Mr. BRENCKMAN. I have not said anything about fish. I know that many farms could produce fish profitably.

Mr. GIFFORD. Profitably?

Mr. BRENCKMAN. Yes. I have a friend named Moore in Pennsylvania who owns a lake in Bradford County, and he has been introducing fish not only for his own use but for the use of others. People -camp on the shores of that lake. He charges a fee, as he has a right to do. He propagates and protects fish. There are many other places where that may be done.

If Secretary Ickes desires to annex any division of the Department of Agriculture in order to maintain the importance and prestige of the Department over which he presides, and to find something to do for his staff, I would respectfully suggest that legislation be introduced to transfer the Bureau of Public Roads to the Department of the Interior. There is no particular reason why that Bureau should be within the Department of Agriculture. It is the former Office of Road Inquiry.

Under the changed conditions of today, when every State has its own highway department, the reasons which led to the establishment of the Bureau of Roads in the Department of Agriculture no longer exist.

It seems to me that to retain the Bureau of Roads in the Department of Agriculture is in some respects a disadvantage to the farmers of the country. Every time some newspaper editor sets out to prove that the farmer is the pampered favorite of the Government, he is apt to cite the heavy appropriation figures made to the Department of Agriculture. Since these figures include appropriations for highways that are used by all the people of the country, this creates an unfair impression in the minds of the people of the country who are not familiar with all the facts in the case.

From 1917 to 1933 Federal aid appropriations for highways totaled $1,290,000,000. The appropriation for the present fiscal year was $125,000,000. All this is charged to the Department of Agriculture.

While the National Grange itself has taken no action in the matter, as I have already said, it is my personal opinion that it would be to the advantage of the farmers if the Bureau of Roads were transferred to the Department of the Interior.

Again, the Department of the Interior might as well take the Weather Bureau. The Bible says that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. We are all interested in the weather, and there is no reason why the Department of the Interior should not have the Weather Bureau; but leave all that has to do with conservation in the Department of Agriculture, where it belongs.

I have a letter addressed to the editor of the Washington Post, which letter appears in this morning's Post, by Gifford Pinchot, former Chief Forester and twice Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, expressing his views of the pending bill, or the issue involved in it. I should like to include it in the record.

Mr. GASQUE. In the absence of objection, you may do so.

(The letter in question reads as follows:)

[From Washington Post, July 17, 1935]

OPPOSES TRANSFER OF FOREST AUTHORITY

To the EDITOR OF THE POST.

SIR: I appeal to you because the national forests are again in serious danger. Another attempt is under way to get the national forests and the forest work of the Government transferred from the Agricultural Department, where the forests are safe and the work well done, back to the Department of the Interior, from which they were taken because of wretched management.

The present attempt is made under cover of an effort (Senate bill 2665) to change the name of the Interior Department to the Department of Conservation and Public Works. The transfer of the national forests and the Forest Service is not mentioned in the bill, but is planned for later on.

Conservation is too broad a subject to be confined to any one department. Nearly all of them deal with it in one form or another. A department of conservation would be almost as illogical as a department of typewriting or a department of wastebaskets, which everybody has to use.

The conservation policy itself, and about every important conservation movement for the past 30 years, originated in the Department of Agriculture. It has shown practical horse sense in dealing with natural resources intelligently, uprightly, and without fraud or loss.

In contrast, the record of the Interior Department is far and away the worst in Washington. Every natural resource, without exception, that has been held for disposal by the Interior Department-public lands, Indian lands, coal, oil, water power, and timber-has been wasted and squandered at one time or another. It is one long story of fraud in public lands, theft in Indian lands, and throwing the people's property away.

Most of the fights for conservation_have been made to save natural resources belonging to the people which the Interior Department was throwing away. The national forests must not go the same road.

Secretary of the Interior Ickes is sincere and honest, but he cannot live forever. Secretary Garfield was honest, but Secretary Ballinger, his successor, tried to give away the people's water powers and the coal lands in Alaska. The resulting scandal cost Taft his reelection. And everybody remembers Tea Pot Dome, when Secretary Fall handed the Navy's oil lands over to the despoilers. Fall tried hard to get his hands on the national forests.

Ickes is my friend. Wallace is my friend. But the national forests could not be better handled in the Interior Department than in the Department of Agriculture, where they have been safe for 30 years. What is the use of rocking the boat? The Forest Service is completely free from politics where it is. Ickes himself is straight, but the whole history of the Interior Department is reeking with politics. The tradition of the Interior Department is to put private interests first. The tradition of the Agricultural Department is to put public interests first.

