MESSRS. LOUIS C. CRAMTON (Chairman)
FRANK MURPHY, BURTON L. FRENCH, EDWARD T.
TAYLOR, AND WILLIAM W. HASTINGS

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

SEVENTIETH CONGRESS

DANIEL R. ANTHONY, JR., Kansas.

INTERIOR DEPARTMENT APPROPRIATION BILL, 1930

HEARINGS CONDUCTED BY THE SUBCOMMITTEE: MESSRS. LOUIS C. CRAMTON (CHAIRMAN). FRANK MURPHY, BURTON L. FRENCH, EDWARD T. TAYLOR, AND WILLIAM W. HASTINGS, OF THE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, IN CHARGE OF THE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT APPROPRIATION BILL FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 1930 ON THE DAYS FOLLOWING, NAMELY:

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1928.

STATEMENT OF HON. ROY 0. WEST, SECRETARY OF THE

INTERIOR

Mr. CRAMTON. Mr. Secretary, for the opening of the hearings on the Interior Department appropriation bill for the fiscal year 1930, the committee is very glad to have you before us. The appropriation bill for the Department of the Interior, the department over which you preside, is a bill of very great importance to the country. It is a bill that treats of problems generally of a constructive character, a development character. The subcommittee that is handling the bill has been engaged in this work for several years and has become much interested in it. Some of us in the past year have had the opportunity to come in contact with your work in the field, and observe your efforts to familiarize yourself with the problems of the department, and have been very favorably impressed by your attitude toward those problems, and by your appreciation of their importance to the West, which has a greater interest in the most of these problems than the country generally.

We are very glad to have you come before us and to have your statement to open the hearings on this 1930 bill. Anything that you may desire to call to the attention of the committee we will be very glad to hear.

GENERAL STATEMENT OF SECRETARY WEST

Secretary WEST. I thank you, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen. I took office on the 25th of July, 1928. I came to Washington and was here something over 30 days. During that time I studied reports, conferred with bureau chiefs, and made an intensive effort to familiarize myself with the many and unrelated activities of the department as best I could in the office. Thereafter in the Northwest I met Congressman Cramton, your chairman, and Congressman French, of your committee, and others who were not members of the committee but were members of the House, and gave no little attention to reclamation projects, particularly in Montana and Wyoming. I

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believe that I inspected personally practically all the projects in those two States.

We gave considerable attention to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and the lands appertaining to that reservation, and went through Glacier Park rather carefully, making such inquiry as was possible to make, and by reason of the presence of the Congressmen I think I was able to obtain far more information than ordinarily could have been gotten.

I then returned to the department for about two weeks, going thereafter to the Southwest to Arizona and New Mexico. I gave particular attention to the Indian affairs and to reclamation. Some of the reclamation projects affected the Indians. I visited Coolidge and other dams, and went down to El Paso. We looked over that project between Mexico and the United States. Judge Finney was with me on that trip and Commissioner Mead was with us much of the time. We spent two days or more motoring and walking over the proposed conservancy district of the middle Rio Grande, visiting six pueblos. We attended four Indian council meetings with the governors and the native members of the councils. Through interpreters we discussed this proposed project.

We were at Santa Fe and looked at the headwaters above Santa Fe that would affect the district. At Santa Fe we conferred with members of the Pueblo Indian board and inspected their records and offices. We visited the land offices and other offices of the department, and then we went down, as stated, for two days through the middle Rio Grande section, motoring and walking for about 100 miles along the river. At Albuquerque we met with the conservancy board, and we met with opponents of the proposed project. Only this morning we have back from Albuquerque a revised and executed copy of the proposed contract, to which we are giving very careful consideration before signing it, in an endeavor to follow the statute as Congress enacted it. At Safford, Ariz., we gave a hearing to about 2,000 assembled residents who wish a more adequate water supply from the upper Gila for their irrigated lands.

After that trip of two or three weeks in the Southwest I returned to the department, and have been engaged since in the routine work of the department and until the last few days in the preparation of my annual report. This is my first report and covers the administration of my predecessor rather than of myself. Its preparation therefore has been a real job for me, but very interesting and quite informative.

Now, I am planning to devote myself particularly to the Indian situation. We have somewhere around 350,000 Indians in the country. We have very considerable sums of their cash in our control. We are trustee for great areas of their lands, and, of course, it all is a real responsibility. Only this morning, in looking over the list of deposits of cash which we carry, I find that since 1920 or 1921, about that time, there was over $6.000.000 deposited in banks which closed their doors, and all that has been collected, save about $40,000, which, however, we expect to collect, part of it having been reduced to judgment. There has been some loss of interest in that time, but no loss of principal. Our reclamation projects (Indian and white), considering the agricultural depression that we have had through

the years, would seem to be in very excellent condition. I expect now to devote myself particularly to the health and education of the Indians. They are problems of importance and worthy of our best efforts.

We do not ask from this committee, or from Congress, radical or revolutionary appropriations. My own opinion, from the observations and inquiries which I have been able to make, is that we will get more benefit if you give us reasonably increased appropriations, particularly for the Indians. Thus we can adjust ourselves to the increased appropriations and make each dollar go far. Our personnel changes rapidly. I think the turnover in Washington is about 59 per cent annually, which would appear to me to be very large.

Mr. CRAMTON. Of course, Mr. Secretary, in connection with that, it should be considered that there have been two increases in the last few years.

Secretary WEST. One was the Welch bill.

Mr. CRAMTON. And one just before it.

Secretary WEST. Yes. At any rate, we expect to cooperate with you gentlemen in watching appropriations. We do not want anything excessive. We want it in homeopathic doses rather than allopathic. We want to adapt ourselves to the changed conditions and administer things in an economical and careful way.

At the risk of imposing upon you gentlemen, as long as I have to do with the department and this committee is manned as it is now, I expect to confer with you often, and I will be very pleased if you gentlemen will volunteer at any time any suggestion you may have in connection with the department. I have seen enough of your committee to appreciate that we want the same things. You have an unselfish interest in rendering service, and that is why some of us are in Washington.

Mr. CRAMTON. I might say, Mr. Secretary, that it has always been the desire of this subcommittee to cooperate as helpfully as possible with the department. We have always tried to remember that we do not have an administrative responsibil ty and have always tried to avoid seeming interference in administrative matters; but it has been our desire to learn the problems of the departments, and to have our work here not obstructive but constructive. We do not wish to appear to be standing in the way of getting the money you need; on the contrary, through an understanding of your problems, it is our desire to be helpful. We will be very glad, indeed, to coopererate with you, and we feel very sure it is going to be very helpful to the interests that we are both pledged to serve.

Did you have anything with reference to your problems that you would like to bring to our attent on?

Secretary WEST. I think not, Mr. Chairman. I have found that you gentlemen are encyclopedias of information respecting our department and that your ideas and purposes are, in my opinion, absolutely correct. I know little about the department, with the undivided attention I have given it for three or four months, compared with what you gentlemen know about it. I am quite content to leave the matter to your best judgment. I am mindful of your responsi