EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. 35. Septembee, 1916. No. 4. 



As the years go by, the annual acts making appropriations for 

 the support of the Federal Department of Agriculture are coming 

 to be recognized more and more as of ^4de public interest. They 

 serve to epitomize the development and progress of the Department 

 and to emphasize its intimate relations with the daily life of the 

 whole American people. They constitute the medium in which pro- 

 vision is made from time to time for new and enlarged activities, 

 as in the development of demonstration work and the prosecution 

 of marketing studies. Quite frequently they embody important 

 pieces of legislation, as in the meat-inspection amendment of 1906, 

 the Nelson amendment of 1907 increasing the appropriations to the 

 agricultural colleges, and the virus-serum-toxin and the migratory- 

 bird provisions of the act of 1913. 



The latest of these acts, covering the fiscal year ending June 30, 

 1917, is fully as important and interesting in these respects as any of 

 its predecessors. It considerably extends and enlarges the functions 

 and activities of the Department and establishes a new high-water 

 mark in the appropriations for its maintenance. Among other pro- 

 visions it materially increases the funds available for marketing 

 studies, the eradication of the cattle tick in the South, the combating 

 of rabies in the Rocky Mountain States, and the farmers' cooperative 

 demonstration work outside the cotton belt, as well as for most of 

 the regulatory services of the Department. It inaugurates a market 

 news service and includes, as a new item, studies and demonstrations 

 of methods for obtaining potash on a commercial scale. It provides 

 for the expenditure of $3,000,000 for additional purchases of lands 

 in the White Mountains and the southern Appalachian system for 

 development as National Forests. It repeals the United States 

 Cotton-Futures Act of 1914 and substitutes a modification of that 

 measure, and it embodies, among other new legislation, provisions 

 to be known as the United States Grain-Standards Act and the 

 United States Warehouse Act. 



The new law was introduced into the House of Representatives 

 March 4, following hearings extending over a period of nearly six 

 weeks. As usual, many of its provisions received detailed considera- 



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