Your committee adopt the foregoing report and recommend the passage of the bill when amended as follows:

Strike out all after the enacting clause and insert:

That the Secretary of the Interior be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to place on the pension roll, subject to the provisions and limitations of the pension laws, the name of Mary Wolcott Kilburn, widow of Charles L. Kilburn, late colonel and assistant commissary-general of subsistence, United States Army, and pay her a pension at the rate of thirty dollars per month in lieu of that she is now receiving.

O

PUBLIC BUILDING, NEW ORLEANS, LA.

FEBRUARY 18, 1902.-Ordered to be printed.

Mr. SCOTT, from the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, submitted the following

REPORT.

[To accompany S. 76.]

The Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, to whom was referred the bill (S. 76) to provide for a public building at New Orleans, La., have considered the same and report it back with an amendment to title, and recommend that the bill do pass.

Since the establishment of the present post-office facilities in New Orleans the city has greatly increased in population, wealth and commerce. The population has more than doubled, and it is now estimated that it contains a population of 300,000.

Its exports for the year 1899 were $87,993,277 and the imports $11,917,659. When the present facilities were established there was no communication with remote parts of the country by railroads. Now, the Southern Pacific, Texas Pacific, Illinois Central, Mississippi Valley, Louisville and Nashville, and Arkansas Central railroads, all of which enter the city, connect it with the remote sections of the United States. In consequence of this increase in population, trade and commerce with different parts of the country by rail and steamboat, and with foreign countries and our coast cities by ocean transportation, there has been a corresponding increase in the post-office receipts in that city. Since 1889 the receipts have increased over 60 per cent, being $140,778.35, with a probable increase in the next ten years of $350,000.

The number of employees has been increased to meet the demands of the public service. The post-office is located in the custom-house, which was never intended for this purpose. It occupies the space once used for warehouse rooms, and they were never suitable for a postoffice and at this time are totally inadequate for an efficient service. The present location of the post-office is not convenient, being too remote from both the business and residence sections of the city.

At present the Government is paying rent for the accommodation of the United States quartermaster, the United States commissary,

board of pension examiners, and United States engineers in charge of the fourth district of the Mississippi. The United States courts hold their sessions in the custom-house, and it is conceded that the accommodations for these courts are inadequate. The proposed building, besides offering accommodations for the post-office, will be occupied by the above offices and the Federal courts.

The increasing customs receipts render it necessary that the customhouse shall be restored to its original purposes. With the removal of the post-office, the taking out of screens and partitions, more light will be given to the lower part of the building and it can be put in sanitary condition.

The following correspondence is a response to an inquiry from the Treasury Department of the Hon. J. R. G. Pitkin, postmaster, New Orleans, and gives a correct idea of the condition of the present postoffice and its inadequacy and the necessity for relief from the conditions so graphically described.

The following statement summarizes the reasons why there is an immediate necessity of the erection of a public building in the city of New Orleans:

SOME REASONS FOR A NEW POST-OFFICE BUILDING.

The present quarters are neither central in location nor adequate for the postal service to which they are applied. They were never intended for such use at the time of the erection of the building, but solely as warehouse space for the customs department, and were utilized for their present purpose during the civil war only for temporary use, there being no other quarters available at the time.

The general floor is but a few feet above the soil, charged with dampness.

The main corridor, to which more people have daily recourse than to all other parts of the building, is dark, uninviting, and discreditable to the city and to the Government.

The street fronting the post-office proper is noisy with drays and heavy vehicles, which seriously disturb the Federal courts, located immediately over the postal department.

As to the interior of the office, it is a wonder that such a volume of mail matter can be effectively handled. Though the day be fair without, artificial light must be used through the entire working department.

The numerous carriers are huddled closely together at their desks in small spaces, where they must assort their mail for delivery and attend to all the duties connected with their positions.

The registry and money-order departments are greatly cramped for want of room. The space allotted to the mailing division is so limited that the business pertaining to that most important branch of the service is carried on with great difficulty.

The unwholesome air arising from so large a force of employees breathing in a damp and ill-ventilated space, and the somber rear corridor, without an opening to admit light, justifies an urgent remonstrance of having human beings in such quarters. The records of the office, for lack of a record room, must be placed together with the stock of stamped paper in the storeroom, and for want of proper space it becomes a hardship to have to refer to the records when once stored.

The carriers have no dressing room, and the small space (part of the rear corridor) improvised for that purpose hardly allows room to move.

