1060 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
Commissioner has been a loser to the amount of from $1,800 to $2,000 a year; this, 
independent of the expenses of furnishing gas and coal, unreturned cost of the sum- 
mer work, etc. é 
Since the completion of the buildings at Woods Hole for the accommodation of 
the work of the commission, the commissioner has paid all expenses of board of visi- 
tors to the commission; this sum, in 1885 (including the board of his own family and 
that of visitors to the station), amounting to over $300. It may here be distinctly 
and emphatically stated that all the subsistence of visitors to the commission has 
been paid from the commissioner’s private funds. 
In conclusion, attention may be called to the fact that the commissioner receives 
his entire pay from the Smithsonian Institution, which is not a Government estab- 
lishment, and that consequently the Government does not make one cent of compen- 
sation to him either for his work as U. S. Fish Commissioner or as director of the 
National Musuem. There is and has been nothing to prevent his receiving pay as 
commissioner, even under the law of prohibition of double salaries. 
It may also be stated that, on several occasions, when it was proposed to pay him 
a salary he declined to entertain the proposition, on the ground that it might impair 
his usefulness as commissioner by the impression that he derived benefit from 
appropriations made for its maintenance. 
The fact may be well emphasized that the clause providing for noncompensation 
of the commissioner was inserted at the request of the commissioner; but that the 
increase in the duties and responsibilities was made by Congress at the suggestion of 
an outside association and not at that of the commissioner. 
ADDITIONAL MEMORANDA IN REGARD TO THE RELATIONSHIPS OFS. F. BAIRD TO THE 
U. 8. FISH COMMISSION. 
The act establishing the U. 8. Fish Commission provided that the commissioner 
should serve without additional salary. From the time of the appointment of the 
present commissioner to the secretaryship of the Smithsonian Institution, he has re- 
ceived no salary whatever from the Government; and therefore any compensation 
for the service would technically not be additional to anything already received. In 
view of this fact Mr. Edmunds proposed to ask for a specific appropriation to pay a 
salary, but the commissioner discountenanced the movement, on the ground that it 
would take away from that disinterestedness and freedom of action in requesting 
appropriations which were desirable under the circumstances. 
Some years ago the commissioner, feeling the burden of furnishing quarters to the 
commission, asked for an appropriation to pay for the renting of rooms or a building 
outside; but Mr. Holman, who was then chairman of the Appropriations Committee, 
declined to entertain the proposition, as he was opposed to anything ‘‘that looked 
like fastening an additional Bureau upon the Government.”’ 
It will, of course, be understood that the expense of keeping up a house large enough 
to furnish a number of rooms for the service of the Fish Commission, in addition to 
the needs of his own family, will be much greater than that of an ordinary private 
residence. The house contains twenty rooms, of which three are in constant use by 
the commission. The expense of lighting and heating a house of this magnitude 
amounts to about $600 per annum. 
Mr. Eugene Harr. Why did we not take this matter in hand years 
ago, and give Professor Baird a salary ? 
Mr. Epmunps. I proposed it to Professor Baird (and that is what his 
daughter or somebody must have referred to in making the end of that 
memorandum after he died), and Professor Baird said, ‘‘ No; Congress 
will do whatever they think is proper for me in the end, and I do not 
