INTRODUCTORY 1 5 



be chosen. Only the secretary's salary and expenses were 

 to be paid out of the public treasury, and if the state of the 

 treasury was such as to make this seem inadvisable, not even 

 these were to be paid by the Government. 



The report of the committee was referred to a committee 

 of the whole to be brought up the next Monday, but it be- 

 came confused with a discussion of direct taxes and was 

 never brought up.^' 



During the next twenty years, there seems to have been 

 no more definite proposals in Congress for extending the 

 aid of the government to agriculture; but in 1817, Repre- 

 sentative Hulbert presented a petition of the Berkshire As- 

 sociation for the promotion of agriculture and manufactur- 

 ing in Massachusetts, praying " that the aid of the National 

 Government may be extended to the promotion of the in- 

 terests of agriculture and manufacturing either by the estab- 

 lishment of a national board or by such other means as in 

 the wisdom of Congress may seem meet and proper." This 

 petition was referred to a select committee and was never 

 again revived.^* For the next twent)'- years, the activity of 

 Congress with respect to agriculture was practically limited 

 to the appointment of a committee on agriculture in the 

 House in 1820,^' and the appointment of a similar committee 

 in the Senate in 1825.^° Both of these still exist and are 

 now very important committees ; but at the time they were 

 created they seem to have been little more than convenient 

 repositories for such petitions, memorials or other docu- 

 ments relating to agriculture as might come before Congress. 



There was enacted, however, during this period, such 

 legislation as was necessary in the development of our public 

 lands policy. While this legislation affected the develop- 

 ment of agriculture, as indeed it did the entire history of 

 the nation ; it cannot be said that the public lands policy of 

 Congress had as its aim the promotion of the interests of 



13 Annals of Cong., 4th Cong., 2d sess., p. 1835. 



1* II)i(l., 14th Cong., 2cl sess., pt. i, p. 769. 



1* Ibid., 16th Cong., 1st sess., pt. 2, p. 2179. 



1" Register of Debates in Congress, 19th Cong., ist sess., cols. 5, 7. 



