426 AGRICULTURAL APPROPRLVTIOX BILL, 1924. 



of the department in the application of the recommended grades for 

 timothy and clover mixtures. 



Mr. Anderson. Will any charge be made for those inspections? 



Mr. Sherman. Yes, sir; a charge will he made for the inspections, 

 but how nearly it will come to making the work self-supporting, we 

 can not tell in advance. It will have to be tried out. We will have 

 to experiment with that as we go along, just as we did in the case of 

 fruits and vegetables. As you will remember, the fruit and vegetable 

 inspection work during the first year was a free service. In connec- 

 tion witli the fruit and vegetable work, during the fiscal year ended 

 June .30, 1919, 14,493 cars were inspected, and no charges were made 

 until October of that year. Then we began with a fee of .S2.50 per 

 car, and that fee was continued through the next year, or the year 

 ended June 30, 1920. During that year 25,488 cars were inspecte<l 

 at a fee of 82. .50 per car. Then the fee was raised to .S4, and the 

 interstate limitation was put on by Congress. Then the number of 

 inspections dropped to 23,877. Then in the fiscal year ended June 

 30, last, the inspections went up to 31,207, at a fee of S4 per car. 

 Therefore, as you will see, we have progressed from no income at 

 the beginning to a point wliere we have returned to the Treasury in 

 the last fiscal year $128,627 out of an appropriation of §17.5,000, 

 making the service about five-sevenths self-isupporting. We are 

 running at just about the same rate this year in our work in the cities. 

 That is a digression from the discussion of the hay work to a discus- 

 sion of the fruit and vegetable work. 



Now, the same policy is to obtain in the hay-inspection work that 

 has obtained in the fruit and vegetable inspection work — that is. to 

 start with fees that the people will pay and then work it up as nearly 

 to a self-supporting basis as possible. When we come to the (|uestion 

 of the inspection of fruit and vegetables, I would like to go into that 

 matter further, and see whether the committee has the idea that we 

 should raise the fee so as to make the work entirely self-supporting, 

 or until we reach the point where the decrease in business balances the 

 increase from higher fees, or whether we should aim to keep the work 

 )opular, even at the expense of a small part t)f the appropriation, 

 t is a f|uestion right now whether we should raise that fee to $5. 

 If the fee had been $5 last year, and if we had had the same number 

 of inspections, we would have been only $10,000 short of turning in 

 the full amount of the approj:)riation to the Treasury. 



Mr. Anderson. If I understood Mr. Tenny correctly, those hay 

 standards arc still in a somewhat experimental stage. 



Ml-. Shehman. They necessarily aie in an experimental .>^iagc until 

 they reach the stage of demonstration in actual practice. '1 he hay 

 associations of the country have generally accepteil and approved 

 this proposition, and wish to jMit their business upon the basis of the 

 recommended bay grades, so far as timothv and clover mixtures are 

 <'onceined. Most of the work lemains to be done with reference to 

 prairie hays and alfalfa, so that the hay-insjiection work contempUted 

 under this item will be conlined very largely to the Kastern cities. 

 'Ihe men actually in (raining n«iw are expiH-ted to work in lioston. 

 New York, Philadelphia, an<l Richmond, \'a., with one operating 

 here in Wasliin<;tori, who will be available for inspection work at 

 Washing((»n and in .Mexandria, wheie the hav laboratorv is located. 



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