June 16, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



919 



As a full-fledged department with a cabinet 

 minister at its head, the department dates 

 only from 1889. But if we go back to 1839, 

 when $1,000 was appropriated for " agricultural 

 statistics," and include every dollar appropri- 

 ated out of the treasury of the United States 

 for agricultural purposes down to and in- 

 cluding the year 1900, the total sum is, as Mr. 

 Scott pointed out, only $45,102,616, while the 

 aggregate of all the money appropriated from 

 the end of 1900 to the end of the current fiscal 

 year reaches a sum nearly double this, or 

 $90,012,058. For the fiscal year 1901 the ap- 

 propriation for maintenance was $3,304,265.97. 

 This year the department has at its disposal 

 $15,470,634.16. "Ten years ago the total 

 number of persons employed in the depart- 

 ment was 3,388; this year if all the rolls were 

 called an army of 12,480 men and women 

 would respond." 



Under the bill which the committee sub- 

 mitted, and which after considerable discus- 

 sion and amendment received the signature of 

 President Taft March 4, provision is made for 

 an even greater development during the en- 

 suing year. The aggregate amount carried by 

 the act is $16,900,016, which by far exceeds 

 that granted in any previous measure, and is 

 $887,960 in excess of the estimate submitted 

 by the department. 



There is an apparent increase over the ap- 

 propriation act for 1911 of $3,412,380, but of 

 this $720,000 is only nominal, since it merely 

 replaces what has hitherto been provided auto- 

 matically as a permanent appropriation to the 

 state experiment stations under the Adams 

 Act. It will be recalled that by the terms of 

 that act as subsequently construed in the ap- 

 propriation act for 1907, definite appropria- 

 tions were made only until July 1, 1911. The 

 action taken by congress now provides for the 

 continuance of the Adams Fund on the same 

 basis as the Hatch Fund, requiring the 

 amounts to be appropriated annually in the 

 agricultural bill. With due allowance for this 

 item, however, there is still an actual enlarge- 

 ment of the appropriations of every bureau, 

 and a net increase of fully 20 per cent, for the 

 department as a whole. 



In general the increased appropriations are 

 for the purpose of extending and developing 

 lines of work already under way rather than 

 the undertaking of new projects, and some of 

 the principal increases are for what may be 

 termed the administrative activities of the de- 

 partment. One of the largest new items is an 

 appropriation of $1,000,000 for fighting and 

 preventing forest fires in the national forests 

 in cases of extraordinary emergency. This ap- 

 propriation is in addition to the regular 

 appropriation of $150,000 for fire fighting 

 under ordinary conditions, and supplements 

 deficiency appropriations of over $900,000 in- 

 curred as a result of the disastrous fires of 

 last summer. 



The federal meat inspection, which has been 

 enforced by the department from a permanent 

 annual appropriation of $3,000,000, receives 

 an indirect increase of $155,000 through the 

 transfer of its clerical force to the statutory 

 roll of the Bureau of Animal Industry. The 

 Bureau of Chemistry receives $60,000 addi- 

 tional for the enforcement of the Food and 

 Drugs Act, and the Weather Bureau $75,490 

 additional for its weather service. Provision 

 is also made by an appropriation of $87,000 

 for the enforcement of the Insecticide Act, 

 which became effective January 1, 1911, and 

 for which a deficiency appropriation of $35,- 

 000 had been allowed for expenses to July 1. 



A number of propositions involving general 

 legislation were considered in connection with 

 the bill, but as finally enacted the law remains 

 substantially a routine measure. The secre- 

 tary was again authorized to continue investi- 

 gations on the cost of food supplies at the 

 farm and to the consumer; and a special ap- 

 propriation of $5,000 was added for a study of 

 chestnut bark disease. 



Comparison of the allotments to the various 

 bureaus in this act and those preceding it is 

 rendered difficult because their clerical em- 

 ployees will, in accordance with a clause in- 

 serted in the act of 1911, be transferred on 

 July 1 from the various lump-fund appropri- 

 ations on which a portion of them had been 

 carried to the roll of positions specifically pro- 

 vided for. These transfers in certain cases — 



