Mr. BOND. We have fallen down every time that we have undertaken to change a local name, and we have stopped it. The name that has been on that mountain for a hundred years, and in all the publications, has been Mount Rainier.

Mr. Wood. What is the use of your organization, then?

Mr. BOND. We have fixed Mount Rainier, and they appealed to the Congress and the Congress would not change it.

That is the situation so far as that one case is concerned. But we have cases of similar character at every meeting. We correspond with all the local people out there. We correspond with county officers, county superintendents, county clerks and other officials of the immediate locality, to find out what local usage is. We never pass on a name without that. We get "their slant" on it, their view. Mr. Wood. I do not suppose you have ever had anybody who has become a partisan of the name Mount Tacoma as against Mount Rainier?

Mr. BOND. We have had several delegations from Tacoma city, two or three times, advocating it.

Mr. WOOD. You do not suppose that the difference between the sizes of those two places has anything to do with the name of that mountain?

Mr. BOND. The only question we are interested in is, what is the local usage? What is the established name of the mountain? What do the people there, and in the State, and in the United States, and in the world, call it? What has become established? When we

find that out, then we have but one course to pursue, and that is to adopt formally the established name and say to the different departments of the Government here, "Do not use Tacoma any more, if you have been using it. This is the name. It is Mount Rainier and all of you must, under the Executive order, follow that name."

Mr. WOOD. I will tell you what you could have done just as well as to call Mount Tacoma Mount Rainier. You call the falls of Minnehaha, Minnehaha, do you not?

Mr. BOND. I do not remember whether we have passed on that

or not.

Mr. WOOD. Well, if you have not, God forbid that you ever do change it.

Mr. BOND. If it was the local usage, and it came before us, we probably would adopt it.

Mr. WOOD. It strikes me that we ought to try to preserve the things that are peculiarly American, instead of trying to cater to the things that are foreign.

Mr. BOND. I am right with you on that. There is not a particle of doubt about that. That is one of our principles.

Mr. WOOD. There is not much music in the word "Rainier." There is a whole lot in "Tacoma." Now, your whole activity, if it is worth anything, is sentimental.

Mr. BOND. No; we are not worried by sentimentality, because whatever is local usage is going to stick, whether it is sentiment or not. It is going to stick in spite of everything.

Mr. Wood. I do not think that you have offered an excuse, or that you can offer an excuse, for the continuance of this board at all, if you are only in existence with the idea of creating local controversy.

Mr. BOND. As I told you, we are enlarging the duties of the board remendously. We are going into the proposition that I spoke about, and have it started and under way with practically half the States ngaged in it; and it is something that the people out there could alk to you about much better than I can, as to the desirability of it. Mr. WOOD. Suppose that you were getting out your dictionary o-day, giving the nomenclature of these places; just taking the instance that we have in mind, what would you say about Rainier, or what would be said by your board about Rainier?

Mr. BOND. We would simply print our decision as it is in that book.

Mr. WOOD. Well, what is it?

Mr. BOND. If is very brief. I will hand you the book and let you read it. Our decisions are all brief. We are asking all the State boards, however, to recommend the names in their States for our consideration here. I have asked them to recommend names that are of Indian or Spanish or French origin if they are for new places, and I have asked them also, if they are of historic importance, to give us a brief line on that end of it: "What does this name mean? Whom does it commemorate? What event does it celebrate?" or words to that effect.

Mr. WOOD. Now, let us just see how much benefit this thing is either to the present or the future with reference to Mount Rainier [reading]:

Mount Rainier: Peak, Cascade Range, Pierce County, Wash. Not RanierMr. BOND. It is spelled in a different way:

Mr. Wood (continuing):

Nor Takoma.

Now, what does that amount to?

Mr. BOND. That was all that the departments of the Government wanted 30 years ago, when that decision was made. They did not want historical matter. They wanted to know what the name was, and we were authorized in the first executive order to tell them what the correct name was, and that is what that does.

