Act No. 261 (1901)

Also known as: An Act Creating a Bureau of Agriculture — the statute's own long title · The Bureau of Agriculture creating act — the genealogical shorthand of this wiki's Bureau of Agriculture entry · The 1901 agriculture act — the founding-date styling

Government

Definition

Act No. 261 is a statute of the Philippine Commission long-titled “AN ACT CREATING A BUREAU OF AGRICULTURE,” approved October 8, 1901 — the act by which the Insular Government of the American regime created its agriculture bureau, the body this wiki’s entry on the Bureau of Agriculture treats as the root of the Philippine agriculture bureaucracy. (LawPhil — Act 261) Section 1 created the bureau under the Department of the Interior in words worth quoting whole: “There is herein created, under the Department of the Interior, an Insular Bureau of Agriculture, which shall conduct investigations and disseminate useful information with reference to the agricultural resources of the Philippine Islands, the methods of cultivation at present in vogue and their improvement, the practicability of introducing new and valuable agricultural products, the introduction of new domesticated animals, and the improvement of the breeds of domesticated animals now found in the Islands; and shall, in general, seek to promote the development of the agricultural resources of the Archipelago.” The same section put the bureau in charge of “the Government farms at Magalang, in the Province of Pampanga, and at La Carlota, in the Province of Occidental Negros, and of the Government Agricultural Experiment Stations in the Provinces of Iloilo, Cebu, Isabela, Ilocos, and Albay.” (LawPhil — Act 261)

The statute is brief — five sections — and administrative in character. Section 2 created the office of “a Chief of the Insular Bureau of Agriculture, who shall receive a salary of four thousand dollars per year, payable monthly, in money of the United States”; Section 3 required the Chief to “submit to the Philippine Commission a plan for the organization of the Bureau, framed as nearly as may be after the organization of the Department of Agriculture of the United States,” gave him “general supervision and control over the work of the Bureau,” and authorized him to “appoint its subordinate officers and employees, subject to the provisions of the Civil Service Act and of Act Numbered Twenty-five”; Section 4 invoked the expedited procedure of the act of September 26, 1900; and Section 5 provided that “This Act shall take effect on its passage.” (LawPhil — Act 261)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article (title verified missing this session); the act’s history is carried within Wikipedia’s Bureau of Plant Industry (Philippines) article
Wikidata	N/A — entity search returns no item for the act (verified this session)
DBpedia	N/A — the data endpoint returns an empty resource (verified this session)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	agriculture — the bureau’s whole subject matter (headword verified this session)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A — no heading for the act or the Philippine bureau (search verified this session)
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	agriculture (c_203) — the act’s field (verified this session)
Google Scholar	Act No. 261 October 8 1901 Philippine Commission Insular Bureau of Agriculture Department of the Interior Magalang La Carlota experiment stations Iloilo Cebu Isabela Ilocos Albay Chief four thousand dollars USDA organization plan Act 2666 Act 3639 Bureau of Plant Industry
ConceptNet	N/A — ConceptNet API unreachable this session (HTTP 502)
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

An Act Creating a Bureau of Agriculture — the statute’s own long title
The Bureau of Agriculture creating act — the genealogical shorthand of this wiki’s Bureau of Agriculture entry
The 1901 agriculture act — the founding-date styling

Examples and Analogies

A bureau born with its field stations: one statute created the office, the two government farms at Magalang and La Carlota, and the experiment stations at Iloilo, Cebu, Isabela, Ilocos, and Albay — the research network pre-built. (LawPhil — Act 261)
A Chief, not a Director: the office the act created is “Chief of the Insular Bureau of Agriculture” — the “Director of Agriculture” styling belongs to the bureau’s later years, and the act is silent on who appoints the Chief, fixing only his salary, duties, and power over subordinates. (LawPhil — Act 261)
A succession fixed by later statutes: into the DANR by Act No. 2666 (November 18, 1916); ended by Act No. 3639 (December 7, 1929), effective January 1, 1930, creating the Bureau of Animal Industry and renaming the remainder the Bureau of Plant Industry. (LawPhil — Act 2666, LawPhil — Act 3639, Wikipedia — BPI)

Usage Scenarios

1. Citing the Bureau of Agriculture’s Creation

Researchers fixing the birth of the Philippine agriculture bureaucracy cite this act’s own text — approval October 8, 1901, the Department of the Interior placement, and the Section 1 mandate — rather than the summary accounts that renumber or misdate it. (LawPhil — Act 261)

