694 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Northern District of Ohio, but was reversed by two of the three 

 judges of the Circuit Court of Appeals for that circuit. The Govern- 

 ment's petition for a rehearing was denied and steps were taken to 

 remove the case to the Supreme Court of the United States for review. 

 Conspicuous success attended the department's efforts through the 

 courts to enforce payment to the Government of excess profits made 

 on the wool clip of 1918 by licensed wool dealers operating under the 

 regulations of the War Industries Board, the duty of collecting and 

 distributing these excess profits having been transferred to the 

 Department of Agriculture after the War Industries Board ceased to 

 operate. This work is more particularly referred to elsewhere in this 

 report. 



The long-mooted question of the right of an employee of the 

 department to bear arms in the discharge of his duties under penal 

 statutes committed to the department for enforcement, notwithstand- 

 ing State laws restricting the privilege of bearing arms to a limited 

 class of officers of the State, was presented during the year to the 

 United States District Court for the Northern District of West Vir- 

 ginia in the case of the arrest, trial, conviction, and sentence under 

 State law of one of the department's forest rangers. That court held 

 that the forest ranger had the right to bear arms in the discharge 

 of his duties, notwithstanding the State law, and the ranger was 

 released from the custody of the State authorities. 



I am pleased to report that there was no addition to the working 

 force of this office during the year. 



Much of the work of the office can not be presented statistically; 

 neither is it practicable to preserve a record of all of its work. Ad- 

 ministrative officials of the department were in daily consultation 

 with the lawyers in the office on legal questions arising in the admin- 

 istration of their several bureaus. Frequent conferences were 

 had with persons whose business is affected by the laws administered 

 by the department, and many letters were written in response to 

 letters of inquiry from correspondents who wished information on 

 a very wide range of legal subjects. The volume of the letters 

 prepared in the various bureaus for the Secretary's signature and 

 referred to the Solicitor for examination before presentation to the 

 Secretary was quite large. Drafting of new and revision of existing 

 regulations under the various regulatory laws administered by the 

 department assumed substantial proportions during the year. 



The following is a summary of the work of the office during the 

 year, so far as it is possible to present it statistically: 



Four hundred and fifty-nine formal written opinions were rendered 

 the administrative officials of the department. No record was pre- 

 served of the advice given these officials in daily informal consulta- 

 tions, nor of opinions expressed by brief pencil notations on papers 

 sent to the office for consideration. 



Pursuant to authority of section 4 of the food and drugs act and 

 section 4 of the insecticide act, 1,150 notices of judgments were 

 prepared for publication. In addition to the criminal prosecutions 

 below tabulated, 737 decrees of condemnation and forfeiture were 

 entered under the food and drugs act and 8 under the insecticide 

 act. 



There were reported to the Department of Justice 2,478 viola- 

 tions of statutes intrusted to the department for enforcement. 



