President and in Congress. This bill does not propose to leave this matter to the President. Congress has the veto power.

May I also remark that if the very eminent gentlemen who represent the War and Navy Departments had gone to the trouble of reading the record, reading what I said here when I appeared before you at the former hearings, they would not have had any misapprehension at all. I made it perfectly clear that it was further from my idea at any time to ask for the transfer of any activities of either the Army or the Navy. The question of oil reserves was raised. I went this far on that, that if I had my way we would turn over more of our oil producing lands to the Navy as naval reserves. If that indicates any intention on the part of the Secretary of the Interior, in the event of a change of name, to encroach or to take away anything from the Navy Department, I would like to know it. That is true in spite of the fact that the Teapot Dome scandal arose under the Navy Department and not under the Department of the Interior. There is a general impression to the contrary, but despite that, I think it will be sound national policy to turn over more of our oil reserves to the Navy because their greatest use to this Nation is in the way of defense. It is raising a straw man to knock down. They would not have had to raise the straw man if they had done me the compliment of reading what I said at the former hearing of this committee. There is nothing to it at all.

But when it comes to raising straw men I think I will have to give the palm to the Secretary of Agriculture. He protested on making this a mandatory bill. Why? Because he had nothing to say, except on that theory, and his argument fell flat. He was not advising the members of the committee because, apparently, some gentleman in the Agricultural Department the committee understood entertained an opinion that he gave here.

Mr. GASQUE. I might add for your information that they did not have a chance to read your statement because that has not been printed yet.

Secretary ICKES. Then I withdraw that. We would have been very glad to have furnished them with a copy and I think there were copies sent to other departments, whether they had that opportunity

or not.

Now, the Secretary of Agriculture says that he does not desire to extend the activities of the Department of Agriculture. Recently there was taken over from Interior subsistence homesteads and soil erosion. He admitted here after he had said that he did not want any more executive responsibility, that he thought grazing ought to go over to the Department of Agriculture. I am sorry he is not here because I would have said to him in your presence that if he had been entirely frank with you he would have also told you what he has told me, that he thinks reclamation ought to go to Agriculture; he thinks the Indian Office ought to go to Agriculture; he thinks the national parks ought to go to Agriculture, and the General Land Office. In other words, according to the theory as it was pointedly brought out by the questions of the members of the committee, in other words, according to that theory of the Department of Agriculture, it is an all-comprehensive all-embracing department. We could abolish all the rest. Judging from what he said, the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture ought to follow the insects. He had a lot to say about insects as if that would determine jurisdiction.

That would bring it into our homes and there would be nothing outside of the Department.

Mr. CARPENTER. If the Secretary of Agriculture desires to have those transfers made, would not this bill be to his advantage?

Secretary ICKES. Absolutely. I think he was just a bit disingenuous in some of his argument. The Department of Agriculture has 80,000 employees and the Department of the Interior 25,000 employees. The Department of Agriculture occupies 1,000,000,000 square feet of office space in Washington alone, and you know the extent of its activities outside of Washington. The Department of the Interior occupies 375,000 square feet. The Department of Agriculture, not counting the bureau from the Department of the Interior that they are reaching out for, have 22 bureaus against 7 in the care of the Department of the Interior.

Mr. MCKEOUGH. Do I understand that they are trying to get more activities?

Secretary ICKES. Certainly they are.

Mr. MCKEOUGH. But you are not afraid to have this bill go through?

Secretary ICKES. I am not afraid.

Mr. GINGERY. You are not trying to take over the Army and Navy engineering departments.

Secretary ICKES. Absolutely not the remotest thought. We welcome the cooperation of the Army and Navy. There is one question I would like to make clear. I understand General Markham to say that they built the dome of this Capitol. That was built by the Secretary of the Interior but perhaps he used an Army engineer. We go there to get good service when we want it. There is one other point that I am not quite positive about, namely, that General Markham said that the overhead of the Army engineers averaged 3.75 to a little over 5. The overhead of the Public Works to date has been less than 1 percent.

Mr. MCKEOUGH. Marvelous.

Secretary ICKES. It is all a question here of efficiency of organization, prevention of overlapping, and saving of expense.

Mr. MCKEOUGH. Common sense.

Secretary ICKES. But we are simply saying to the President, if this bill is adopted here, you have the authority to investigate and recommend. You do not even have to recommend. He is justified in recommending after investigation. He does not have to recommend or investigate. He may only recommend after investigating and then it comes before this very committee. I would be very foolish to come before this committee and ask for the transfer of activities of the Army and Navy after I have had a chance to know your sentiments.

Mr. CARPENTER. The bill changes the name to the Department of Conservation of Works.

Secretary ICKES. Absolutely. If you do not concentrate all the conservation activities in a department whose sole and major concern, or whose major, if not sole, concern is to be conservation, then in Heaven's name abolish the Interior Department and send us all over to the Secretary of Agriculture.

Mr. HAMLIN. I am not a lawyer, but I would like to make an observation here in regard to the language of the bill. It says that after investigation he shall. That is not mandatory, is it?

Secretary ICKES. No. 5.

Mr. HAMLIN. That is the point I made, Mr. Secretary.

Secretary ICKES. He says that the name would be a mandate. It does not take a lawyer to know that cannot possibly be true. If it is a mandate to Interior, it is equally a mandate that the name Interior is more comprehensive than conservation. If the name is a mandate, then Agriculture, War, Navy, Treasury, everything ought to go to the Interior Department, because that means everything except external affairs. I think we would have to exclude the State Depart

ment.

There has been some suggestion of amendment. If you begin to amend it for the Army and Navy, then they will want amendments for Agriculture and all the rest and it might just as well be reported adversely.

Mr. GASQUE. There is not much time left for amending the bill. Mr. WHITTINGTON. We know how you feel and how the President feels. But this would be permanent legislation.

