reduced to $5, and then to $3 in Yellowstone, and we always bring these matters up to show you what the Secretary of the Interior thinks is proper. Mr. JOHNSON. How do the receipts from Yellowstone compare now with the receipts when you charged $5 or $7.50? Mr. DEMARAY. The receipts, of course, are probably more today than they were when we were charging $7.50, because there are more visitors to the park. Mr. SCRUGHAM. Here is what I think is worth conveying in connection with these proposed fees, that there is no desire or plan to charge any human being for getting into the great outdoors and seeing these wonderful things of nature. The charge is made for the automobile's use of roads. I think that that distinction should be made very clear. It is a facility that the Government provides in the way of roads, whereby the automobile can go in very much more cheaply than any other form of travel. If they were going in by team, the usual method of former days, it would cost them five, six, or seven times as much. Mr. LEAVY. Are any of these charges in any of the parks made on a per capita basis? Mr. DEMARAY. The only per capita charge at the present time is for special guide service. Mr. LEAVY. But the other charges are on the automobile or the conveyance? Mr. DEMARAY. That is right. EXPENDITURES FOR CIRCULARS CONTAINING INFORMATION REGARDING PARKS Mr. O'NEAL. What sort of a department do you have and how much money do you have to spend in that service for promotional work? Mr. SCRUGHAM. Advertising? Mr. O'NEAL. Yes. If these were private enterprises, just like a lot of things in Europe, where they attract hundreds of thousands of people, it would be made self-supporting. How much of an effort has been made along the line of what is being done by, say, Cook's Agency, or an organization of that kind? Mr. CAMMERER. I am glad that you brought that up, because that is very important. The fact is that the travel movement is on, and with the shorter working hours coming, the people want to go to these places, and it is a fine sign that people are more and more able to get out into the open and see the beauties of their country. For instance, when they come to the national parks, they ought to have something, such as a circular like this, to tell them about the roads, something about the beauty of the surroundings, the geology, the flora, and the fauna. Congress last year gave us $50,000 for all of our printing, not only of these pamphlets here, which are sent out by the thousands individually, to school children and others that ask for them, but are also given to the people that come to the parks- Mr. JOHNSON. They are not sold?" Mr. CAMMERER. They are given, and before 2 weeks have expired, the supply is gone, and Mr. Demaray can give you the exact amount that we have spent for these circulars. What we really need is $125,000 immediately to do this work. I think that that is the figure. RESTRICTIONS BY COMPTROLLER GENERAL ON ISSUANCE OF PARK CIRCULARS (See p. 504) Mr. DEMARAY. We would require $125,000 a year for promotional work, and we have $50,000 at the present time. We are handicapped to a greater extent now by a ruling of the Comptroller General, which has come out just recently, in which he has ruled that under the law which is quoted in his decision, the rotoprinting or multigraphing or similar processes cannot be used in getting out small circulars, as we have done, of this character [submitted samples of leaflets]. Mr. JOHNSON. On what grounds? Mr. DEMARAY. These are the types of things that we were trying to get out. It is the only information of these areas available at all. Mr. O'NEAL. This is fine, but what I had in mind was some announcement of what it costs, say, from Chicago to Yellowstone Park by automobile, and have that put some place where people will have the opportunity to see it. People do not generally know what the cost is at the parks, and they are a little afraid to start on such a trip. It seems to me that we could very well afford to provide for a department of promotional activities, to get the American public to go to these parks. Mr. CAMMERER. I think that that is a very fine idea, but you do not need another department. You have the biggest travel agency in the world right here in the National Park Service. Mr. O'NEAL. I mean a department of your work. Mr. SCRUGHAM. I think that it is an outrage that you are stopped from multigraphing things like this. I know from my personal contact with these matters that it is one of the most useful things that you are doing, and if you will prepare the necessary language to cover that in this bill, I will present the matter to this committee, because I think that this is done cheaply and economically the way it is. Mr. RICH. I do not think the Comptroller General wants to stop these people from publishing these things, but he wants to cause them to conform to the rules and regulations of the Joint Committee on Printing. Now, the