Chapter 2: The Committee is Reconstituted: 1862-1900

Despite going out of existence in 1857, the Senate Agriculture Committee was revived in 1863 thru the force of national events. First, the nation was in a Civil war with the secession of the Southern States. In addition, immigrants were pouring into America at an unprecedented rate, and the country was rapidly becoming an urban nation with an industrial base. At the helm of the expanding wartime government, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law three important Acts in rapid succession in the spring and summer of 1862; first, the Organic Act creating the Department of Agriculture; second, the Homestead Act; and third, the Morrill Land Grant College Act. **(Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience, Vintage Press, New York, 1973, p. 119.)** Clearly, there was a growing need for an Agriculture Committee to oversee all this activity for the Senate.

As early as 1838, farmers had been petitioning the Congress for the establishment of a Department of Agriculture, although the Petition of 1840 received an unfavorable report by the House Agriculture Committee. However, in the 1850s, support had grown for increasing federal support for agriculture. The Department of Agriculture was finally created when President Lincoln signed the Department of Agriculture Organic Act, on May 15, 1862. The first Commissioner of the Department of Agriculture, Issac Newton, outlined the primary objectives of the new Department as advancing and disseminating scientific research. The Secretary of Agriculture was to; " . . . acquire and preserve . . . all information concerning agriculture which he can obtain by means of correspondence and by practical and scientific experiments, . . ." Begun in the Patent Office of the State Department in 1836, the Department largely restricted its mission until the farm depression of the 1920s. Though the Organic Act of the Department contained broad language and authorized no major new agricultural programs, it succeeded in establishing an ongoing presence in agriculture, requiring funds and congressional oversight of the administration. **(Wayne D. Rasmussen, et al, Century of Service: the First 100 Years of the Department of Agriculture, USDA, Washington, D.C., 1963, p. 13.)**

On May 20, 1862, President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, just five days after he had signed the Act creating the Agriculture Department. Throughout most of the 1800s the nation was engaged in westward expansion. The federal government encouraged this expansion by giving away or selling much of the public domain at very low prices. The Homestead Act was important to the establishment of family farms in the unsettled lands. Despite the huge area involved, some 730 million acres of available public lands, only 213 million acres were given to settlers under the Homestead Act. Farm families could settle on these public lands, and, if they improved the claim with water and fencing, and stayed for five years, they could take title to 160 acres. Prior to and during the Civil War, the country was experiencing a tremendous influx of immigrants from around the world. Individuals displaced because of the Civil War, new immigrants, and farmers looking for virgin lands moved westward. The building of the railroads facilitated that movement.

Immigrants flooded to America during this period. In 1864 some 193,000 landed in America. By 1907, that number had risen 1,285,000 annually. In 1860, of a total national population of 31 million, four million were foreign born, and by 1900, when the U.S. population topped 76 million, the foreign born population reached 10 million. **(Charles and Mary R. Beard, A Basic History of the United States, Doubleday, New York, 1944, pp. 296-297.)** There was also an interesting shift in the immigration pattern during this period. At the time of the opening of the approximately 730 million acres of public lands as a result of the Homestead and other Acts, immigrants were primarily from Great Britain, Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia. In the latter part of the century, however, with the initial settling of the land largely over, the origins of large numbers of immigrants shifted to southern and eastern Europe. These immigrants tended to move into the booming cities to work in new industries that were springing up. The population living in cities of over 30,000 increased from 10 percent of the total in 1860 to more than 25 percent of the total U.S. population by 1900.

In passage of the third important Act of 1862, the Morrill Land Grant College Act, Congressman Justin S. Morrill of Vermont pointed out that existing colleges taught only subjects for the "learned professions," and there were no centers for advanced learning for young people interested in agriculture and engineering. Morrill, who felt his own lack of education had hampered his success, proposed that public land be made available to each State for the establishment and operation of State agricultural and mechanical colleges. The lack of government encouragement to agriculture in the United States, he said, had prevented the improvement of farming methods. He also sensed a great public demand for field and laboratory experiments.

At the time the Morrill Act became law, agricultural colleges were in operation in only four States. Within the next ten years, the Morrill Act encouraged development of agricultural colleges in 26 more States. As introduced in the Senate, the Morrill bill provided grants to states of thirty thousand acres for each member representing the state in the House and Senate. States were then to sell this public land, using the proceeds to invest in bonds yielding at least 5-percent interest. In all, 16,000 square miles of federal lands were given to the States under the Morrill Act. The income could be applied to all costs except for the erection of buildings. Additionally, the colleges had to be established within five years of enactment.

Western Senators generally opposed the bill, fearing that it would tie up their public lands, placing their states in the hands of "absentee landlords." In response to these fears, the Senate adopted an amendment by Senator James K. Lane of Kansas prohibiting the location of more than a million acres in a single state. With that amendment, serious Western opposition in both Chambers disappeared. The great objective was a liberal and practical education of the people in the professions of life. Subsequently, Congress provided direct annual grants to these colleges for more precisely specified educational purposes.

