Forest-tree diseases and forest-insect attacks may at any time assume epidemic proportions, as may animal pests also, and thereby create a serious public emergency calling for an amount of research far beyond anything contemplated in the authorizations of sections 3, 4, and 5. The chestnut blight is an illustration in the cast of forest trees and the cotton-boll weevil and the corn borer in the case of agricultural crops. The department believes that the bill should be so framed that essential research activities will not be restricted in such an emergency. This could be accomplished by the addition of the following proviso, which together with the sections to which it relates refers solely to research and not to control measures, the proviso to follow immediately after that recommended in the preceding paragraph:

"Provided further, That during any fiscal year the amounts specified in sections 3, 4, and 5 of this act making provision for investigations of forest tree and wood diseases, forest insects, and forest wild life, respectively, may be exceeded to provide adequate funds for special research required to meet any serious public emergency relating to epidemics."

The department understands that the intent of this bill is to supplement and round out existing legislative authority and that it is not intended to limit or repeal any existing legislation or authority, except as specifically provided. As a precautionary measure, however, it is recommended that a proviso having this effect be added immediately after that recommended in the preceding paragraph:

"And provided further, That the provisions of this act shall be construed as supplementing all other acts relating to the Department of Agriculture, and except as specifically provided, shall not limit or repeal any existing legislation or authority."

The only other modifications which the department has to suggest in the bill result from a consolidation of the forest-insect item, and the part of the gypsy and browntail moth item used in research which has been recommended by the department, approved by the Budget, and is now before Congress in the appropriation bill for the fiscal year 1929. To make H. R. 6091 conform, line 2 of section 4 should be modified to read as follows:

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'Entomology of forest insects, including gypsy and browntail moths, injurious or beneficial to forest.”

The authorization in line 8 of section 4 should be changed from $250,000 to $350,000. Since the transfer of research funds from the gypsy-moth item is $95,000 there is little change in the amount of the authorization over present appropriations.

In general the bill seems to meet the perfectly legitimate question frequently raised in the Appropriation Committees and by the Bureau of the Budget as to the program of the department for forest research, a question which in the interest of progress should have an authoritative answer in the form of a legislative enactment. I personally welcome the opportunity to give the indorsement of the department to a measure which provides in a comprehensive, far-sighted way for such an important phase of our research as that dealing with forestry. For the reasons outlined above it is the opinion of the department that the bill should receive favorable consideration.

Memoranda from the Forest Service, Bureau of Plant Industry, Bureau of Entomology, Biological Survey, and Weather Bureau, which contain a more detailed justification of H. R. 6091, are inclosed. Memoranda from the Forest Service are also inclosed which justify in more detail H. R. 8564, H. R. 8826, and H. R. 8561, each of which covers an important phase of the broader field provided for in H. R. 6091. Since H. R. 6091 without modifications clearly covers the entire field the department does not at this time favor independent action on H. R. 8564, 8826, and 8561, meritorious though these bills are in themselves, and recommends only the favorable consideration of H. R. 6091.

Very truly yours,

W. M. JARDINE, Secretary.

A similar report on S. 1183, which is identical in its form with H. R. 6091, submitted to the Bureau of the Budget and returned to the Department of Agriculture under date of March 2 with the advice that the legislation proposed would not be in conflict with the financial program of the President if it were amended in accordance with the suggestions contained in the department's report, provided no additional appropriations are required for the fiscal year 1929.

FOREST SERVICE

FEBRUARY 1, 1928.

Memorandum for the Secretary:

With reference to Mr. Haugen's request of January 19 for a report on Mr. McSweeney's bill, H. R. 6091:

Mr. McSweeney's bill does two things primarily :

(1) It codifies and rounds out the authority to do forest research given in the regular annual appropriation bills for the various bureaus of the department, including the Forest Service, the Bureau of Plant Industry, the Bureau of Entomology, the Biological Survey, and the Weather Bureau.

(2) It sets up a financial program in the form of maximum authorizations. The bill ranks along with other acts such as the Clarke-McNary law, the Weeks law, etc., as one in the series of legislative acts of first importance which are gradually outlining a Federal forestry policy.

