8 THE!) AUD UB ON EB Wb Ee Tes 
wires: result, $9.4 million spent on unneeded material at a supply depot in 
France. Senator Paul Douglas has pointed out that at one time 86% of 
the nation’s defense contracts were being let by negotiation instead of 
competitive bidding, so that 10 companies got 37% of all contracts. 
The press has been filled with stories of the stockpiling of goods by 
the Pentagon. Storage at 213 depots costs the taxpayers $11 million a 
year. The items range from quartz crystals to natural rubber to feathers. 
President Kennedy says that this excess stockpile of goods has 
cost taxpayers over $8 billion and has been going on since 1946 under three 
different administrations! Despite all these facts, the House passed a new 
military bill for the Pentagon by a vote of 384 to 0, without a single Con- 
gressman raising a question about excess spending and bureaucratic waste. 
Yet the Wilderness Bill was defeated without coming to a vote in the 
House, and the Padre Island Bill was passed in the Senate by a mere 45- 
39 vote, after four years of discussion. 
What does this mean to the conservationist? That we have not 
touched the real source of waste in federal spending. We should not be 
bashful about pressing for needed funds to clear up the polluted rivers of 
our country; to reduce the litter and vandalism in our parks; to remove 
the honky-tonks from national monuments; and to restore some beauty to 
our roadsides, The Department of the Interior in a letter to me this year 
said that of 22,970,000 acres of land within the Nationa] Park System, 
about 450,000 are private in-holdings. It would cost about $55,000,000 to 
purchase the private lands within our national parks. Will Congress okay 
this suggestion? 
Part of the job of the American public today is to enact a National 
Wilderness Bill, to protect and place under public ownership the few un- 
claimed miles of ocean and lake shoreline, and to cultivate an appreciation 
of beauty and open spaces. An vrgent part of our task is to insure the 
survival of every species of wildiife now threatened with extinction due 
to the loss of native habitat. 
Former President Eisenhower once said: “Every gun that is made, 
every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a 
theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are 
not clothed. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half billion bushels 
of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could house 
more than 8,000 people. ... Is there no other way the world can live?” 
615 Rochdale Circle, Lombard, Illinois 
ft ft Ft ft 
ARE YOU A BALD EAGLE ? 
YOU ARE A Bald Eagle, eligible for membership in the Bald Eagle 
Club, if: 
1. You have gray hair. 2. You have hair with some gray in it. 
3. You have no hair, 4. You have hair, but like eagles anyway. 
And if you didn’t like eagles, you wouldn’t be reading these pages in the 
first place. Here’s the problem. The Bald Eagle is in trouble. He has less 
than 5,000 relatives left — the kind with feathers, that is. In fact, he may 
soon be our extinct National Bird, unless he has help. Money from you 
will buy research and protection that eagles need now. Get a lifetime mem- 
bership in the Bald Eagle Club by writing to Mrs. C. F. Russell, Bald 
Eagle Club Chairman, Box 287, Decatur, Illinois, and enclosing just one 
dollar. We, the other Bald Eagles, thank you. 