Later, in 1867, Morrill was elected to the U.S. Senate, and while he never served on the Agriculture Committee, he continued his legislative campaign for additional support for land-grant colleges. Eventually, an Act approved in 1890 assured each land-grant college an annual Federal grant of $25,000 and authorized support for separate land-grant colleges for blacks.

Because of laws such as the Morrill Act, the creation of the Department of Agriculture, and the westward movement of millions of immigrants into largely agricultural areas, the Committee on Agriculture was recreated by the Senate at the beginning of the 38th Congress, on March 6, 1863. During the six-year interim, bills to establish agricultural professorships and to incorporate the United States Agricultural Society, which likely would have been handled by the Committee, were referred to the Committee on Public Lands and the Committee on the District of Columbia, respectively.

Senator John Sherman of Ohio, later to be remembered for the Anti-trust Act of 1890 that bears his name, sponsored the resolution recreating the panel in 1863. Senator Sherman was then appointed the Committee's new Chairman along with three Free Soil Republicans; James Harlan, from Iowa, Henry Wilson, from Massachusetts, and James Lane, from Kansas also serving on the new committee. Senator Lazarus Powell, a Democrat from Kentucky, represented the opposition. And for the first time, the reconstituted committee now included a clerk, Mr. Joseph McCollough. It was not until 1892 that the committee staff would increase to two individuals. In 1869, the Agriculture Committee began to meet one floor below the Senate chamber in room S-122 of the Capitol. The specific reasons for the committee's recreation are unclear. The matter was not debated on the Senate floor, and there was no apparent effort underway at the time to change the standing committee system.

In addition to a Committee Report issued in 1864 calling for the enactment of suitable laws for the encouragement and protection of immigrants, the committee's interest in the new Department of Agriculture became apparent almost immediately. One of the first measures reported from the Agriculture Committee was a joint resolution providing additional office space for departmental employees. Significantly, one of the Department's duties requiring additional office space was the collection and distribution of agricultural statistics, an area formerly considered outside the committee's jurisdiction. Apparently, the consolidation of certain agricultural programs within a single department had augmented the jurisdiction of the reconstituted Committee on Agriculture. **(Congressional Globe, February 18, 1864, p. 719.)**

Throughout the latter half of the 19th century, the Committee on Agriculture established additional jurisdiction in a number of important areas affecting the country. The committee considered and reported legislation on forest reserves and timber lands, agricultural experiment stations, animal industry, commodity prices, and agricultural sciences. A further indication of the broad scope of the committee's activities in these early years came on February 10, 1879, when the Senate adopted a concurrent resolution supporting the advancement of agricultural interests. The resolution included a statement authorizing the agriculture committees of both chambers:

"...to consider generally the subject of agriculture, and report, by bill or otherwise, what can or ought to be done by the General Government to advance, encourage, and foster agricultural interests." **(Congressional Record, Volume 8, February 10, 1879, p. 64.)**

Land Grant Colleges provided a major contribution to agriculture through the development of laboratory work in which students participated. It soon became evident that the experimental work carried out by the agricultural professors needed more support and attention than could be given it by full-time teachers. The Hatch Experiment Station Act, championed by House Agriculture Committee member William A. Hatch, a Democrat from Missouri, was enacted March 2, 1887. The new law established funding, in cooperation with States, for experimental work to be carried on in an organized manner in experiment stations affiliated with the organic agricultural colleges. The close working relationship between federal and state agencies under this Act has served as a model for federal-state cooperation in other areas.

While agricultural experiment station research is organized primarily to solve agriculture's most pressing problems, it has also spawned by-products that paved the way for general advancement in the biological and life sciences. Some of these have helped medical research win victories over diseases like tuberculosis, brucellosis, rabies and others. Much of the great progress made in the field of antibiotics first grew out of experiment station research that had for its objective a better understanding of the nature of soil bacteria.

As agricultural research activities expanded it soon became evident that research results should be made available not only to students, but to members of the farming community at large. The creation of agricultural extension departments at the colleges was proposed to facilitate dissemination of new information directly to operating farmers.

To complement the Morrill Act, the Department of Agriculture acquired and experimented with the introduction of new crops. Farmers adopted labor saving machines, substituting horse power for human power. Mechanization was especially stimulated by the shortage of labor caused by the Civil War. The great expansion of agricultural land, combined with horse drawn mechanization of farm equipment and better transportation to industrialized population centers, created a commercial agriculture by the latter part of the 19th century. At the same time, problems of excess supply and low commodity prices developed. Farmers saw inequities and monopoly power in the farm input and marketing sectors as being largely responsible for their distressed condition. Cooperative action constituted farmers' early efforts to deal with what they felt to be the political and economic injustices facing them. Farmers organized cooperatives to bargain in selling their products, to purchase and manufacture their needed supplies, to provide credit, and even to process raw commodities into finished products.