The present location is too close to the river front, which makes it very dusty within, and the incessant passage of vehicles to and from the river front is a continuous cause of annoyance.

The number of closets allowed is inadequate for the force of employees, and they are very crude and unsanitary in construction, as well as unwholesome from the standpoint of health.

SIR: In discharge of your request of the 8th instant in connection with H. R. bill 45 for the erection of a public building at New Orleans, La., I have the honor to state: 1. The amount of postal receipts at this office during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1889, was $357,794.59, and during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1899, was $440,778.35. The receipts of 1889, as of twenty previous years, were largely swollen

by reason of mail received and dispatched by the Louisiana Lottery Company, located at New Orleans, whose correspondence ceased September, 1890, under a Federal enactment forbidding thereto further postal service. By the decline of receipts for the fiscal year of 1891 to the extent of $76,136.04 it may be safely presumed that not less than $85,000 in 1889 was due as contributions of mail by the lottery company. That sum deducted from the total receipts for the fiscal year of 1889 reduces them to $272,794.59, in excess of which the receipts for the fiscal year of 1899 are over 60 per

cent.

2. The probable increase in the postal receipts here in the next ten years will reach $350,000, if not $500,000. My reasons for this forecast appear in paragraph 11.

3. The number of persons employed in this post-office in 1889 was 213-107 clerks and 106 carriers. The number now employed is 216-106 clerks and 110 carriers, as also 20 special messengers.

Yet another effect of the Federal inhibition upon the Louisiana Lottery Company's recourse to the mails was a reduction during four months after September, 1890, when that inhibition began, in the working force of this office, to wit: Twenty clerks in the money-order, registry, delivery, and mailing divisions. The increase from the remainder, 87 clerks, in 1891, sums up 19 in 1899, and should not be less than 8 more. On entering this office in October, 1898, 1 found a carrier force of 102, and have since secured an increase of 8 on request for 15.

4. The number of square feet of area now occupied by the post-office is 16,559; for working room inside of the post-office screen, 11,447; for front lobby outside of screen, 2,472; for rear lobby, 2,640; for assistant postmaster, 157; money-order division, 1,180; registry division, 1,248; stamp division, 176; city-delivery division, 3,003; general-delivery division, 325; special-messenger office, 68; carriers' division, 1,207; mailing division, 3,816; post-office vault, 165. The only other offices between the lobbies are those of the post-office inspectors, 1,197 square feet. Exhibit A will show their dimensions. Owing to the congestion in the working room of the post-office, the following are on the other side of the interior wagon way: Postmaster's office, 808 square feet; anteroom thereto, 416; lobby thereto, 342; stock room, 608, and general storeroom, 1,052, or 3,226 square feet of expansion beyond the post-office limits. The railway mail service office, moreover, is still farther removed-on the third floor of the custom-house building. It should be noted that the 11,447 squre feet of the working floor area proper afford the clerks and carriers no dressing room; that the special-messenger division is a small cage, that its messengers await orders at an inconvenient distance in the rear lobby; that the assistant postmaster's office is wretchedly small and inadequate; that the money-order division with its 8 clerks, 8 desks, safe, and counter, and the registry division with its 11 clerks, 11 desks, 9 distributing cases, and safe, are greatly overcrowded; that the approach to the safe of the money-order division is between two water-closets; that in the carrier's division the employees occupy case desks side by side in 8 tiers, 8 desks deep, in a total space of 1,207 square feet; and that in the mailing division 4 necessary pouch racks and the distributing cases so cover the space as to admit bare passage about, embarrass the handling of mails, and compel their inconvenient storage in the rear lobby, which opens on a dark wagon way open to passers, however irresponsible, from Canal street to Custom-house street. Exhibit B will show how this division suffers for want of room.

It should be noted, too, that with the somber Decatur street granite front of the post-office and its dark parallel screen, the two dark corridor walls in the rear, and the double walls at each end, the working force of 156 in the mail office (excluding 18 clerks and 42 carriers on station service and 20 special-delivery messengers) is practically within eight walls, which absolutely forbid proper ventilation and compel, even on the clearest days, recourse to numerous electric lights in order that the necessary work may be performed. The air within this interior is daily fetid by noon, and in the section toward Custom-house street the long tier of water-closets adds to the unsanitary condition, because it is on a dark rear wagon way which is never open to sunlight, and for which, apparently by reason of its mysterious laxative properties, the horses of the mail contractors and city delivery wagons especially reserve their deposits. The post-office quarters are an overcrowded, unwholesome, and sweaty vault, just above normally damp ground, whose character may be better understood when I state that of 700 postal-box posts of iron set up over the city three years ago, 150 so rotted at the base that they had to be replaced during the past year, and a contract has just been closed to replace 500 more which are now unserviceable. These quarters were originally intended and used for customs-warehouse purposes. The windows are sunken 18 inches in granite walls 4 feet thick; and sixteen columns 4 feet square support the arches, impede work, and waste 256 square feet of room. My private office, on the same level with the main office, has recently been patched

