Mr. GASQUE. I want to make this statement as one of the older members of the committee, that I have spent months sitting with the committee-not weeks or days, but months-in holding hearings on consolidating the various departments or various bureaus of departments, and every time we have ever tried to make a change in the committee, some friend of the Navy Department, or some friend of the War Department or of the Interior Department would intervene, and we never have been able to get anywhere, and the only way that this can be done is by delegating this power to the President. If he does not have that power, we will never consolidate anything.

Mr. HOFFMAN. You fellows ought to know; I do not.

Mr. RICH. I agree with that statement. I have seen enough here in 4 years to know that you cannot do anything unless somebody takes the bull by the horns.

Mr. HULL. Congress establishes these powers, and sits up here and appropriates the money. Why delegate all of that power?

Mr. RICH. I am not in sympathy with the delegation of all of the power, but if this bill goes through, we have the power to accept it or reject it. I have found that, once a bureau, always a bureau.

Mr. GASQUE. That is, if you left it to Congress.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. Mr. Chairman, this is all very interesting, but we have some gentlemen here to make statements, and we can take those matters up later.

Mr. MCKEOUGH. Mr. Burlew, assuming that this bill should be passed, and the President should make a recommendation; what would be the procedure?

Mr. BURLEW. That recommendation would come to a committee of Congress, this committee, and this committee would hold hearings, and the committee can reject the thing as though it was affirmative legislation.

Mr. McKEOUGH. Certainly.

Mr. HULL. Is it not a fact that under your section 5, unless this committee acts within 60 days, it goes into effect?

Mr. BURLEW. Exactly.

Mr. HULL. The chairman of this committee, whoever he might be, has got to take hold of this situation mighty quickly in order to get action within that time.

Mr. MCKEOUGH. Let us amend that, then.

Mr. HULL. Let us put in there that it must have the consent of Congress, instead of leaving it as it is.

Mr. BURLEW. The experience under the economy act was not unfavorable to this line of action. I think that the members who were familiar with it will agree with that. There was nothing that was unfavorable to the Government departments. The committee held its hearings within the time, and there were no violent proposals presented. Now, if you make it for an indefinite period, and wipe out the 60 days and require the affirmative consent of Congress, you will get nowhere, as Mr. Gasque said, because Congress cannot act as a body in a case of that kind.

Mr. QUINN. Let me suggest that we continue the hearing of witnesses, and take up all of those matters in executive session.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. Have you a statement as to the number of agencies or bureaus that have been transferred, for instance, to the Department of the Interior under the economy act, or the act of consolidation that previously passed?

Mr. BURLEW. I may say that I have not a complete list, but it involved about 14 activities, most of them small. For instance, the Bureau of Mines was transferred; that was the only major bureau. The others were such things as Public Buildings and Public Parks of the District of Columbia, the National Capital Park and Planning Commission, various things of that sort, a lot of small unrelated, independent agencies that heretofore were not in a Government department. There was nothing taken, as I recall, from a Government department except the Bureau of Mines.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. And that was formerly in the Department of the Interior?

Mr. BURLEW, That was formerly in the Department of the Interior. Mr. WHITTINGTON. I would like to suggest this, in line with what Mr. Hull stated, that a great many of these agencies, and a great many of these bureaus, are not established by substantive law or by an act of Congress, but the executive head, the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of Agriculture, will come down here and say "I ought to have this work," and by Executive order they establish a bureau, and that is how there is overlapping and duplication. Mr. BURLEW. And later they come to Congress to get an appropriation.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. That is right. Our chief function is to support the bureaus that have been established by appropriation, and, as I say, many of them were established by Executive order, and some of those have been transferred to the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. BURLEW. I may also say that, in the case of grazing, we have not set up a bureau for handling it. We have set up a small divisional unit in the Secretary's office which utilizes the services of the three principal bureaus affected by the Grazing Act. It does not perform any bureau function. We are now using two bureaus, Geological Survey and the General Land Office, and one division, the Division of Investigation, in handling grazing, and we centralized it in this division which has about 20 employees.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. It is your view, and I assume that you are in accord with the statement of the Secretary, that section 2 of this act does not contemplate the transfer of any works that are inherently in the War Department or the Navy Department as a matter of national defense, works that they have done since those departments were established in the very beginning of our Government, nor is there any intention to transfer the work that has been done for more than 100 years by the Corps of Engineers?