In January 1888, the Agriculture Committee held a series of hearings to learn about research advances for the treatment of contagious pleuro-pneumonia, foot-and-mouth disease, and rinderpest, as well as ways to eradicate gypsy months threatening New England. **(Congressional Information Systems, Index to Unpublished U.S. Senate Committee Hearings: 18th Congress-88th Congress, Washington, D.C., p. 8.)**

There was one setback, however. Events surrounding the creation and early development of the Senate Committee on Appropriations had a significant effect on the Agriculture Committee's jurisdiction during the latter part of the 19th century. The creation of the Appropriations Committee in 1867 led to the consolidation of most general appropriations bills within that committee's jurisdiction by 1877. In that year the Senate formally amended its rules to centralize jurisdiction over most general appropriations within the committee. However, the new procedure raised fears that, among other factors, such authority was excessive and limited the legislative influence of the other standing committees. In 1881, however, a new crisis in the Senate was to directly affect the Senate Agriculture Committee. **(George Lee Robinson, "The Development of the Senate Committee System, Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University, 1955, pp. 269-271.)**

It began when Chester A. Arthur's succession to the Presidency after the death of President James A. Garfield removed the Vice President from the Senate at a time when his tie-breaking vote was of special importance. For the only time in its history, the body stood evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. The Senate that met on March 4, 1881, consisted of 37 Republicans, 37 Democrats and 2 Independents. One of the Independents, David Davis of Illinois had announced that he would vote on procedural issues with the Democrats. The other Independent, William Mahone of Virginia, owed his recent election to a breakaway faction within his State's Democratic Party. Known as the "Readjusters" that faction pledged itself to a reduction or "readjustment" of Virginia's heavy burden of accumulated financial indebtedness. On March 14, 1881, the Senate proceeded to vote on Committee assignments. When his name was called, Mahone, from his seat on the Democratic side, cast his vote with the Republicans. As a result of the bargain he had made, the freshman Mahone was given the Chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee, as well as the right to select the Secretary and Sergeant at Arms in the Senate. **(Robert C. Byrd, The Senate 1789-1989: Addresses on the History of the United States Senate, Volume I, Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1988, pp. 323-325.)**

In the authorizing committees deep resentment continued over the loss of their control of appropriations. The Committee on Agriculture, on January 26, 1883, reported a resolution amending Senate rules to transfer jurisdiction over Department of Agriculture appropriations from the Committee of Appropriations to itself. The Agriculture Committee's resolution was one of several similar proposals during this period. Though no action was taken at that time, sentiment continued to grow in the Senate to transfer certain appropriations measures, including appropriations for the Department of Agriculture to authorizing committees.

During this period, the management of the nation's forest resources took center stage. Forestry became an especially important part of the Committee's responsibility. In fact, the addition of a Bureau of Forestry to the Department of Agriculture in the mid-1870's prompted the Senate to change the Committee's name to the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry in 1884. **(U.S. Senate, Temporary Select Committee to Study the Senate Committee System, Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1976, p. 15.)**

Forests have played an important role in the development of America. Initially, forests were seen as impediments to the westward expansion of the Nation, but their value in providing building materials and protecting watersheds was recognized before 1900. Seeing their importance, Congress enacted legislation--section 24 of the Act of March 3, 1891, providing for the establishment of the first Federal forest reserves. Jurisdiction over the 56 million acres of reserves was transferred from the U.S. Department of the Interior to the Agriculture Department in 1905, and the Bureau of Forestry became the Forest Service. President Theodore Roosevelt added to the system in 1906 and 1907, more than doubling the area and changing the name of the reserves to National Forests. Today, the National Forest System contains nearly 191 million acres in 44 States and is a major focus of Forest Service activities and funding. The Forest Service also provides assistance to States and to private forest owners and conducts and coordinates forestry research.

Congress has been active in providing guidance to the Forest Service in managing the National Forests. The initial guidance, the Organic Act of 1897, identified watershed protection and future timber supplies as two reasons for the establishment of the forest reserves, and established conditions on federal lands under which timber could be sold or given away.

Finally, during this period, the authorizing committees continued efforts to regain their jurisdiction over appropriations. On December 21, 1898, a resolution was submitted by Senator Thomas H. Carter of Montana, who never served on the Committee, amending Senate rules to require referral of certain general appropriations to authorizing committees, including the referral of the Department of Agriculture appropriations to the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. The Rules Committee reported the resolution on January 27, 1899, and the Senate gave its approval the next day.

The decades prior to the turn of the century were filled with change. The United States, which doubled in size with the Louisiana Purchase from 890 thousand square miles to 1.7 million square miles, was filling up even as additional western states were admitted into the union. **( 1994 World Almanac, Funk and Wagnals, New Jersey, 1994, p. 429.)** Immigrants, originally seeking those free lands of the west, turned increasingly to the cities for the growing employment sparked by the Civil War. Now at the close of the century, the Agriculture Committee, in concert with President Theodore Roosevelt, would increasingly turn to active oversight of important areas of agricultural endeavor such as food safety.