194 HEARINGS BEFORE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE. 
This factory in Texas is handled in this fashion: The owner of the 
land furnishes the land, he irrigates it, and he furnishes all the build- 
ings. The Department simply puts an expert there to grow the tea. 
He does the planting and starts the factory work, and when the work 
is completed all the machinery that is installed will come back to the 
Government—that is, that the Government pays for—and then, of 
course, the tea and the factory buildings and what goes with it go to 
the owner, and the owner is privileged to sell the tea under Govern- 
ment control, so that we know what the profits are. 
The Cuarrman. How much longer do you think that work will have 
to continue? 
Mr. Gattoway. It will take, probably, about three or four years; 
but I think after this year that Ae aes can be cut, probably 
one-half—that is, after we get the installation there. We propose to 
put out 300 acres, and the work in South Carolina can be reduced 
to probably $1,000, largely for this advanced technical investigation 
in the line of determining the method of the varying quality of tea 
by different methods of fermentation. 
The Cuairman. That closes your Bureau. 
Mr. Gattoway. I would like to make a few statements about seed 
work. I would like to say, first, just a few words in regard to the 
present methods of purchasing seeds. The Government now pur- 
chases all of its own seed, and we find we get very much better seed 
by so doing, and we can do it cheaper than where the seed was fur- 
nished by contractor. 
Mr. Bowie. You do not take it from the lowest bidder, necessarily 
Mr. Gattoway. No, sir; we found that was a very fatal way of 
doing the thing. We now endeavor to’purchase in the open market, 
and from stocks in hand, about one-third of the seed we use. It takes 
for the Congressional distribution alone about 135 carloads of bulk 
seed, and it takes about eight months getting ready for the four 
months’ strenuous effort we will have to put in in getting that seed 
into bags. ‘ 
The Cuarrman. How many carloads will that make, packed for dis- 
tribution? Twice as many? 
Mr. Gatitoway. More than that. It may magnify ten times. The 
post-office people here never think of measuring it up by carload 
lots. Sometimes they have the room there full, and they have to 
De out other things from under the piles. On the average they go 
own there at the rate of 100,000 packages a day, and it runs 100 
packages to one of these big mail sacks; so you can get some idea of it. 
One Congressman’s quota would about fill this room—12,000 packages. 
a Hewry. How do you make distribution of what you term select 
seeds? 
Mr. Gattoway. We abandoned that for the reason that we could 
get but very few people to take an interest in it. We selected choice 
seed and hest seed; it laid around there, and members did not know 
what they were and did not come to get them, and so we had most of 
them left on our hands. 
Mr. Bowr. I have no doubt in the world that if that certain thing 
were continued for awhile they would order more out. 
Mr. GatLoway (continuing). We spent for the Congressional—for 
the bulk—seed last year $101,000, and our contract for doing the 
work was forty-two and some odd thousand dollars, which makes it 
something like $143,000 for the work. 
