The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-07-11

| WaShlngtOn, July 1.-The season of midsummer celebrations varying from | home-comings to oldest inhabitants | day, is wrecking the peace of mind of those who are running the Navy | Department. The American citizens | at large has a fashion of demanding that the Navy be kept in fighting trim always; but when the og-days | arrive and the citizens association ana me chamber of commerce of the nome town decide to have a little out burst of merrymaking of some kind or another, the citizens at large decides that to make the little gathering a success, then government should send the Atlantic fleet, and if that cannot come as many battleShipS and torpe- do boats and submarines as are avail | able.
 IT the Navy Department undertook to comply with the flood of summer requests the United States would have to stop farming and take to building oattleships and submarines for the next half century. The demands so far this summer, call for r fleets, 1S7 battleships and GA submarines, all of which are wanted to shed lustre on | the celebration of the thirteenth an- | niversary of the founding of Jonesville l or some equally important event. It is of little moment whether or not the village in question has no deeper access to the Atlantic ocean than three foot mud channel. The | omniscient Navy Department is ex- pected to send it's battleships overland if necessary. a
 Tt is difficult to convince the citi- zens of any seaboard city that the creek on which their metropolis is To- cated is not the finest natural harbor, with little dredging-in the world and large enough to harbor the fleets n al As the navy is the property of the people of the United States, who pay for it. it should be at the call of the six hundred and seventy-two citizens of the towns which wishes to cele- brate."
 For the most part the Navy Depart ment respectfully informs the appli- cants that the navy is laid up in the yards for repairs and cannot possibly despite the desire of the Secretary to make the celebration, wherever it may, success, be brought out for this purpose.
 In this connection it is curious how many people seem to claim ownership of the United States Navy. The citi- zen and the taxpayer is everywhere and he is not shy about declaring that he has good deal to do with the running of the United States. AL though the town which demands na-
 
 may contribute not more than thirty four dollars per annum to the upkeep of the Atlantic fleet the leading citi- zens usually head their petitions to their congressman: Whereas we, the citizens of Mercenaryville contribute to the support of the glorious Ameri- can Navy, we respectfully request that the Atlantic fleet be stationed at our spacious harbor on August g when our glorious city will do honor to the memory of John Jones our revered founder
 Laws to be passed at the next ses- sion of Congress providing for a more rational production and distribution of public documents will save millions of dollars to the government. The Printing Investigation Commission, of which Senator Shoot, is chairman, has discovered that the antique laws now in force have caused a waste of tons of expensive printed matter every year.
 The statute provides that each Sen- ator and Representative shall have a certain number of copies of each docu- ment printed, with the result that members have placed to their credit a great mass of printed matter for which they have no earthly use. In the vaults under the House end of the Capitol the commission found 1000, 900
 
 to distribute. Instead of thus indis- criminately allotting francs" to members it is proposed that each member be given credit at the gov ernment printing office, which he may use to get such publications as are desired by his constituents. Thus member from an agricultural district could expend his entire credit for agri- cultural Yearbooks, while under the present quota system he gets no more of these publications than does the New York city member.
 The Commission has ascertained that the average cost of documents distri- buted by Senators during the last five years has been about $2.400 a year.
 In studying the question whether the government is now printing too large editions of its publications, the | Commission found that the depart ments and independent offices of the government returned to the Superin- l tendent of Documents in the five years | 1905-O9, inclusive, a total of 2,620,596 | documents, which they could not dis 1 tribute and in addition now have on | hand vast aecumulations of other pub | lications that sooner or later will have | to be sent to the Superintendent of | Documents and thence to the waste | paper pill. The Joint Committee on | Printing was called upon this year to | authorize the sale of waste paper of | more than 900.000 useless or obsolete | documents that had been unlOaded | on the Superintendent of Documents l by other branches of the government. l
 Another cause of the excess in gov | ernment publications is in their du- | plicate distribution of libraries by the | Superintendent of Documents, the de- | partments and by members of con- | gress. The commission has made a | compilation of the reports of the Su- | perintendent of Documents showing l that in the last 15 years he has dis | tributed a total of 1906, 1892 government | publications to libraries throughout | the country, of which 5592, 909 went to | designated depository libraries, 1,636, ,O91 l to miscellaneous libraries and 677, ,812 ] to geological depository libraries. In | the same fifteen years, the Superinten- dent of Documents has had returned | from these libraries a total of 1,579,- | 164 documents or an average of more | than 100000 a year. This return of | documents discarded by the libraries | is rapidly increasing as the reports | show that in the last three years the | Superintendent of Documents has re- l ceived 754 367 documents on which the | government has had to pay double | postage in addition to the enormous l expense of printing and then dispose l of them as waste paper.
 The Commission ascertained that the | departments have nine separate en- graving and lithographing plants in | operation, not including the Bureau of | Engraving and Printing of the Trea- | sury Department. These nine plants | were operated at a cost of $348 271. last | year. In addition to this the total |