Wood is a crop. Forestry is tree farming. It belongs in the Department of Agriculture with all other farming and production from the soil.

Undoubtedly if Secretary Ickes got the national forests he would do his level best. But he has more work now than any other Cabinet officer in Washington. The national forests are bigger than all the Atlantic States from Maine to Virginia, inclusive. Why put this additional load on a man who has too much to do already? Let the national forests stay where they are.

MILFORD, PIKE COUNTY, PA., July 9.

GIFFORD PINCHOT.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. You realize that it would be very difficult for us to go into the merits of transferring one agency to another depart

ment.

Mr. BRENCKMAN. Yes.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. Inasmuch as forestry has been dealt with, I want to ask what agencies, what institutions, what citizens interested in forestry have appeared before this committee and urged that the Forest Service be retransferred to the Department of the Interior? Mr. BRENCKMAN. I do not know any. I feel sure there has been

none.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. Do you know any agencies of forestry or reforestation in the United States that are advocating the transfer of the Forest Service back to the Department of the Interior? Mr. BRENCKMAN. I do not.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. If there has been such a bill, in the language of the present bill, in 1905, the Forest Service could not have been transferred to the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. BRENCKMAN. If there had been a bill like this?

Mr. WHITTINGTON. Yes.

Mr. BRENCKMAN. Perhaps not.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. In other words, it specifically provides that no conservation activity may be transferred from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. BRENCKMAN. Yes.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. There would not have been any opportunity for President Theodore Roosevelt to transfer the Forest Service to the Department of Agriculture from the Department of the Interior if this act had existed at that time.

Mr. BRENCKMAN. That is right.

Mr. HOUSTON. The national parks are under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior, are they not?

Mr. BRENCKMAN. Yes.

Mr. HOUSTON. Does the Department of Agriculture want jurisdiction over the national parks?

Mr. BRENCKMAN. I am not interested in bringing the national parks under the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture. So far as our organization is concerned, we are willing that national parks should remain where they are. That is not a vital, matter, in my opinion; but the other proposition is a vital matter for the farmers, and that is why I appeared to take your valuable time.

Mr. QUINN. Following your line of thought, do you not think this is a good bill, in that certain activities should be transferred elsewhere, when it is considered that the bill gives the President discretionary authority, after the matter comes to this committee and then goes to the House? It seems to me that this is a good opportunity to properly readjust whatever conflicts may exist.

Mr. BRENCKMAN. I would amend the bill by taking the Bureau of Roads and the Weather Bureau from the Department of Agriculture and putting them in the Department of the Interior. So far as the conservation activities are concerned, and those agencies mentioned, there is no division of opinion in the National Grange.

Mr. HOUSTON. What advantage is there, if any, in having the Forest Service in the Department of the Interior?

Mr. BRENCKMAN. There cannot be any, in my opinion. There cannot be an improvement over what we have. There would likely be a disruption of that agency of the Government that would be detrimental to the people.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. You are looking at this matter from the standpoint of agriculture, of course, but let me remind you that you have overlooked the major proposal. This bill provides for the transfer of public works, and that would affect every department in the Government. I think the matter of conservation is a minor factor in the powers of this bill. The bill goes beyond conservation.

Mr. BRENCKMAN. I have two fundamental objections to the bill. In the first place, the title indicates that the plan is to take the

national forests, the Soil Erosion Service, and probably, the Biological Survey and transfer them to the Department of the Interior; the other part of the title relating to public works indicates that we might expect the depression to continue forever and that we would continue to spend large sums of money for public works to keep the unemployed off the relief rolls. I want the depression to end and to have less public works.

Mr. GASQUE. The time for the hearing to conclude, according to our agreement, has arrived. Shall we hear another witness?

Mr. WHITTINGTON. I think we should go along. Let me remind members of the committee that the advocates of the bill have agreed that the bill should be changed, and it looks to me like it will be impossible to hold an executive meeting today, no matter what we may think. Furthermore, we do not want to duplicate anything. My understanding is that the Senate has reported this bill. They have the right-of-way, and ordinarily we wait till their bill gets to us. have no disposition, though, to delay this matter.

STATEMENT OF HUGH F. HALL, AMERICAN FARM BUREAU
FEDERATION

Mr. GASQUE. Let us hear Mr. Hall next.

I

Mr. HALL. I am here to substitute for Mr. Chester H. Gray, of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Our organization, at its annual meeting last December in Nashville, Tenn., had as one of its committees a committee on land utilization. We are moving into a period when the problem of utilization of lands is becoming one of national consciousness; and, in accordance with that growing feeling, a special committee was appointed to deal with that problem, and it did so in a rather comprehensive way for a meeting of that kind. The chairman of that committee was Mr. L. I. Frudenthau, of New Mexico, president of the New Mexico Farm Bureau Federation. He prepared a resolution which is quite long, and I will not attempt to read it all. I should, however, like to file the part I do not read and read only one or two paragraphs.

