THE PRESENT ORGANIZATION 39 



and to still others all of the educational work; but, as we 

 shall see later, such a division would have been very unde- 

 sirable, if not impossible. 



The primary subdivision in the Department of Agricul- 

 ture, as in the other federal departments, is the bureau. Not 

 all of the units of this rank are called bureaus, because of 

 the selection in some instances of designations that are in- 

 tended to indicate more clearly the functions performed. 

 For instance, the bureau which is charged with the admin- 

 istration of most of the acts of Congress involving coopera- 

 tion with the various States, is called the States Relations 

 Service. The difference, however, is merely in the name, 

 and not in its relation to the head of the department or to 

 the units of the same rank. Each bureau is under the 

 supervision of a bureau chief who is directly responsible to 

 the Secretary. In the larger bureaus, much of the admin- 

 istrative work is under the immediate direction of an assist- 

 ant chief of bureau, who, in the absence of the chief, be- 

 comes the acting head. The principal administrative units 

 within the bureau are generally known as divisions. These 

 vary in number according to the number of distinct activi- 

 ties which have been assigned to the bureau. Where the 

 work of the division is very large or diverse, this unit is in 

 turn subdivided into lesser units called sections. In some 

 instances, where the work of the section is unified, not vol- 

 uminous, and not related to the work of any division, the 

 head of the section is associated administratively directly 

 with the chief of bureau. For purposes of centering respon- 

 sibility and giving definiteness to the work, divisions and 

 sections are sometimes still further divided into projects. 

 These projects are immediately supervised by a project 

 leader who reports to the section or division head. 



Not all of the activities of the department are grouped 

 into bureaus for administrative purposes. Those functions 

 which relate to the department as a whole have been as- 

 signed to units which altiiough not forming a part of any 

 bureau, arc ranked as divisions, whose principal officers arc 