and painted to hide the erosions of the walls, presumably due to the influence of salt once stored there, and nine years ago like repairs at the same spots were made at the instance of one of my predecessors. Because of inadequate room in the main office nearly one-half of my private office is used for the storage, behind panels open at the top, not only of valuable stamp stock, but of old records, which latter, by reason of the dampness of the quarters, taint the air with a poisonous stench of must. An adjoining room, also for storage of records, and now full and locked up, is pungent with mildew. In fine, the whole post-office is a damp semicellar, which often smells like a tomb and offers in its unhealthful condition preparation for the tomb. I do not scruple to say that yellow fever can, perhaps, never find better encouragement in this city than at the present post-office, where a close and oppressively warm interior, and yet warmer because of necessary artifical lights, vitiated air, and a foul, dark wagon way, are especially perilous during the summer season, not only to its working force, but to the public which seek the office. The conditions involve distribution of disease as well as of mail.

Furthermore, the post-office is out of the business center, is remote by but two full blocks from the river levee, is subject to gusts of dust blown thence up Canal street, which has the width of three ordinary thoroughfares, and though expanded across the interior wagon way, is now without needed space for present and future requirements. I deem it appropriate to present in Exhibit C a token of public opinion here in the published conclusions on the 8th instant of a committee of the New Orleans Progressive Union.

5. Not less than 22,000 square feet of working surface of floor area are now required as proper accommodations for the present postal business, and a margin of 3,000 feet should be allowed for the next ten years. I venture to suggest that the postmaster's office and anteroom, inspector's offices, stock and general storeroom, now occupying 4,081 square feet, might well be on the second floor of a new structure, and accessible by elevator. One important feature in the interest of the mail service in other leading cities is the construction of points of lookout in post-offices, whence, unobserved, Government inspectors scrutinize the conduct of employees. Such supervision, in the interest both of the Government and of honest servants, is practically impossible here because of the construction of the post-office quarters.

6. The number of post-office boxes is 1,180 and of drawers 237. Of the former, 279 are not rented, and of the latter, 82. This measure of nonuse is largely due to the extent of the carrier service, which should be expanded yet more.

7. The post-office pays no rent, being in a Government building.

8. Nor is rent paid, and for the same reason, for the occupation of the Federal courts and their offices, port collector, gauger, appraiser, weigher, naval office, port surveyor, assistant treasurer, surveyor-general, land register, collector of internal revenues, Marine-Hospital surgeon, steam inspectors, shipping commission, special Treasury agent, Weather Bureau, and engineer office of the Hydrographic and LightHouse departments.

Outside of the custom-house building are located at different points in the city the United States mint, the United States quartermaster's department, the United States commisary department, the board of pension examiners, and the quarters of the United States engineer in charge of the fourth district of the Mississippi River. For the quarters of all these last recited, save the mint, rent is paid. The customhouse building appears, even to its roof, to be without further suitable accommodation. 9. Site. I have observed due caution in the ascertainment of available sites, central and convenient to business.

The diagram, Exhibit D, will illustrate their location. Commercial New Orleans is especially embraced between St. Louis and Poydras streets in one direction and between the river front and Baronne or Dauphine street in the other. Within this area a new building should be erected. I commend to your consideration the sites now presented.

(A.) At X, of diagram D, it would be on Camp street, in the active midst of the mercantile community, in the immediate neighborhood of the banks and exchanges, less than one and two squares from the leading journal offices, and less than a square in approach from Canal street. The space afforded by this site, as the proposition Exhibit E and blue pencil draft, Exhibit F, herewith transmitted, show, is 146 feet on Camp street and 217 feet on Common street, these thoroughfares being severally about 63 feet wide. The location would yield abundant light, air, and an area of about 21,768 square feet; and ample space for mail wagons on Canal street and an approach thereto, 36 feet wide and 125 feet deep, can, I am permitted to say, be secured for an additional $100,000 should the wagon service not be restricted, as it might be, to Common street.

The 36 feet wide tract Z, of diagram D, for suggested wagon way, is now occupied