170 



PROBLEMS IN WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



in the executive agencies vested in it; and to designate and 

 fix the name and functions of any consolidated activity or 

 executive agency. 57 



The President's powers were limited by the provision that 

 such executive order should be transmitted to Congress and 

 that it would not be effective until after the expiration of 

 sixty calendar days from the date of such transmission un- 

 less Congress should sooner approve such orders. If either 

 branch of Congress within such sixty-day period passed a 

 resolution disapproving of such executive order it would 

 not be effective. 68 



Under authority of this act President Hoover in the last 

 days of his administration did send to Congress a series of 

 executive orders accompanied by a message of reorganiza- 

 tion. 59 The major features of the proposed change was the 

 setting up of a land utilization group in the Department of 

 Agriculture under an assistant secretary. The Forest Ser- 

 vice, the Biological Survey, the Bureau of Chemistry and 

 Soils, and the General Land Office transferred from the 

 Department of Interior would be in this group. 



Hearings were held on the message of President Hoover 

 by the House Committee on Expenditures in the Executive 

 Departments at which time considerable opposition devel- 

 oped, especially in regard to the transfer of the General 

 Land Office, led by organizations from the public land 

 states. Taking this opposition as an excuse, the House of 

 Representatives, controlled by a Democratic majority, passed 

 a resolution disapproving of all the executive orders, and 

 consequently none of them went into effect. 



Convinced at last that no important reorganization could 

 take place unless the President were given broader powers 

 than he had been by the act of 1932, and perhaps, it might 



47 Stat. L. 413- 68 47 Stat. L. 414. 



59 Congressional Record, 72nd Cong., 2nd Sess., pp. 227-48 (1933). 



