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National Resources Committee 



of officers and men and purchases of regular supplies, 

 materials, etc., are from centralized appropriations, 

 irrespective of the duties or functions of the officers, 

 men, and materials. The Army and Navy budget offi- 

 cers state that no allocation should be attempted of 

 such expenses used for research purposes, since the 

 same number of officers and men and the same amount 

 of supplies and equipment would be maintained ii-re- 

 spective of whether research was carried on or not, and 

 personnel detailed to a research or field-testing job are 

 given such assigiunents not so much to carry on re- 

 searcli as to become acquainted with devices that they 

 may have to use later. 



Buildings. — The cost of maintaining Government- 

 owned buildings and the rent of privately owned build- 

 ings for govenmiental use, is an expense borne by the 

 National Park Service for which two consolidated ap- 

 propriations are received, applicable, respectively, to 

 public buildings and grounds in the District of Colum- 

 bia and outside the District of Columbia. No attempt 

 has been made in this study to allocate any part of 

 these expenditures to research activities, although some 

 part of the total might legitimately be charged to 

 housing research activities. 



Overhead of Bureaus, Departments, and 

 the Government as a Whole 



The amount of overhead expenditures of the bureau 

 or office that should be allocated to research was re- 

 quested for each agency. If no better method of allo- 

 cation was suggested, a simple division of the cost of 

 administrative and internal-service units was made by 

 using the ratio that research expenditures were to the 

 total budget exclusive of such overhead items. Over- 

 head items, to be included unless otherwise specifically 

 provided for, were general administration, legal coun- 

 sel, accounting, personnel, chief clerk, printing, trans- 

 portation, sui^plies and materials, travel, and clerical 

 help not specifically assigned to the research units. In 

 some cases where a distinct research unit in the organi- 

 zation is supposed to centralize the research work of the 

 organization completely, it was difficult or impossible 

 to obtain a figure representing outside general admin- 

 istrative expenses, especially after printing and travel 

 had been accounted for. 



In addition to the overhead of the separate bureaus, 

 some overhead expenses of the departments in which 

 the bureaus were located might have been included. 

 Wliere research work was carried on within adminis- 

 trative officers' own organizations, these organizations 

 were called an agency and the amount of research was 

 included, with any appropriate intra-agency overhead, 



as a separate unit in the general data. Otherwise, the 

 general rule was followed that no allocation of overhead 

 expenditui-es to research would be made from funds 

 expended outside of the agency itself, excepting where 

 definite amounts of a departmental appropriation for 

 printing, travel, etc., were specifically allocated by the 

 department for the work of a constituent bureau. The 

 rule that estimates of general administrative and other 

 overhead expenditures for research should stop at the 

 borders of the agency itself has made some inconsis- 

 tency in the data for different departments, but on the 

 whole seems more defensible than any other procedure. 

 The effect of the method by departments may be sum- 

 marized as follows: Amounts for departmental over- 

 head allocable to research were probably included ade- 

 quately under separately listed administrative units in 

 case of the Departments of State, Treasury, Agricul- 

 ture, and Labor. Data for overhead allocable to re- 

 search were omitted {a) for the War and Navy Depart- 

 ments for reasons analogous to those stated in the para- 

 graph on Omissions, above; and {h) for the Depart- 

 ment of Justice where the usual type of investigation 

 for preparation of legal briefs were excluded from re- 

 search by definition. Any addition of prorated over- 

 head to the small amounts reported for research by the 

 Post Office Department would not increase these amounts 

 appreciably. In the Departments of the Interior and 

 Commerce the general administrative expenses might be 

 estimated on the basis of the research expenditures 

 reported from the constituent bureaus to be in the 

 neighborhood of $100,000 which might be added to the 

 total for research if one wishes to take account of this 

 indirect expense. It is omitted in the tables used in the 

 body of the report because of the rule stated above. 



To have a complete allocation of indirect overhead 

 expenditures for research, it might be considered nec- 

 essary to add to the allocation of such expenses within 

 the bureaus and departments a further amount repre- 

 senting allocated general overhead expenditures of the 

 Government as a whole. For example, expenditures 

 of the Civil Service Commission would be considered 

 an overhead expense for the personnel of the Govern- 

 ment, the General Accounting Office an overhead ex- 

 pense for accounting, the finance work of the Treasury 

 Department would be an overhead cost of financing ac- 

 tivities, and the Department of Justice would be charged 

 to the cost of dealing with legal difficulties. Even 

 the Congress would be an overhead expense chargeable 

 to legislative consideration and authorization of plans, 

 and the Federal courts Mould constitute a cost for de- 

 ciding matters affecting the various functions of the 

 executive agencies. From this point of view, most of 

 the rest of the Government would be an overhead ex- 



