Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1921-08-26

that the public printer and the direc.
tor Of the budget between them intend
to save a large part of the fourteen
million dollars which it was estimated
it would cost this year to pay Uncle
Sans printing bill. In other words,
the estimates are to be cut radically
Fourteen millions is a large sum OF
money, but when men are talking IN
billions it does not seem to be sucn
a staggering sum after all. Neverthe-
less the hope is to bring the bill down
as close as possible to the pre-War fig
ures, which were about eight millions
of dollars. If six or seven millions
can be saved it is worth while.
The intention is to lop off here and
lop off there from the printing ex-
penses, and this of course means that
a lot of government material which
ordinarily has been put through the
press will go into the waste paper
basket, or in manuscript form will be
eaten by the Office cat or disposed OF
surreptitiously in some way by the
printers devil.
Everybody who receives public doc
uments from the printing office be-
lieves that a lot of stuff is printed
which never should have been put
through the press, but it must be re-
membered that this is the individual
viewpoint, and what does not inter-
est one man may interest another. SO,
broadly speaking, it is impossible for
any one person to pass judgment on
the general value of much of the print
ed material which the public shop
turns out for the reading public.
Congressional Record Is Expensive.
All the foregoing has reference,
however, to documents which come
from the departments Of government,
and it has nothing whatsoever to do
with the Congressional Record which
is, as its name implies, a record Of
the doings in congress, including the
speeches.
AS someone else has put It.: Go
quacity in the senate and house ac-
count for the largest single item Of
expenditure $4,000 to print and cir
culate the Congressional Record,
which has daily circulation Of 3d.
600 to 35,OOO."
Each representative in congress is
entitled to 60 copies each day of the
Record, while each senator gets SS
copies. OF course the senators and
representatives put favored constitu-
ents on their mailing lists for Con-
gressional Records and keep some
copies for themselves. Taking it by
and large, the numbers of free copies
are not many, but there is a great deal
printed in the Congressional Record
which is intended only to exploit, for
his constituents sake, the personal
and political views Of the Individual
congressman.
In order that the folk back in the
home district may know that their rep
resentative in congress is familiar
with the classics, or that he likes to
read modern poetry and essays,
speech after speech has been printed
LII l44C NO119 OoOlO4ldl 4eCNOIu DIT COuSlQ-
cradle cost to the people. The repre-
sentative continues his remarks in
the Record" and the folks at home
think that he is most learned man,
and that every word that appears in
print was spoken on the floor, which
frequently is not the case.
In the saving Of money it is prob
able that a good many manuscripts
worth while may be thrown out, or
because of advance information, may
not be printed or never may be pre-
pared. It is going to be hard job
to discriminate between the worthy
and the worthless, but somebody with
good horse sense will be assigned to
the task.
Advice to the Farmer.
There is no definite way by which
the various departments of govern
ment can determine just what material
which they send out in public print
form is the best worth while. OF
course, from some articles they get
large returns in comment from the
daily press and in letters from inter-
ested persons all over the country.
However, there are certain elements in
the community which rarely write let
tiers, notably the individual farmers.
If the farmers of the country find
that they are particularly interested in
some line Of governmental publica-
tons the wisest course for them to
pursue, if they want the printing on
the subject to continue, is to write let
tiers of interest and commentator to
the Agricultural department. This
probably will insure the continued
publication of particularly interesting
material.
A large amount of the printed mat
ter which goes from the government to
the country is educational in it's scope.
All of it is intended so to be, but there
are men IN the government depart
ments, as there are men in congress,
who yield to the desire occasionally
to air their own views without much
regard to the probabilities or possibili-
ties that their views may be of no in
terest to other people
Lake Poets Marked by Simplicity.
The term Lake Poets was applied
by the Edinburgh Review. early in the
Nineteenth century, to a group of po-