Page:Final Report of the Northwest Territory Celebration Commission.pdf/24

 Federal Theatre, that two of them were then in New York for professional work.

The plan submitted to C.C.C. was that a place on the caravan party should be alloted to each State as an award of merit to the best C.C.C. member in that State. C.C.C. officials fell in with the idea heartily but again could give no final acceptance until Congress passed the act continuing the Conservation Corps.

No one concerned then contemplated any change in the new act, and plans were proceeded upon accordingly.

However, in late July Congress passed the new C.C.C. act and it was interpreted adversely to such a project as the caravan.

This left the Commission in a bad predicament, in that the entire celebration program had been built around this central motif, and had progressed so far that there was no practical way in which to redesign the plan.

In order to go through with the caravan out of its own funds, the Commission started in reducing budgets for other celebration features, and with so small a total amount to work with it was problematic as to whether the caravan could be included in the program by this reallocation of funds.

Finally, and assuming estimates on cost of personnel and other factors were correct, all but $3400 of the probable cost of the caravan was possible.

At this time Congressman Secrest introduced a bill in Congress and secured its passage authorizing re-appropriation of the receipts from sales of commission literature.

It is well to explain here that in such government agencies, any receipts go to the General Fund of the U.S. Treasury, and not to the credit of the particular agency's funds. To make such receipts available to the agency, bills must be passed by Congress, first authorizing their re-appropriation and second, actually appropriating them.

When the time came for re-appropriation, it was deemed best to estimate the total receipts of the commission and ask but one re-appropriation rather than one after another as the moneys were actually received. This was particularly true because this commission's receipts were in small amounts of from 8c to perhaps a dollar or two.

Congress passed the act appropriating $15,000. This is not regarded as an additional appropriation because it was intended to merely return to the Commission the moneys spent from the original appropriation for literature sold or to be sold.

This relieved the pressure somewhat as to the caravan plans, but at all times it had been necessary to be most conservative in management.

Again being new as a project, and yet dealing with the recreation of the period of one hundred and fifty years ago—it was necessary to do a great deal of digging into little known details of the past.

To illustrate, the element of oxen, how and where to procure them (with horns for instance); what they would stand in the way