Secretary ICKES. It is limited to 2 years, and you will be here and the President and I will be here, I hope. I do not know.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. I hope we will all be here. In this legislation, Mr. Secretary, you see just how they have been feeling from the experience we had before you got here. We hope we are going to be here and you and the President, but we had an engineer at the White House 2 years ago and he wanted this committee to pass a similar bill and we did not want it to happen and there was a lot of talk about putting the Corps of Engineers in the Department of the Interior. Secretary ICKES. I did not know that he had any idea of putting anything in Interior.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. We spent a lot of time here on that.

Mr. GASQUE. That was putting it under our Board of Public Works, not under the Interior, but under a separate board.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. We with all our limitations here spent a lot of time before you came down to Washington as Secretary of the Interior, on this very matter of transferring the Corps of Engineers to some other department than the War Department, and we just have every confidence in you and the President, but this is permanent legislation.

Secretary ICKES. You have the veto power.

Mr. WHITTINGTON. I refuse to give the veto power to the President down here before this one and I will not give this veto power to every President who comes along, because unless this committee for Congress acts within 90 days it becomes a law of the land and is permanent legislation. One of the difficulties about it is that-and keep in mind our situation with respect to the Corps of Engineers because we declined to give that 2 years ago, this 90 days, to give that power to the engineer in the White House. This is permanent legislation. Secretary ICKES. You have the right to transfer.

Mr. GASQUE. Our time is exhausted. There is a roll call of the House and it is up to the committee to be there.

Secretary ICKES. I thank you, gentlemen.

(Thereupon, at 12:15 p. m., the committee adjourned, to meet again at the call of the chairman.)

CHANGE THE NAME OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR TO THE DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION AND WORKS

THURSDAY, JUNE 27, 1935

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON EXPENDITURES
IN THE EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS,

Washington, D. C.

The committee met at 10 a. m., Hon. Allard H. Gasque (acting chairman) presiding.

Mr. GASQUE. The committee will be in order. We are continuing hearings on H. R. 7712. Those who desire to be heard will give their names to the clerk. Secretary Wallace has asked to be heard further on this subject.

STATEMENT OF HON. HENRY A. WALLACE SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE

Secretary WALLACE. In view of Secretary Ickes' statement to your committee on June 21 that the Department of Agriculture desires to have transferred to it the Reclamation Service, the National Park Service, the General Land Office, and the Indian Service of the Department of the Interior, I desire to say that to the best of my knowledge the Department of Agriculture has never made any effort to obtain these agencies.

Informal discussions were had more than a year ago with regard to a rearrangement through transfer of bureaus, looking toward increasing the efficiency of the two Departments. During these discussions I said frequently that I felt that the rearrangements discussed were not politically and otherwise feasible.

After returning from a trip in the field, I reached the conclusion that, from the standpoint of savings, the transfers proposed would not be in the financial interest of the Government. I was of this conviction with special reference to the proposal that the Forest Service be transferred to the Department of the Interior insofar as forest resources were affected, while the Grazing Service of the Department of the Interior and grazing activities carried on in the national forests be transferred and coordinated in the Department of Agriculture, this proposal having contemplated reserving to Agriculture, grazing in the national forests. The maintenance of one set of men from one department in the national forests for forest purposes and another set of men from another department for control of grazing seems to me clearly impractical.

I have said to Secretary Ickes that the problems of the Reclamation Service, once the dams and canals were built, could be much

better served by Agriculture than Interior. The bringing of public lands into agricultural use is of the greatest importance to agriculture, particularly in view of the crisis which has faced agriculture because of the loss of foreign markets and the excessive plant capacity of agriculture as a whole, resulting from expansion of acreage during the World War.

I have felt that division of functions between departments cannot be solved entirely on the basis of logic. A division of functions as nearly reasonable as possible would seem to me to be feasible only if based on the natural division of our resources between the inorganic and the organic. The organic resources are, of course, those which have to do with growth from the soil, plant and animal life. These would seem to fall quite naturally into the Department of Agriculture. The administration of these resources, of course, in some cases has a definite bearing upon conservation. Indeed, many of the bureaus of the Department of Agriculture are engaged in many phases of conservation, among them the Bureau of Biological Survey, Forest Service, and Soil Conservation Service. The theme of conservation runs through the activities of other bureaus of the Department, increasingly so in the case of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, and steadily in the work carried out by the bureaus engaged in scientific research, experimentation, and demonstration.

The Forest Service is closely integrated with the work of many other bureaus in the Department of Agriculture and it is clearly undesirable to substitute the more cumbersome interdepartmental relationship for the smooth running relationship now existing between the Forest Service and the other bureaus of the Department, whose work has such a close relationship to its forestry and grazing responsibilities.

I know that past history and customs must also be taken into account. I am inclined to think that the changes which Secretary Ickes has in mind, should this proposed enabling legislation succeed, would either reduce the value of the services or increase the cost, or both.

I want to call the attention of the committee to the fact that the bill is so worded as to leave the President little discretion in making bureau shifts in a direction away from the proposed Department of Conservation and Public Works. Under this bill nothing could be moved from that Department, even remotely dealing with conservation, while almost everything could be moved into it even though the functions are primarily concerned with agriculture and growing, living things.

イ

Secretary Ickes has challenged my opposition to this bill on the ground that such opposition indicated a lack of confidence in the President, who would be provided with a broad grant of power to transfer or consolidate bureaus with the consent of Congress in the interest of administrative efficiency.

The wording of the second section of the bill shows that those who drafted it have little confidence in the President or in Congress. It is not a broad grant of power to the President to transfer or consolidate bure aus and agencies with the consent of Congress in the interest of administrative efficiency. It thoroughly circumscribes such transfers.