2. Quoting the Founding Mandate

The statute’s operative language — “conduct investigations and disseminate useful information,” the farms and stations listed by province — is the primary source for what the colonial state understood agricultural development to mean in 1901; as a specimen of the Commission’s founding legislation it also shows the era’s method — enactment under presidential authority, an existing department as home, civil-service staffing, expedited procedure. (LawPhil — Act 261)

3. Tracing the Statutory Genealogy

The line runs from this act through Act No. 2666’s reorganization of 1916 to Act No. 3639’s split of 1929 — the three statutes every history of the Bureaus of Plant Industry and Animal Industry must cite, treated in this wiki’s entries on the Bureau of Agriculture and Act No. 3639. (LawPhil — Act 2666, LawPhil — Act 3639)

Strategies

Legislate the mandate and the estate together: farms, stations, and functions in one act — the bureau began work with a physical network already in public hands. (LawPhil — Act 261)
Copy the metropole’s template: the USDA-model organization plan let a new colonial bureau borrow a proven structure instead of inventing one. (LawPhil — Act 261)
Distribute the stations across the crop regions: Pampanga and Negros for the farms; Iloilo, Cebu, Isabela, Ilocos, and Albay for the stations — a decentered design the national research centers still reflect. (LawPhil — Act 261)
Let the chief build the bureau: rather than legislating every division, the act required the Chief to propose the organization to the Commission — flexibility by design in the founding year. (LawPhil — Act 261)

Security and Safety Measures

Food security as a founding purpose: the charge to “promote the development of the agricultural resources of the Archipelago” made the colony’s farm economy a state responsibility from 1901. (LawPhil — Act 261)
Civil-service discipline in the scientific corps: subordinate appointments were “subject to the provisions of the Civil Service Act and of Act Numbered Twenty-five” — professionalization for a technical service in a patronage age, with the $4,000 salaried Chief a full-time professional rather than a political perquisite. (LawPhil — Act 261)
For researchers: cite the statute as Act No. 261 of October 8, 1901 — not the “Act No. 271” misprint the standard departmental account carries, Act 271 being the October 19, 1901 statute on religious corporations’ landholdings — and do not attribute a “Director” to the 1901 text, whose office is the Chief. (LawPhil — Act 261, LawPhil — Act 271)

Historical Context

The act belongs to the season in which the Philippine Commission built the Insular Government’s scientific services. Enacted “By authority of the President of the United States” a year into civil government, it set the agriculture bureau in the Department of the Interior, ordered to pattern itself on the United States Department of Agriculture and to coordinate with the government laboratories established by Act No. 156. (LawPhil — Act 261)

The bureau the act created outlived the act’s arrangement. Act No. 2666 of November 18, 1916 gave the new Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources “direct executive control, direction, and supervision of the Bureau of Agriculture, the Bureau of Forestry, the Bureau of Lands,” and its other bureaus; and Act No. 3639 of December 7, 1929 divided the bureau, its animal divisions becoming the Bureau of Animal Industry and the remainder the Bureau of Plant Industry on January 1, 1930 — the reason the 1901 statute stands at the head of the modern Department of Agriculture’s bureau genealogy. (LawPhil — Act 2666, LawPhil — Act 3639, Wikipedia — BPI)

Challenges and Controversies

Act 261 or Act 271?

The standard departmental account credits the bureau’s creation to “Act No. 271” — but Act 271, approved October 19, 1901, is “AN ACT AUTHORIZING THE HOLDING OF LAND BY RELIGIOUS CORPORATIONS OR ASSOCIATIONS OF WHATEVER SECT OR DENOMINATION,” while the agriculture statute is Act No. 261 of October 8, 1901. The statute book governs. (LawPhil — Act 261, LawPhil — Act 271)

The Chief’s Appointment Is Not in the Act

The statute fixes the Chief’s salary, duties, and plan-submission obligation, and subjects his subordinate appointments to the civil service — but is silent on the appointing authority for the Chief himself, a gap researchers should state rather than fill. (LawPhil — Act 261)

A Colony Modeled on the Metropole

Section 3’s instruction to frame the bureau “after the organization of the Department of Agriculture of the United States” is the act’s ideological tell: the colony’s science was to be the metropole’s science adapted — a transfer of capability and an instrument of control at once. (LawPhil — Act 261)

No Linked-Data Record of Its Own

The act has no Wikipedia article, no Wikidata item, and no DBpedia resource — all verified empty or missing this session — so any semantic-web citation must be built from the statute book itself. (LawPhil — Act 261)