FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



was right by the country and by the department and to inform 

 themselves as accurately as possible concerning what was going 

 on. Nevertheless, the task continued to be an onerous one for the 

 Bureau Chief, and he found himself in a distressing position 

 when he was not accurately informed upon every subject that 

 came up and not able to answer cleverly and satisfactorily every 

 question that was asked him, whether pertinent or not. I have 

 myself wriggled internally under such conditions, and, with a 

 sort of malicious joy, have watched other Bureau Chiefs wrig- 

 gling when I happened in toward the end of one hearing or 

 stayed on into the beginning of another. 



The general effect of these hearings, however, is very good. 

 Twelve or fifteen years ago, when I happened to be in the 

 Secretary of Agriculture's antechamber, ex-Congressman James 

 Wadsworth entered with a tall, smooth-faced young man. He 

 greeted me with his usual cordiality and introduced the young 

 man with great pride as his son, the newly elected Senator from 

 New York. The young Senator said that he knew me well by 

 reputation and remembered with the greatest interest that once 

 years ago, when he was on a vacation from Yale College and 

 had come down to visit his father, he went with him to one of 

 these meetings of the Committee on Agriculture. He said that 

 he listened to the statements by the Bureau Chiefs with the most 

 intense interest, and that he considered the general education he 

 gained in that way was rather better than anything he got at 

 Yale. 



One funny incident that happened while Mr. Wadsworth was 

 Chairman of the Committee was in the early part of the century, 

 when the first application was made to Congress for a consider- 

 able appropriation to fight the Cotton Boll Weevil. I had had 

 a large papier-mache model made of the weevil. It was about 

 two feet long, and I had it sent up to the Committee room in 



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