Mr. WOOD. Suppose somebody looks at this thing a hundred years from now, when you and I are both gone, and wants to know something with reference to the controversy about this name. It does not say a thing about it. You just arbitrarily fix the name of that mountain as Mount Rainier. Is that all you are doing?

Mr. BOND. Oh, no. Our record on Mount Rainier is that thick [indicating].

Mr. WOOD. But it is not here.

Mr. BOND. We are not allowed to spread unnecessary material in that report. We have to confine it to a bare statement of facts. Mr. WOOD. My judgment is that that kind of business does not amount to anything.

DEPARTMENTS REPRESENTED ON THE BOARD

Who constitutes this United States Geographic Board?

Mr. BOND. We have representatives from eight departments and three independent establishments.

Mr. WOOD. Who are they?

Mr. BOND. The departments are Interior, State, War, Navy, Treasury, Commerce, Agriculture, and Post Office. The independent establishments are the Congressional Library, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Government Printing Office. Some of the departments, like Commerce, have four members.

Mr. Wood. Why is that?

Mr. BOND. They represent different bureaus. Some of them are bureau chiefs. They represent bureaus that are interested in publishing literature, maps and other things requiring geographic names. Mr. Wood. I see it is stated in the Congressional Directory that the board has the following functions:

The board passes on all unsettled questions concerning geographic names which arise in the departments, as well as determines, changes, and fixes place names within the United States and its insular possessions, and all names suggested by any officer or employee of the Government shall be referred to the board for consideration and approval before publication. The decisions of the board are to be accepted by all the departments of the Government as standard authority.

So about all that you are qualified to do is this, for instance: You could name that mountain Mount Rainier, or anything you wanted to, for Government purposes?

Mr. BOND. Yes, sir. We do not undertake to coerce the public at all, but they will follow the Government decisions, as a rule. All the big publishing houses come to the board for its decision when they get a name that they are in doubt about.

Mr. Wood. It strikes me that this is getting down to pretty small business when the Government is entering into an activity of this character.

STATIONERY AND PRINTING AND BINDING

You have an item here for printing and binding of $300, as against $345 for 1927. What do you use that for?

Mr. BOND. We use it for these little things; these publications of decisions.

PITTSBURG LANDING VERSUS SHILOH

Mr. WOOD. To inquire a little bit into the authenticity of this! book of yours, it seems to me that I have heard, some time or other, in connection with the history of the Civil War, that there was a battle called Shiloh. Did you ever hear of that?

Mr. BOND. Yes; I think the Government of the United States calls it Pittsburg Landing.

Mr. WOOD. Yes.

Mr. BOND. But I do not think that has ever been before us.
Mr. WOOD. There is no such name as Shiloh in your book.

Mr. BOND. Oh, no; there are a million names that are not in the book to one that is in it.

Mr. Wood. You do not pay any attention to a little thing like the battle of Shiloh? Yet places like Plum Creek and Podunk are all in here.

Mr. BOND. Those cases have all come before us formally from the outside. We do not pick them up. They are brought before the board by other people, asking for a decision.

Mr. WASON. Who brought up the question about Rainier?

Mr. BOND. It was before my time when they first got it, but it came from out there, no doubt. Nine-tenths of the people out there are in favor of Rainier to-day.

Mr. WASON. Not in that vicinity.

Mr. BOND. Yes, sir.

Mr. Wood. There has been a controversy of historians ever since I can remember-and that has not been very long-with reference to whether that was the Battle of Shiloh or the Battle of Pittsburg Landing; and that thing has never occurred to your people yet?

Mr. BOND. We will probably never touch that name at all. I do not know why we should, unless it comes before us, and unless the State in which Pittsburg Landing is located files it in a list of names. which they would like to have us adopt.

Mr. WOOD. I have been down there on that ground myself. Some of the people refer to it as Pittsburg Landing and some refer to it as Shiloh. That thing has apparently never reached this board.