Congress has made appropriations for forest research for so many years that lengthy justification seems hardly necessary at this late date. In part, however, the justification is much the same as that for forestry itself. No one now questions the fact that we must grow our own timber supplies, and that long years of heavy use without provision for replacement has made our problem exceedingly urgent. It is commonly accepted that we must husband existing as well as future timber supplies by wise use and prevention of unnecessary waste. The Mississippi flood merely accentuates the commonly accepted belief that under some conditions we must preserve a forest cover to regulate stream flow and to prevent erosion. There is a growing recognition of the possibility of obtaining range for livestock grazing in some of our forests, that forests are the natural home of abundant game and wild life, and that they offer exceptional opportunities for recreation.

The ordered use of lands for these varied products is an entirely new field of American endeavor and requires a vast amount of new technical knowledge. The fundamental purpose of Mr. McSweeney's bill is to insure the acquisition of this knowledge. It could be obtained in part over a long period of time with excessive losses and delay through large-scale mistakes by the timehonored method of trial and error, but the cheapest, quickest, and most efficient way is through research. Time and cost are compelling considerations in this national undertaking, because the denudation of our forest lands has already gone so far. In comparison with the trial and error method research is a short cut to authoritative information that we can not afford to neglect. It means bringing to the solution of a vast number of intricate and interrelated biological problems the best talent which the Federal Government can obtain in a planwise attack. In a large sense it is the key to the entire forestry movement. Heretofore the research items in the annual supply bill of the department have been dealt with in a fragmentary, piece-meal way, but the conviction has slowly been growing that the situation now requires a comprehensive program such as that represented by H. R. 6091 in the House and S. 1183 in the Senate. The bill is based upon a thorough study of our national requirements for forest research by a special committee of the Society of American Foresters, the professional organization of foresters in the United States.

Many agencies, including the Federal Government, should contribute to forest research. Some of the reasons why the Federal Government should make a substantial contribution are:

(1) Federal ownership and administration, chiefly in the national forests, of one-fifth of the forest lands of the country. The Federal forests should be demonstration forests par excellence, and the officials responsible for their administration must have the benefit of authoritative scientific information. (2) The national or regional character of many of our forest problems, such as the regulation of stream flow, the control of forest diseases and insect epidemics which in many cases are international in character, the manufacture, distribution, and consumption of lumber, pulp, and paper, and other forest products, and the waste incidental to these processes. Federal leadership is particularly necessary in such national investigations as forest taxation and a forest survey. Practically all of our important forest types extend over several States, and accordingly call for research on regional problems.

(3) The ownership by farmers of nearly one-third of our forest land, with the same reason for Federal aid through research as in agriculture.

(4) The well-recognized Federal obligation to stimulate the development of forestry as a national enterprise and the fact that through research lies one of the cheapest, most effective, and most far-reaching methods.

The special committee on the Society of American Foresters, which made the survey on which this bill is based, attempted to formulate the national needs and the part which the Federal Government might logically be expected to contribute for a decade ahead. Most sections of the bill involve, therefore, the conception of a fairly regular annual increase in appropriations. Aside from section 9 and a part of section 8, which will be referred to later, the following tabulation shows by sections the annual increase for which an authorization is proposed, and the total of slightly more than $213,653 for the department, which includes $164,320 for the Forest Service, $15,150 for the Bureau of Plant Industry, $17,543 for the Bureau of Entomology, $14,000 for the Biological Survey, and $2,640 for the Weather Bureau.

Section 9 contains an authorization for a forest survey and limits the total cost of the undertaking to $3,000,000 and the total annual appropriation to $250,000. Since the most efficient conduct of a survey would require appropriations reaching the maximum in two or three years and held until the survey was completed, the section does not lend itself to the same classification as the other sections. The provision in section 8 for tests of foreign woods is also an exception because a fairly large part of the entitre authorization of $50,000 would be necessary in order to undertake the work provided for.

That the authorizations carried by the bill are necessary to meet the rapidly growing national requirements for information is shown by a consideration of the basic place of forest research in such things as

(1) The maximum productivity for timber-growing and related purposes of at least one-fourth of our entire land area.

(2) Supplies of wood and other forest products ample to meet American requirements, which are now nearly half of the world's requirements.