Mr. BURLEW. No; and, further than that, there are many construction functions in the departments that are closely related to the administrative function. We would object to having those taken from the Indian Service, for instance, where we use Indian labor. That would deprive the Indians of the advantage of having this work, and deprive the Indian Bureau of the administration of it, where it should be, and that is not contemplated by this bill.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. There may not be any objection to the name "Conservation", but have you given any thought to the term "Public Works"?

Mr. BURLEW. I have been in touch with the reorganization of the Government for a good many years, and from the time that the Brown report was issued there have been various proposals for establishing

a Public Works Department. Most of them contemplated absorbing it in the Department of the Interior.

As the Secretary pointed out in his statement, you cannot have true conservation of natural resources without a great deal of construction, not necessarily of public buildings; we are not interested in public buildings particularly, but, of course, if an investigation showed that a public building function should go to this new department, that would be up to the President and Congress, and reports would be made and they would be presented in regular order.

I think the works function is very important in conjunction with conservation.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. That is all.

Mr. WHITE. Mr. Burlew, reference was made to the grazing division being under direct control of the Secretary, in his office, and not in a division or bureau.

Mr. BURLEW. That is right.

Mr. WHITE. In the set-up of the bureaus and sections of the Department of the Interior, are there not cases where a division will have a larger volume of business than some of the bureaus?

Mr. BURLEW. Yes; but they do not have the authority. Now, the Division of Investigation has 300 or 400 employees. In my office alone, on one phase of my work in connection with patronage, I have 100 employees, which is more than the Bureau of Reclamation has here in Washington. But it depends upon the powers which are delegated to the Division or the Bureau. A bureau has more power than a division.

This Division of Grazing is merely a coordinating division.

Mr. WHITE. I just wanted to get that clear, as to the set-up in the Department of the Interior, the distinction made between divisions and sections.

Mr. BURLEW. A bureau is usually established by statute with a certain definite function. A division is created by Executive or departmental order, and later it may be enlarged.

Mr. WHITE. Then Congress does not exercise the control over the establishment of bureaus that it does over divisions?

Mr. BURLEW. It is the other way. It exercises more control over establishing bureaus than divisions. For instance, the National Park Service was first started as a Division in the Secretary's office, just the same as is the case with grazing, and later its authority grew and its field was enlarged by Congress, and appropriations were made for it, and now it is a Bureau.

Mr. WHITE. Thank you.

Mr. GASQUE. Mr. Burlew, there has been some question raised as to the possibility of this act applying to the Army and the Navy. The language of this act would give the President power to apply it to those departments, would it not?

Mr. BURLEW. Oh, yes.

Mr. GASQUE. If there was any objection to that, what would be your objection to having an amendment saying that it did not apply to these departments, in order to make it clear?

Mr. BURLEW. There is one feature of this which the Secretary did not discuss, and it is mighty important to all of us in the Interior Department, and that is that public works should have some dominating policy as to this emergency, but until the emergency organ

izations were set up, public works was not a function of the Government, nor was it coordinated with the Government. Now, if you have a Public Works Department it will coordinate public-works policies among bureaus, and I should dislike very much to see any bureau eliminated by putting a restriction in the bill, because a later study might develop that a dominating policy of public works in planning and things of that sort should be set up, which might be done under a public works department.

Mr. HOUSTON. Is Public Works a bureau or a division?

Mr. BURLEW. No, that is an independent establishment now. It s an emergency organization which expires in July 1937.

Mr. QUINN. Are there as many as 100 of these little mushroom bureaus, doing this or that?

Mr. BURLEW. I should say yes, more than that. There are divisions and offices. I never knew the distinction. We have an office of information, and there are some divisions carrying the title "office" instead of "division.” I should say that there are hundreds of those throughout the Government.

Mr. QUINN. How many different divisions of the departments are there in the building business?

Mr. BURLEW. Practically all of the departments, I should say, except the State Department.

Mr. QUINN. Each containing its own supervising architect and their own corps?

Mr. BURLEW. I do not know the phrase that they maintain, but there is the Bureau of Mines

Mr. QUINN. They build?

