Perth Amboy evening news., 1910-07-12
BIG WASTE OF
PRINTING BY
GOVERNMENT

uUvEhNMENI
Washington. July 11:-Laws to
be passed at the next session of
congress providing for a more RAJ
tional production and distribution
of public documents will save mil
lions of dollars to the government.
The Printing Investigation Commits
sion, of which Senator Smoot Ia
chairman, his 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
senator and representative shall
have a certain number OF copies of
each document printed, with the re-
suit 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 100000 doou-
ments which members had failed to
distribute. Instead OF thus indis-
criminately allotting copies to mem
bers, 1t Is proposed that each Nom
Der be given a credit at the govern
ment printing office. which he may
use to get such publications as are
desired by his constituents. Thus a
member from an agricultural dis
trict could expend his entire credit
for agricultural Yearbooks, while
under the present quota system he
gets no more of these publications
than does the New York city mem
Der. The commission has ascer-
tanned that the average cost of doc
uments distributed by senators dur
ing the last five years has been
about $4,000 a year.
In studying the question whether
the government is now printing too
large editions of its publications,
the Commission found that the de-
partments and independent offices OF
the government returned to the Su-
perfntendent OF Documents in the
five years, 1905-09, inclusive, a to-
tai of 2,620,596 documents, which
they could not distribute and In ad-
dition now have on hand vast accu-
mutations of other publications that
sooner or later will have to be sent
to the Superintendent of Documents
and thence to the waste paper pile.
The Joint Committee on Printing
vas called upon this year to author
ize the sale Of waste paper of more
than 5000 useless or obsolete doc
uments that had been unloaded on
the Superintendent of Documents by
other branches of the government.
Another cause of the excess in
government publications is In their
duplicate distribution of libraries by
the superintendent of Documents,
the departments and by members Of
congress. The commission has made
a compilation of the reports of the
Superintendent of Documents show
ing that In the last fifteen years he
has distributed a total of ~7,906,892
government publications to libraries
throughout the country, of which
b,592,909 went to designated deposit
tory Libraries, 1~,638.091 to miscella-
neous libraries and 677,812 to geo.
logical depository libraries. In the
same fifteen years the Superinten-
deht of Documents has had returned
FROM these Libraries a total of t.
.679A164 documents or aG-aveTage- or
moro, thai ,UOO a year. This re-
ta4n Of documents discarded by the
libraries is rapidly increasing as the
reports show that In the last three
years the Superintendent of Docu-
ments has received 754,367 docu-
ments on which the government has
had to pay double postage in addi-
ton to the enormous expense of
printing and then dispose of them
as waste paper.
The commission ascertained thai
the departments have nine separate
engraving and lithographing plants
in operation, not including the Blu
reau of Engraving and Printing of
the Treasury Department. These
nine plants were operated at a cost
of $348,271 last year. In addition
to this the total awards to outside
establishments for engraving and
lithographing for the government
amounted to S317,664, making a
total of $665,936 expended by the
government for engraving and litho-
graphing last year, not including the
work of the Bureau of Engraving
and Printing which is confined to
printing currency, bank notes,
stamps and the like. The commits
sion is aow investigating the advisa-
bility of having more of the engrav-
Ing and l~ithographing for the gov
eminent done In it's own plants,
some of which are equipped to per-
form additional work.