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103

THE SECRETARY'S OPENING STATEMENT

It is my pleasure to be here this morning and to open in a ceremonial sense the second Smithsonian Priorities Conference.  I hope participants in this conference will think not only of efficiencies to be obtained with current resources, and of clear ways to engender future development, but also will bear in mind that we do not want to perpetuate a series of priorities every year which will entrench us as administrators to the end of time, and which will not allow us to think about anything new.  This is not characteristic of the Institution, although it tends to be a Washington phenomenon.  For example, one of the important Smithsonian achievements of the last decade is reflected in many letters coming in from various Federal Government bureaus.  These letters usually begin with some phrase like "Although we realize, of course, that you are not a line agency..." or, "Although we realize, of course, that you are not a Government enterprise..."  There is a moral in all of this.  We are not a line agency.  We are not a strict Government bureau.  There are pleasures to be derived from not being so, as well as perhaps some pain.

The pain would be for us to sit back and simply go to Congress every year for ever larger appropriations.  The pleasures are that we can derive satisfaction from knowing that we are real people with real plans to think about.  We have priorities, and we are able to make very firm and careful choices between activities we think are in the best interest of the Institution, or our respective divisions of the Institution, and those things which may grow like Topsey, with little purpose other than they mean just a little bit more money from the Federal Government.

I hope that in planning priorities for the future we try to emphasize continually the private side of the Institution.  This has been the great neglect of the past fifty years.  We have gotten into the habit of assuming that we were not going to get any private funds, and that we would have to go back every year along the appropriations line.  This is the easy way out.