Mr. BURLEW. They build.

Mr. QUINN. And the Treasury Department?

Mr. BURLEW. Yes, and the Treasury Department.

Mr. QUINN. That all seems idiotic, on the face of it, everybody building.

Mr. BURLEW. But the principal function of the Bureau of Mines is not building, you know.

Mr. QUINN. I know that, but it is a side issue. It is a side issue with most of the departments.

Mr. BURLEW. That is right.

Mr. MCKEOUGH. This sort of a bill might cure that.

Mr. BURLEW. Yes, this sort of a bill might cure that.

Mr. QUINN. It would put them in one department.

Mr. BURLEW. And it would not interfere with the normal function

of the bureau from which it was taken.

Mr. HOUSTON. That is where the public works will come in.

Mr. QUINN. That is where it ought to come in.

Mr. GASQUE. Are there any further questions?

If not, we thank you very much, Mr. Burlew, for your statement. You have given a very clear statement, as has the Secretary. Mr. Silcox, would you want to be heard, sir?

Mr. SILCOX. Yes, sir.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. Mr. Chairman, I am just wondering if we have any reports from the other executive departments?

Mr. GASQUE. Not from all of them. We have from a few of them. Mr. WHITTINGTON. I have seen one from the Secretary of the Navy, and that is the only one that has been brought to my attention.

The CLERK. The Secretary of Commerce says that there does not appear to be any objection to the enactment of the proposed legislation on the part of his Department. That just arrived.

Mr. MCKEOUGH. How about the Secretary of Agriculture? It was said that there was a letter written by him to the Committee on Expenditures of the Senate.

Mr. SILCOX. I have that here.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. Have we requested the other executive heads to give us a report?

The CLERK. Yes, sir.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. And we have not received them all?

The CLERK. Not as yet.

STATEMENT OF F. A. SILCOX, CHIEF, FOREST SERVICE

Mr. SILCOX. I have been requested by the Secretary of Agriculture to appear here for him, since he is absent from the city today, or otherwise he would have appeared himself.

I have been charged with being metaphysical, and of raising the question as to what the word "conservation" meant and what it included. There is no necessity of going into that. I am not going to discuss words, metaphysics, and similar things raised by Secretary Ickes. But I do want to read into the record a letter of the Secretary of Agriculture which I think explains his point of view quite clearly. It reads:

MY DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: With your permission I should like to have this letter included in the record of the hearings on H. R. 7712, "A bill to change the name of the Department of the Interior and to coordinate certain governmental functions." I make this request because of the obvious interest of agriculture in any move involving the conservation activities and policies of the Federal Government, and because of the equally obvious interest of the Department of Agriculture in a bill which would set up a "Department of Conservation and Public Works", and which would concentrate in such a department all governmental agencies "engaged in conserving the natural resources or in carrying on publicwork activities."

This bill sharply raises several basic questions, but the most important, from agriculture's point of view, concerns the effect a concentration of all conservation agencies in the Department of the Interior might have upon our developing national agricultural program. The members of this committee are well aware, I know, of the long struggle for an intelligent, effective agricultural program. Ever since the end of the World War, agriculture has been groping for a way to adjust production to demand, a way to promote sound land use and to discourage land misuse, and a way to build a satisfying rural civilization which might serve as the greatest single stabilizing factor in a modern democracy.

The problem was clearly recognized by President Roosevelf during the campaign of 1932. In a noteworthy speech at Topeka, Kans., on September 14, 1932, he touched on the problem of “permanent farm relief”, and declared that "We must have, I assert with all possible emphasis, national planning in agriculture. We must not have, as now, the scattering of our efforts through the heterogeneous and disassociated activities of our Government agencies dealing with the problem. Then he continued:

"On my part, I suggest the following permanent measures:

"First, I would reorganize the United States Department of Agriculture, looking toward the administrative machinery needed to build a program of national planning. * * *

"Second. I favor a definite policy looking to the planned use of the land * * * ""

By way of illustration he told what had been done in New York State, where submarginal land was bought and reforested, and he emphasized the significance of such planning in gaining "a better and less wasteful distribution of agricultural productive effort" and in pointing the way to "readjustments in the distribution of the population in general.