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SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION   671
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MADE BY BAKER-VAWTER CO.
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the Budget Bureau and was therefore not transmitted to Congress.   The last Congress, as recommended by our Regents, by the Chiefs of the United States and British Weather Services, and unanimously by the National Academy of Sciences - but without the recommendations of Bureau of the Budget - appropriated $10,000 additional for the current fiscal year, 1926, in order that the Chilean Station might not be discontinued when Mr. Roebling's support ended.

The Bureau of the Budget, in the estimates for 1927, has cut off this supplementary $10,000 granted by Congress for this year, and not only so, but has cut the limitation of salaries for the Astrophysical Observatory to $18,000, which is $8,840 under the existing total.  This cut had to be allotted.

Doctor Abbot considered two possibilities:

(A) To allot for the existing personnel for eight months of the fiscal year 1927, and then wind up the work of the Observatory;

(B) To cut off the salaries of C. G. Abbot, Director, $5,200, and F. E. Fowle, Assistant, $3,800, for the entire year.  He has preferred the latter alternative.   It would not have answered merely to cut off the Chilean Observatory, for the total roll there is but $4,680.  So that unless one of the expedients (A) or (B) were adopted, as many as four of the staff would have to be discharged, and the entire observing program negatived.

Unless the Congress shall see fit to restore this item to the form and amount of 1926, not only will a highly promising and highly recommended investigation be crippled, but the Institution will lose the services of Doctor Abbot and his first assistant in the Astrophysical Observatory.  In the Budget before Congress there is no provision for the salary of either.

The next most serious cut by the Budget Bureau is the reduction in the Budget for next year of the current appropriation for Printing and Binding from $90,000 to $75,000.  Even with the current appropriation the allotment
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