department of Agriculture.

POSSIBILITY OF REDUCING SIZE OF ORGANIZATION

Mr. CANNON. Our last experience with the organization of a new activity was when we repealed prohibition, and found it necessary to organize the Alcohol Control Bureau. They came down from the Budget with an organization which we almost cut in two, and we found that they functioned very efficiently. I am wondering if it is not possible, in view of the fact that you are correlating your 47432-36- -55