The bill proposes to restore to the public domain, subject to homestead entry, accompanied with certain restrictions, the southwest quarter of the southwest quarter of section 2, lots 5, 6, and the east half of the northeast quarter of section 10, all in township 134 north, of range 29 west, fifth principal meridian.

The lands above described, together with other tracts, were, by proclamation No. 957, dated August 27, 1893, withdrawn from sale or disposal. This action was taken in view of a report made to the Secretary of War by the United States engineer having charge of the survey provided for by the acts of June 18, 1878 (20 Stats., 152), March 3, 1879 (20 Stats., 370), June 14, 1880 (21 Stats., 193), and March 3, 1881 (21 Stats., 481), which provided for the determination of the practicability and cost of creating and maintaining reservoirs upon the headwaters of the Mississippi River and of the St. Croix River in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

This Office has no objection to urge against the passage of the bill, but in view of the fact that the withdrawal was made on the recommendation of the War Department, I would suggest that the matter be submitted to the Secretary of War for an expression of his views in the premises.

S. 2296 herewith returned.
Very respectfully,

The SECRETERY OF THE INTERIOR.

W. A. RICHARDS,
Commissioner.

WAR DEPARTMENT, OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF ENGINEERS,

Washington, February 12, 1906.

SIR: I have the honor to return herewith a letter, dated the 31st ultimo, from the Senate Committee on Public Lands, inclosing, for the views of the War Department thereon, S. 2296, Fifty-ninth Congress, first session, "A bill restoring to the public domain certain lands in the State of Minnesota."

The object of the bill is to restore to the public domain certain lands reserved from sale or disposal by Executive proclamation No. 957 for the use of the Government in connection with the construction, operation, and maintenance of reservoirs at the headwaters of the Mississippi River. The bill provides that the lands shall be restored subject to the right of the Government to overflow them, if necessary, and as this is sufficient to protect the most important interest that the Government has in the lands I make no objection to the favorable consideration of the bill by Congress.

FURTHER PROTECTION OF THE PUBLIC HEALTH, ETC.

MARCH 9, 1906.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed.

Mr. WANGER, from the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce submitted the following

REPORT.

[To accompany H. R. 14316.]

The Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, to whom was referred the bill (H. R. 14316) to further enlarge the powers and authority of the Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service and to impose further duties thereon, having considered the same report thereon a substitute by way of amendment and as so amended recommend that it pass.

The introduction of yellow fever into the United States is generally through ports located upon the Gulf of Mexico, or in Florida or South Carolina. Experience has shown that the national quarantine is far more effective than State or municipal quarantine. The State of Florida has relinquished the conduct of all her quarantine stations to the Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service, and it is stated that South Carolina has recently authorized like action.

In the epidemic of 1905 a condition approaching anarchy existed in portions of the Gulf States, and, at the request of the governor of Louisiana, the Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service took charge in New Orleans and elsewhere throughout the State, the authority of these officers being more generally respected than the authority of other health officers, with resulting diminution of panic and disease.

It is believed that the United States should have quarantine stations and anchorages at the entrance to each of the principal ports on or near the southern or southeastern coast line of the United States, and where practicable and desirable, established stations and plants should be taken when the authorities controlling the same choose to transfer them to the United States, and that when there is no such choice or it does not seem to the best interest of the United States to acquire such established stations and plants, that new ones should be erected by direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, where, in his judgment, the same are necessary.

It is believed that there should be a quarantine station and anchorage at Dry Tortugas. There was formerly such a station there, which the Secretary of the Treasury and Surgeon-General of the Public Health and Marine-Hospital Service sought to have continued, but it was thought advisable to establish instead at these islands a coaling station under the Navy Department, and the sundry civil act for the fiscal year 1901 appropriated a sum of money for two quarantine stations in lieu of that at the Dry Tortugas, one of which was to be at or near Key West.

No desirable and satisfactory site has been found for the latter, and Garden Key, one of the islands known as the Dry Tortugas, is believed to be the best location for such quarantine station or refuge. It would be, furthermore, not a mere local quarantine station for Key West and vicinity, buc a convenient calling and disinfecting place for infected vessels bound in or out of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Navy Department has expended a large amount of money in the erection of a distilling plant, etc., as described in the accompanying letters, and has above 17,000 tons of coal to the right and left of the old structure known as Fort Jefferson.

The distilling plant and certain other erections for the coaling station will be needed for the quarantine station, but the coaling plant proper should be removed where it may be used by the Navy Department.

The coal should also continue for the use of the naval vessels and ample time be given for its removal to some other coaling station or used by naval vessels, as there will be no interference with the continued use of the coaling station, except when infected patients or vessels are in quarantine, until all of the coal has thus been removed for consumption.

It is also thought proper that if the Secretary of the Treasury should find it necessary to have other like quarantine stations for use chiefly for refuge, that he have the authority to establish not exceeding three such in addition to the one at Dry Tortugas. While, under the terms of the bill, the use of these stations is for the prevention of importation and the eradication of yellow fever, the stations will none the less be available for protection from any other infectious disease or plague.