fact of the matter is that they can get these things printed over at the Government Printing Office which we have established over there, which we have increased in size and made the largest printing office in the country for the purpose of doing the work of the Government, but these departments want to set up their own printing plants, and that is the reason why the Comptroller General is objecting. Am I right? Mr. DEMARAY. I might explain it in this way, that with $50,000 to do our printing, if we are going to get out information on all of the areas under our jurisdiction, it is necessary to resort to other means to provide for that printing. Mr. RICH. That is just what the Joint Committee on Printing, of which I am a member, objects to. They think that they are able to do this work in the Government Printing Office, and why can you not have your printing done over there? Mr. DEMARAY. For this reason, that the Department has a duplicating plant which they require for letters, and that sort of thing. Those people are not rushed all of the time. They are employed regularly. The employees of the Park Service can prepare this material, can type it, and can have the little illustrative blocks made by people permanently employed, and then they can be sent downstairs and printed without cost to the Department. If we send it to the Government Printing Office, we have to pay Government Printing Office prices, and when you have a very small appropriation, you certainly cannot get this work done. We have no objection to having all of the work done at the Government Printing Office, provided that Congress will make the necessary appropriation. Mr. RICH. Congress makes the appropriation for the Government Printing Office and for your office. You want to get an authorization so that you can do the work. I will say to the chairman of this committee and to the members of the Park Service that if the Printing Department of this Government permits these various departments to do as some of them have done, you will have a printing department in every one of them. I am convinced, from my observation of the operation of the printing divisions of this Government, that that is the case. Mr. SCRUGHAM. This is not printing. This is what we call mimeographing or duplicating, and they have it done very economically, so what earthly reason can there be for sending these to the Government Printing Office, when the cost would be 10 times as much? Mr. RICH. They would not be satisfied with that very long. They would want to have their own printing establishment. Mr. LEAVY. I am very much in accord with the general statment of our colleague, Mr. Rich, that all of our Government printing should be done in the Government Printing Office here, and I think that it is a highly efficient establishment and it does its work extremely economically, but I wanted to ask a question or two concerning these pamphlets. Do you get one out similar to this one that you have on the Hot Springs National Park for every national park that we have in the system? Mr. DEMARAY. No, sir. We have never been able to print circulars for each one of our national parks. The reason that Hot Springs and the larger parks have pamphlets is that they have been in the system for a long time and they have had circulars for many years, and it is a lot easier, and cheaper, to revise those circulars than to get out wholly new ones Mr CAMMERER And we have not been able to meet more than one-tenth of the demand. Mr. LEAVY. I was coming to that, to the demand for these circulars, Do you in any way give preference in the matter of demand to the school systems? Mr. CAMMERER. School children circulars" Mr. LEAVY. I am not asking about school children. I am asking about school systems. That would be the superintendents or the heads of the schools. Mr. CAMMERER. The curious thing is that in the Washington office we get demands through the mail for these circulars from school children who want them in connection with their graduation subjects, their theses and things like that, and we are not able to meet the demand. Mr. LEAVY. The purpose of my question was to suggest that if each school, or, say, class in geography, in the United States, could be supplied with a circular such as this with reference to the larger parks, not only would the educational value be manifest, particularly as to outdoor life, but you would likewise create a curiosity which would be a wholesome one and which would result in a tremendous increase in visits to these parks annually, and I am wondering if we could not expand that activity. Mr. DEMARAY. It would be a wonderful thing. Mr. CAMMERER. The demand is tremendous for them, and we are not able to meet that demand. You remember that during the war days in the schools they took all of the pictures of the Kaiser and of foreign potentates off of the walls. We would like to get these things into the schools, and eventually those school children