An Act Providing for the Establishment of a Government Rice Farm Under the Bureau of Agriculture

February 11, 1903

ACT NO. 634

AN ACT PROVIDING FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A GOVERNMENT RICE FARM UNDER THE BUREAU OF AGRICULTURE

SECTION 1. There shall be established under the Bureau of Agriculture a Government rice farm in the Province of Pampanga for the purpose of demonstrating to the inhabitants of the Philippine Islands the practical advantages of modern methods of cultivating, harvesting, and threshing rice.

SECTION 2. The Chief of the Bureau of Agriculture is hereby authorized to secure by rental a suitable tract of land not exceeding two thousand acres in extent in the Province of Pampanga on the basis of the payment to the owner or owners of such land of one-fourth of the un-hulled rice produced on the land rented from each of them.

SECTION 3. The Chief of the Bureau of Agriculture is hereby authorized, with the approval of the Civil Governor, to sell at such time as he may deem desirable, at the current market price at the time of sale, any of the rice remaining after the payment of the annual rental and not required by the Insular Government.

SECTION 4. The following sums, in money of the United States, are hereby appropriated, out of any money in the Insular Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to be expended by the Bureau of Agriculture in connection with the Government rice farm for the purposes named: One hundred mules, twenty-five thousand dollars; agricultural machinery, implements, tools, wagons, harness, twine, and sacks, nine thousand two hundred and eighteen dollars; buildings, five thousand dollars; salaries and wages, including one superintendent at one thousand eight hundred dollars per year; one overseer at one thousand dollars per year; one overseer at nine hundred dollars per year; five laborers at sixty dollars per month each; seventy-five laborers for thirty days at thirty-cents per day; ten thousand eight hundred and fifty-five dollars; oats, hay, and coal, thirteen thousand one hundred and forty-eight dollars.

SECTION 5. The appropriations herein made shall be withdrawn from the Treasury in local currency at the ratio authorized at the time of the withdrawal; and payments in local currency of all obligations of the Insular Government properly expressed in United States currency shall be at the ratio at the time of payment, except salaries, which shall be paid at the ratio existing on the next to the last day of the month for which they are paid; and in any case where a deficiency thereby arises in appropriation for salaries, the appropriation of such further sums as may be necessary to meet the authorized salary payments in such branch of the Insular Government is hereby made. caITAC

SECTION 6. The public good requiring the speedy enactment of this bill, the passage of the same is hereby expedited in accordance with section two of "An Act prescribing the order of procedure by the Commission in the enactment of laws," passed September twenty-sixth, nineteen hundred.

SECTION 7. This Act shall take effect on its passage.

ENACTED, February 11, 1903.