The only officers or employees in the Department of the Interior, other than the Secretary of the Interior, authorized to contract on behalf of the United States, are the officers under the Secretary of the Interior "appointed to make such contracts." In other words, an officer of the Department of the Interior, except the head of the department, can not bind the United States by contract, unless appointed or designated by the Secretary of the Interior for that purpose. See Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co. v. United States, 261 U. S. 592, as to the effect of the absence of authority to contract on behalf of the United States. Where the officer has been appointed or designated as a contracting officer he can not ignore the mandatory and imperative requirements of section 3744, Revised Statutes, on the ground of "expedition and dispatch of the public's business," or that it could "serve no further useful purpose whatever for the economical administration and expeditious execution of Government affairs," as appears to be urged in this case. The Congress, with the approval of the President of the United States, had deemed it necessary, with the exceptions hereinbefore cited, for the prevention of fraud on the part of officers intrusted with the making of all contracts for the Department of the Interior, to require certain formalities to be observed in the acquisition of supplies or services, including the reduction of the contract to writing and the signing by the parties with their names at the end. As was succinctly stated by Chief Justice in Dixon v. United States, 1 Brockenbrough, 177, the contracting officer—
* * * is a ministerial officer, whose business ft is to pursue the statute, and if he fails to do so, the statute will not sanction his act * * *. That in this particular case, the condition inserted may not be in hostility to the general views of the legislature, can not materially vary the question, for it is not warranted by the statute; and if the officer be at liberty, under the color of office, to introduce such conditions as his own judgment may approve then his judgment and not the statute becomes the director of his conduct.
The fact that the requirements of a statute may work a hardship in a particular case does not justify excepting said case therefrom. Corona Coal Co. v. United States, 263 U. 8. 537.
Tt is not understood how it could be seriously contended at this late day and in view of the decisions of the courts and of the accounting officers of the United States as to the mandatory and imperative requirements of section 3744, Revised Statutes, that there is any discretion whatever in any officer of the Department of the Interior as to whether contracts for the purchase of supplies or services other than personal, with the exceptions noted, should be reduced to writing and signed by the parties with their names at the end.