will be national park guests, and right on that subject I want to say in addition that the reason for these 180 requests for us to investigate national park possibilities throughout the country is not only because they recognize the educational value of these things, but it means a lot of money distributed throughout the country and in the neighborhoods where those national parks are. I well remember that south Utah was absolutely dormant before our beloved Chief, Mr. Mather, went in there and developed those national parks, and now the people come in there and spend their money for gasoline and food and lodging, not only in the parks, but on the way to them. They buy oil and gas from local people, and they buy their groceries, and so forth, in the community, and that means a great deal. Mr. LEAVY. I think it is one of the finest of the public services. Mr. CAMMERER. In the Smokies, last year, there have been 750,000 visitors there, and I counted cars from 29 States one Sunday down there, and you can just imagine what that travel means to the economic welfare of this country, and we ought to recognize it, because we are the great travel agency of the Government, that has been recognized by Congress to develop these things. Mr. LEAVY. What do these pamphlets, like the one on Hot Springs National Park, cost when you put them out, by the thousands or ten thousands? Mr. DEMARAY. Those are all printed at the Government Printing Office. We have no printing department ourselves. Of that Hot Springs circular, there were 25,000 copies printed, at a cost of $894.96, and on August 27 they were exhausted. In other words, the edition was printed about this time of the year, and by the 27th of August all of the copies were gone. Mr. SCRUGHAM. About 3 cents apiece. Mr. LEAVY. If you increased that number to 200,000, would the rate drop any? Would there be any reduction? Mr. DEMARAY. Oh, yes; the rate drops as the cost of the assembling and the plating of the pamphlet is absorbed by many more copies. Mr. LEAVY. That is, if you had gotten 100,000 copies, you would have gotten them for considerably less? President to the Governor of Vermont that if his State would acquire 130,000 acres and donate it to the United States, the President would recommend to the Congress that it be accepted for national park purposes. Mr. CAMMERER. In the State of Florida the Everglades National Park has been proposed. The State of Florida is endeavoring to acquire 2,000 square miles of land and water area for that park, as a bird sanctuary and for public use. Mr. RICH. Is that recommended by your Department? Mr. CAMMERER. It has been authorized by Congress, on the recommendation of the Public Lands Committee. Mr. RICH. But they have not an authorization for that Everglades park, have they? Mr. CAMMERER. Yes. Mr. SCRUGHAM. Yes, sir. That was passed about 2 years ago. Mr. RICH. We had it locked up for quite a while. I recall now that it did go through. They said that they were not asking for any public funds. What is it going to cost you? Are they asking for any money now to develop that? Mr. DEMARAY. No, sir. The lands have not been acquired as yet. The status of that is that it was authorized by the act of May 30, 1934. There are about 40,000 acres of Federal land within the area. The trustees of Internal Improvements of Florida control about 350,000 acres in land, in water about 500,000 acres, and in Indian reservations 10,000 acres, or a total almost in hand of approximately 900,000 acres, leaving to be acquired about 350,000 acres, and it is those 350,000 acres that are causing Floridians a headache, because they are expensive lands to be acquired to meet the conditions. Mr. CAMMERFR. They still have to gather the funds with which to get the land. Congressman Rich, you will never regret having established this park. They want it established down there, because it is wilderness, and a great place for wildlife. Mr. RICH. And I will gamble with you that you will later be here requesting millions of dollars to develop it because it is wild. Mr. CAMMERER. Personally, I do not know that there will be millions put in there, but it is a fact that once Congress authorizes a national park, by that act it indicates that it will maintain and administer it for the use of the public. PROPOSED SCHEDULE OF FEES FOR ADMISSION TO PARKS Mr. SCRUGHAM. Mr. Cammerer, what has been done to investigate the feasibility of charging fees for entrance to the parks, in order to render them more or less self-supporting? That was discussed a year ago, and I believe that the Bureau of the Budget made some investigation. Have you a special report? Mr. CAMMERER. Mr. Demaray has a special report on that proposal. Would you like to have it read? Mr. SCRUGHAM. Yes; I would like to hear it read, because I think it is of unusual importance in handling the finances of the park system. (Mr. Demaray thereupon read the report in question, which is reproduced below.) |