EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. XXIIL July, 191D. No. 1. 



In submitting for the consideration of tlie House of Representatives 

 the bill making appropriations foi- the Federal Department of Agri- 

 culture for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1911. Hon. Charles F. Scott, 

 chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, characterized the 

 measure as " unique in the fact that it is almost identical with the 

 estimates submitted by the Secretary; and the estimates are unique in 

 the respect that they are substantially a copy of the existing law. 

 There is no new legislation of importance. There is no change of 

 language which alters in any Avay the scope or character of the work 

 the Department is doing: and in only three of the bureaus are there 

 changes in the sums appropriated sufficient in amount to call for 

 special comment.'' 



During the progress of the bill through Congress it received the 

 usual extended consideration and a number of amendments were 

 adopted, but in general the Act as finally signed by the President on 

 ]\[ay 26 remains substantially as described above. There is, however, 

 a net increase of $492,000, or nearly four per cent, over the appropria- 

 tions carried by the measure for the fiscal year 1910. 



Although this increase is somewhat less than that accorded during 

 recent years, it may perhaps be interpreted as no less significant of the 

 continued interest of the people of the country in the work of the 

 Department, and of their realization of the importance of the unin- 

 terrupted continuation of its various lines of work, AVith a view to 

 the avoidance of a deficit in the Treasury during the ensuing year, 

 the estimates of all the departments were, as expressed by President 

 Taft in his annual message to Congress, " cut to the quick," aggre- 

 gating as a whole over one hundred million dollars less than the 

 appropriations for the previous year. That none of this reduction 

 took place in the Department of Agriculture indicates the general 

 acceptance of the view expressed by Chairman Scott that the Depart- 

 ment " bears a relation to the chief industry of our people so direct 

 and vital that to withdraw from any field which it now occupies for 

 so long a time as a year would inflict a money loss upon our people 

 immeasurably greater in the aggregate than the small sum which the 

 most rigid economist would argue should be deducted from this bill." 



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