Mr. BOND. It has never been before us so far as I know; and there are probably a million or maybe 5,000,000 names in the United States that have never yet come before the board. But with this work that we are doing now every one of them is going to come. Not only that, but in the Western States especially there are lots of mountains, lots of rivers, lots of buttes and independent peaks and ranges that have never been named. Now, the people out there are going to come to us and say, "Here, we would like to have this name attached to this mountain, for this reason, and we recommend it."

MOUNT RAINIER

Mr. Wood. It will end, I imagine, just like this controversy that has been going on with reference to Mount Rainier. When Tacoma was the bigger town of the two, it used to be Tacoma; but when Seattle came to be the larger town, they got to fighting; and it seems. to me it is the most foolish thing in the world for those two towns to be fighting as to who should have the right to name that mountain. But after Seattle got to be bigger than Tacoma, all of a sudden she changed to Rainier. It occurs to me that we are devoting a lot of money here to flyspecks.

Mr. BOND. Of course, I can not argue that with you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. WOOD. No; you can not argue it with me.

Mr. BOND. There are so many people that are very much interested in this matter. The departments of the Government are all interested in it.

Mr. Wood. Oh, it is not of much interest to the Government.

My judgment is that we are spending $3,645 here for nothing; just a little bit worse than nothing. You say that President Benjamin Harrison started this thing?

Mr. BOND. He issued the first Executive order.

Mr. Wood. Well, he was a great man. Somebody must have imposed on him.

Mr. BOND. The members of this board up to this time have given their work free, and have performed it in addition to their other duties, because of the necessity to pass upon these questions. It was not from any special desire on their part, but somebody had to do it; at least it was believed so, and so the board was created.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1926.

INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION

STATEMENTS OF HON. JOHN J. ESCH, COMMISSIONER; HON. E. I. LEWIS, COMMISSIONER; HON. FRANK MCMANAMY, COMMISSIONER; AND GEORGE B. McGINTY, SECRETARY

GENERAL STATEMENT

Mr. WOOD. Mr. Esch, we shall be glad to have a general statement from you in regard to the work of the Interstate Commerce Commission.

Mr. EscH. Mr. Chairman, if you will allow me to make a few introductory remarks before going into the details, I shall be very glad to do so.

Commissioner McManamy is here to appear for the estimates for locomotive inspection, and Commissioner Lewis will appear a little later in behalf of the estimates for valuations.

According to the understanding which we had a year ago it was thought wise to try to stabilize our various items of appropriation in order that we might avoid the consequences of violent fluctuations in the amounts appropriated. The fluctuations in the amounts appropriated for our several activities, as in the past, necessitated a shrinking of the personnel and the curbing of work which we considered as very necessary in administering the law.

We feel gratified that the Congress has seen fit to, in a way, stabilize our various items, making them all basic so that we would have a firm foundation on which to build and to conduct the work hereafter. In doing this we can better apportion our work and lay it out for the future, and better meet the current work and the emergency work that may come from time to time as the result of decisions of courts or acts of Congress.

We stated a year ago that should any of our work in any of our bureaus be lessened because of the completion of any given task, or because of a reduction in the general flow of business, we would come to you and so advise you; or should there be any increase of work due to the enactment of new legislation, or decisions of the courts, or our own decisions making necessary any increase in our force and hence an increase of the appropriations, we would be free to come to you and so state.

The estimates which have been submitted to you for the coming fiscal year are, in a general way, along the line of that understanding, in that the Bureau of the Budget has submitted estimates which follow closely those for the current year. There are deviations, however, due to the amount of increase which the Bureau of the Budget has submitted to you, based upon the per diem, as one matter, and presumably a reduction of approximately 2 per cent in personnel in order to enable us to come within the so-called 2 per cent club.

If these two facts are kept in mind in considering these estimates it will make it easier for us to undertsand the appropriation items which are now being submitted.