CONGRESS. (THE PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.) 



169 



investigations and procuring agricultural statistics. 

 From this small beginning the seed division of the 

 Department of Agriculture has grown to its present 

 unwieldy and unjustifiably extravagant proportions. 

 During the last fiscal year the cost of seeds purchased 

 was $66,54:8.91. The remainder of an appropriation 

 of $135,000 was expended in putting them up and 

 distributing them. It surely never could have entered 

 the minds of those who first sanctioned appropria- 

 tions of public money for the purchase of new and 

 improved varieties of seeds for gratuitous distribution 

 that from this would grow large appropriations for 

 the purchase and distribution by members of Congress 

 of ordinary seeds, bulbs, and cuttings which are 

 common in all the States and Territories, and every- 

 where obtainable at low prices. 



In each State and Territory an agricultural-experi- 

 ment station has been established. These stations, 

 by their very character and name, are the proper 

 agencies to experiment and test new varieties ; and 

 vet this indiscriminate 'and wasteful distribution by 

 legislation and legislators continues, answering no 

 purpose unless it be to remind constituents that their 

 representatives are willing to remember them with 

 gratuities at public cost. Under the sanction of exist- 

 ing legislation there was sent out from the Agricul- 

 tural Department during the last fiscal year enough 

 of cabbage seed to plant 19,200 acres of land, a suf- 

 ficient quantity of beans to plant 4,000 acres, beet 

 seed enough to plant 2,500 acres, sweet corn enough 

 to plant 7,800 acres, sufficient cucumber seed to cover 

 2,025 acres with vines, and enough muskmelon and 

 watermelon seeds to plant 2,675 acres. The total 

 quantity of flower and vegetable seeds thus distrib- 

 uted was contained in more than 9,000,000 packages, 

 and they were sufficient, if planted, to cover 89,596 

 acres of land. 



In view of these facts this enormous expenditure 

 without legitimate returns of benefit ougnt to be 

 abolished. Anticipating a consummation so mani- 

 IV. tly in the interests of good administration, more 

 than $100,000 has been stricken from the estimate 

 made to cover this object for the year ending June 

 30, 1895; and the Secretary recommends that the re- 

 maining $35,000 of the estimate be confined strictly 

 to the purchase of new and improved varieties of 

 seeds, and that these be distributed through experi- 

 ment stations. Thus the- seed will be tested, and 

 after the test has been completed by the experiment 

 station the propagation of the useful varieties and the 

 rejection of the valueless may safely be left to the 

 common sense of the people. 



The continued intelligent execution of the civil- 

 service law, and the increasing approval by the peo- 

 ple of its operation, are most gratifying. The recent 

 extension of its limitations and regulations to the 

 yees at free-delivery post offices, which has 



been honestly and promptly accomplished by the 

 commission with the hearty co-operation of the Post- 

 master-General, is an immensely important advance 

 in the usefulness of the system. 



I am, if possible, more than ever convinced of the 

 incalculable benefit conferred by the civil-service 

 law not only in its effect upon public service, but 

 also what is even more important in its effect upon 

 elevating the tone of political life generally. The 

 course of civil-service reform in this country 'instruc- 

 tively and interestingly illustrates how strong a hold 

 a movement gains upon our people which has under- 

 lying it a sentiment of justice and right, and which 

 at the same time promises better administration of 

 the Government. 



The law embodying this reform found its way to 

 our statute book more from fear of popular sentiment 

 existing in its favor than from any love of reform 

 itself on the part of legislators, and it has lived, 

 grown, and flourished in spite of open and covert 

 hostility of spoilsmen, and notwithstanding the 

 querulous impracticability of many self-constituted 

 guardians. Beneath all the vagaries and sublimated 

 theories which are attracted to "it there underlies this 



reform a sturdy common-sense principle not only 

 suited to this mundane sphere, but whose application 

 our people are more and more recognizing to be abso- 

 lutely essential to the most successful operation of 

 their Government, if not to its perpetuity. 



It seems to me to be entirely inconsistent with the 

 character of this reform, as well as with its best en- 

 forcement, to oblige the commission to rely for cler- 

 ical assistance upon clerks detailed from other depart- 

 ments. There ought not to be such a condition in 

 any department that clerks hired to do work there 

 can be spared to habitually work at another place; 

 and it does not accord with a sensible view of civil- 

 service reform that persons should be employed on 

 the theory that their labor is necessary in one de- 

 partment when in point of fact their services are de- 

 voted to entirely different work in another depart- 

 ment. I earnestly urge that the clerks necessary to 

 carry on the work of the commission be regularly 

 put upon its roster, and that the system of obliging 

 the commissioners to rely upon the services of clerks 

 to other departments be discontinued. This ought 

 not to increase the expense to the Government, while 

 it would certainly be more consistent, and add greatly 

 to the efficiency of the commission. 



Economy in public expenditure is a duty that can 

 not innocently be neglected by those intrusted with 

 the control of money drawn from the people for pub- 

 lic uses. It must be confessed that our apparentlv 

 endless resources, the familiarity of our people with 

 immense accumulations of wealth, the growing senti- 

 ment among them that the expenditure of "public 

 money should in some manner be to their immediate 

 and personal advantage, the indirect and almost 

 stealthy manner in which a large part of our taxes 

 are exacted, and a degenerated sense of official ac- 

 countability, have led to growing extravagance in 

 Government appropriations. 



At this time, when a depleted public treasury con- 

 fronts us, when many of our people are engaged in a 

 hard struggle for the necessaries of life, and when 

 enforced economy is pressing upon the great mass of 

 our countrymen, 1 desire to urge with all the earnest- 

 ness at my command that congressional legislation 

 be so limited by strict economy as to exhibit an ap- 

 preciation of the condition of the Treasury and a sym- 

 pathy with the_ straitened circumstances of our fellow- 

 citizens. The 'duty of importance is the intimate and 

 necessary relation to the task now in hand of provid- 

 ing revenue to meet Government expenditures and 

 yet reducing the people's burden of Federal taxation. 



After a hard struggle tariff reform is directly before 

 us. Nothing so important claims our attention, and 

 nothing so clearly presents itself as both an oppor- 

 tunity and a duty an opportunity to deserve the 

 gratitude of our fellow-citizens, and a duty imposed 

 upon us by our oft-repeated professions and by the 

 emphatic mandate of the people. After full discus- 

 sion our countrymen have spoken in favor of this 

 reform, and they have confided the work of its ac- 

 complishment to the hands of those who are solemnly 

 pledged to it. 



If there is anything in the theory of a representa- 

 tion in public place of the people and their desires, if 

 public officers are really the servants of the people, 

 and if political promises and professions have any 

 binding force, our failure to give the relief so long 

 awaited will be sheer recreancy. Nothing should 

 intervene to distract our attention or disturb our 

 effort until this reform is accomplished by wise and 

 careful legislation. While we should stanchly ad- 

 here to the principle that only the necessity of reve- 

 nue justifies the imposition of tariff duties and other 

 Federal taxation, and that they should be limited by 

 strict economy, we can not close our eyes to the fact 

 that conditions have grown up among us which in 

 iustice and fairness call for discriminating care in the 

 distribution of such duties and taxation as the emer- 

 gencies of our Government actually demand. Mani- 

 festly, if we are to aid the people directly through 

 tariff reform, one of its most obvious features should 