It is also deemed important to prevent interference with the instrumentalities of commerce engaged in the transportation of passengers or freight between the States, as it is known that heedless persons (including State and municipal health officers) have greatly interfered with such passengers and commerce, and that it should be made a misdemeanor.

The late Senator Vest submitted Report No. 521 (to accompany S. 2680), in the Fifty-fifth Congress, second session, in which he stated: Beginning with the case of Gibbons v. Ogden, in 9 Wheaton, a large number of decisions have been rendered by the Supreme Court of the United States as to quar antine powers of the Federal and State Governments, but the substance of all these opinions is expressed by Justice Davis in Peete v. Morgan (19 U. S., 581):

"That the power to establish quarantine laws rests with the States, and has not been surrendered to the General Government is settled in Gibbons v. Ogden.

"The source of this power is in the acknowledged right of a State to provide for the health of its people, and although this power when set in motion may in a greater or less degree affect commerce, yet the laws passed in the exercise of this power are not enacted for such an object. They are enacted for the sole purpose of preserving the public health, and if they injuriously affect commerce, Congress, under the power to regulate it, may control them."

In the case of Morgan Steamship Company v. Louisiana, involving the constitutionality of a Louisiana statute for collection of quarantine fees (118 U. S., 465), Mr. Justice Miller, delivering the opinion of the court (Mr. Justice Bradley alone dissenting), used this language:

"Whenever Congress shall undertake to provide a general system of quarantine all the State laws inconsistent with said enactment will be abrogated, but until this is done the laws of the State on the subject are valid."

Mr. Justice Miller also said in this case:

"For while it (the statute of Louisiana in question) may be a police regulation in the sense that all provisions for the health, comfort, and security of the citizens are police regulations and are an exercise of the police power, it has been said more than once in this court that even where such powers are so exercised as to come within the domain of Federal authority as defined by the Constitution, the latter must prevail. (Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat., 1; Henderson v. Mayor, 92 U. S., 259; New Orleans Gas Co. v. La. Lgt. Co., 115 U. S.)"

In the case of Hannibal and St. Joe Railway v. Husen (95 U. S., 465), a statute of Missouri prohibiting the driving or conveying of any Texas, Indian, or Mexican cattle into the State between March 1 and November 1 of each year, was declared unconstitutional. Mr. Justice Strong, delivering the opinion of the court (which was unanimous), said:

"While we unhesitatingly admit that a State may pass sanitary laws and laws for the protection of life, liberty, health, or property within its borders; while it may prohibit persons and animals suffering under contagious or infectious diseases, or convicts, etc., from entering the State; while for the purposes of self-protection it may establish quarantine and reasonable inspection laws, it may not interfere with transportation into or through the State beyond what is absolutely necessary for its self-protection.'

Under the decisions in Peete V. Morgan and Morgan Steamship Company v. Louisiana, it is clear that Congress has the power to control the operation of State quarantine laws when, in its opinion, they injuriously affect commerce among the States, and whenever Congress enacts a general quarantine law all State laws in conflict with it are abrogated.

Edgar Howard Farrar, esq., an eminent lawyer of New Orleans, La., who vehemently repudiates all but the last of the foregoing conclusions. of the constitutional authority of the United States to supplant State quarantines, in an article dated October 21, 1905, in which he declares the quoted language in each to be mere obiter dictum, after recommending certain action by the States, says:

If the States can not agree upon any settlement of the momentous question of quarantine on interstate commerce, and if the present unsatisfactory conditions are not rectified, it will, in my judgment, be the duty of Congress to pass some stringent penal statute punishing any person, whether health officer or not, who shall unlawfully interfere with uninfected interstate trains and uninfected interstate passengers, passing through a State. No State has any power to block the highways of interstate commerce, or to lay embargoes on interstate commerce under the pretense of exercising quarantine powers. That power can be lawfully exercised without any such harsh measures. The limit of its exercise is "necessity." As was said in the Husen case:

The police power of the State can not obstruct foreign or interstate commerce beyond the necessity for its exercise, and it is the duty of the courts to see that under color of it objects not within its scope be not secured at the expense of Federal quarantines.

The same duty rests upon the Congress that rests upon the courts, and the Congress has the same measure of power to legislate that the courts have to adjudge.

Accordingly the committee recommend that the bill H. R. 14316 be amended by striking out all after the enacting clause and inserting the following:

That the Secretary of the Treasury shall have control, direction, and management of all quarantine grounds and anchorages and of all quarantine stations and anchorages of refuge established by authority of the United States, and as soon as practicable after the approval of this act he shall establish at the group of islands known as the Dry Tortugas, at the western end of the Florida Reef, a quarantine station and anchorage of refuge, whereto infected vessels having on board any person with yel