I might interpolate by saying that the Secretary of the Interior referred to this resolution I am about to read in his remarks at your last meeting. I appeared before the Senate committee 10 minutes, and the Secretary was there; and you heard his criticism. I shall leave to your judgment whether the criticism is well founded. The resolution in question reads as follows:

VII. A POLICY FOR THE UTILIZATION OF LAND

GENERAL

1. Whereas, the American Farm Bureau Federation in national convention assembled is of the opinion that agriculture in the United States has suffered as the result of fragmentary land utilization policy in the past;

2. And that our early land-use policy was dominated by the all-impelling notions of individualistic self-advancement;

3. And at the ameliorating influences of the Homestead Act of 1862 and its reforms of 1891, and the conservation movement of the 1900's are no longer sufficient to our enlarged needs and purposes;

4. And that the factors causing land expansion and farm-production expansion of the past are no longer compelling under changed national and international conditions;

5. And that changed conditions have made necessary legislation to control production;

6. And that future modifications of that legislation will be necessary to adjust production to the changing domestic and foreign conditions of supply and demand: Now, be it, therefore,

Resolved, (1) That the American Farm Bureau Federation favor the adoption by the Government of a formulated policy of land utilization in the United States to the end that all lands shall be tested in terms of the general welfare rather than in those of private advantage;

(2) That in devising the formulae for correct utilizing of the land there shall be kept to the fore the two principles of rational production on lands under cultivation and the social well-being of the men who cultivate these lands;

(3) That such policy of correct utilization of land can best be instituted by a program which will withdraw from cultivation certain lands now in use and which will at the same time offer better economic protection to lands continued in cultivation;

(4) That this program be initiated as a Federal program, to be carried out with State cooperation;

(5) That land withdrawn from cultivation be withdrawn by direct purchase by the Federal Government and/or at their option by State and/or municipal governments;

(6) That land withdrawn from cultivation be utilized for the following and similar purposes: (a) Forestation, (b) water-shed protection for domestic and/or irrigation water systems, (c) grazing, (d) public parks, (e) public playgrounds, (f) bird refuges, (g) game preserves, (h) erosion control to protect other lands; (7) That all public interests in private lands acquired by the Federal Government under this program be under a single system of public administration and/or regulation, devised by a single agency;

(8) That this agency be the United States Department of Agriculture;

(9) That to make the United States Department of Agriculture the sole administrative agency in this Federal program there be effected the following changes: (a) Transfer of all public lands to the United States Department of Agriculture, (b) transfer of Bureau of Reclamation from United States Department of the Interior to United States Department of Agriculture, (c) transfer of Bureau of Erosion from United States Department of the Interior to United States Department of Agriculture, (d) enlargement of the Forest Service as an indispensable subagency in making a land utilization policy effective, (e) vesting in the United States Department of Agriculture the sole authority for issuance of grazing permits, (f) transfer of the public domain from the United States Department of the Interior to the United States Department of Agriculture;

(10) That in the maintenance and control of these lands, under the United States Department of Agriculture there be utilized the services of the land grant colleges, the Extension Service, and similar agencies;

(11) That in the maintenance and control of these lands after purchase by the Federal Government, there be allowed the greatest possible local responsibility in their wise use for the purposes named above;

(12) That the solution of the problem of the best protection of the public interest in matters pertaining to the forest reserves and the public domain continue to be a Federal function;

(13) That under a correct policy of land utilization, lands continued under cultivation be protected economically to the fullest extent by (a) attention to maintenance of fertility, (b) erosion control, (c) decreasing or increasing production to market requirements, (d) maintenance of an active research in all matters pertaining to the production and marketing of farm and forest products;

(14) That taxation be considered in reference to lands withdrawn from cultivation in order that taxes may not be inordinate in counties, townships, or other areas, where a large sector of land may have been acquired by the Government, either by a continued payment of taxes by the Government, or by a rebounding of the units affected, or by other methods of compensation.

SUBMARGINAL LANDS

Whereas a correct land utilization policy must contemplate a withdrawal of certain lands from cultivation;

And whereas a prime requisite of such withdrawal must be the control of agricultural lands and agricultrual products for the greatest benefit of the greatest number: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That in withdrawing lands from cultivation in furtherance of a correct land-utilization policy, the following types of land, for the reasons named, be