(3) Reduction of waste in the manufacture and utilization of wood which is now responsible for about two-thirds of the annual cut from our forests and for which we have the scientific foundation only in small part.

(4) A satisfactory silvicultural and protective technique for the richest and most complex Temperate Zone forests in the world, for which we now have only a relatively small start toward a scientific basis.

(5) A scientific basis for making forest lands more effective for watershed protection and for insuring satisfactory production and use of the forage, wildlife, recreational, and other resources consistent with such watershed protection and timber production.

(6) A foundation in economic facts for forest and land policies, including the correlation of use for timber growing, livestock grazing, game production, streamflow regulation, and recreation.

(7) Rapidly increasing annual expenditures on forestry in the United States by all agencies already total probably about $20,000,000, every dollar of which should be made to count to the utmost. Only a scientific foundation can make this certain.

(8) The permanence of the forest industries, which as a group rank about fourth among American industries and which have a capitalization of about $3,600,000,000 exclusive of forest lands and stumpage worth at least $10,000,000,000 more. Such permanence depends absolutely upon a continuous supply of wood.

Additional considerations, which show the authorizations to be very conservative, are:

(9) Expenditures by the Federal Government and the States for agricultural research, which are almost universally regarded as inadequate, now total from eighteen to twenty million dollars; and the work is concentrated largely upon about 500,000,000 acres of improved agricultural land, an area but little larger than the area of forest lands. Furthermore, an important group of agricultural organizations have during the past year been advocating an increase of $6,000,000 in a single year in the departmental appropriations for agricultural research. Total annual departmental expenditures of $3,625,000, including the $100,000 modification in the forest-insect item recommended by the department for forest research, by the end of a decade are not, therefore, excessive.

(10) A single corporate group, the American Telephone & Telegraph Co., is already expending $10,000,000 a year in research; and this is nearly three times the authorization proposed for forest research at the end of a decade. The General Electric Co. is expending $3,000,000; the Du Pont Co., $1,000,000; General Motors Co., $1,000,000; and the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., $1,000,000. In July, 1924, the expenditures for industrial research in the United States were estimated at $75,000,000. The National Bank of Commerce in New York in December, 1926, estimated these expenditures at one hundred to two hundred million dollars a year; and the national industrial conference board has recently announced the results of a compilation showing that about $200,000,000 a year is now being spent in the United States for industrial research by industrial corporations and by the Federal Government.

The existing functions as to forest research of the various bureaus of the department which are concerned in this bill-the Forest Service, the Bureau of Plant Industry, the Bureau of Entomology, the Biological Survey, and the weather Bureau-are not changed. The enlarged organization will very largely be built around existing institutions. For example, the Forest Products Laboratory, where we now concentrate the great bulk of our forest-products research, would continue under H. R. 6091 to be the chief center of our forest-products research. This would be true not only of the work of the Forest Service under section 8 but also of that of the Bureaus of Plant Industry and Entomology under sections 3 and 4, respectively. It will also be true of the regional forest experiment stations, as will be explained in greater detail in the discussion of section 2.

The following discussion deals separately with each section of the bill: Section 2 provides for the silvicultural, fire, and other investigations needed to furnish the scientific foundation for reforestation, the protection of forests against fire, and in brief for the growing of timber crops.

In the United States proper this research is to be concentrated at a series of 12 regional forest experiment stations specified in the bill, the boundaries of whose regions are shown on the attached map. Nine of the eleven have been established under specific acts of Congress or have been the direct result of bills pending in Congress. The station authorized for the intermountain region is new. Provision is also made in the discretion of the Secretary of Agriculture for the establishment of one station in Alaska and one in the possessions of the United States in the West Indies. The Bureaus of Plant Industry, Entomology, and the Biological Survey have adopted in principle the plan of concentrating at these stations as much as practicable of their work under sect ons 3, 4, and 5 in order to insure correlation of attack in related problems. The exceptional wealth of our forests in valuable timber species, the great variations in our topography, climate, and soils add to the complexity of the problems which must be solved before we can intelligently grow the timber crops which we need. We can adopt something from European knowledge, but in the last analysis we face the development of an American silviculture adapted to American tree species and American conditions. Unfortunately, we 93858-28 -8