prevent trespass and to guard against and check fires upon the lands involved in the case of the United States v. Oregon & California Railroad Co. and others, suit numbered 3340 in the District Court for the District of Oregon, now pending on appeal in the Supreme Court of the United States, $25,000."

In a letter from the Secretary of the Interior to the chairman of the committee, dated May 14, 1917, the Secretary suggests the following legislation:

For the protection of the so-called Oregon & California Railroad land and Coos Bay wagon-road land: To enable the Secretary of the Interior, with the cooperation of the Secretary of Agriculture or otherwise, as in his judgment may be most advisable, to establish and maintain a patrol to prevent trespass, and to guard against and check fires upon the lands revested in the United States by the act of June 9, 1916 (39 Stats., p. 218), and the lands known as the Coos Bay wagon-road lands involved in the case of Southern Oregon Co. v. United States (No. 2711 in the circuit court of appeals in the. ninth circuit), $25,000.

What have you to say about that?

Mr. TALLMAN. That makes no additional appropriation. It simply authorizes the use of the $25,000 appropriated for fire protection on the Oregon and California grant lands, on the Coose Bay grant lands as well. The lands are situated in the same general section and overlap very largely, and the United States District Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals have now both decided in the case of the Coos Bay land, embracing about 90,000 acres, in favor of the Government. We are not advised as yet whether appeal has been taken or will be taken to the Supreme Court. We want to protect these lands as well as the Oregon and California lands, and they very largely overlap and are in the same general area.

Mr. SHERLEY. And you think the sum of $25,000 which is now available for the one is sufficient to take care of both?

Mr. TALLMAN. I think so. There are 2,300,000 acres of the Oregon and California land, and only 90,000 acres of the Coos Bay lands situated largely among the Oregon and California lands, and I think that is sufficient to handle it all.

MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 1917.

PATENT OFFICE.

STATEMENT OF MR. WILLIAM F. WOOLARD, CHIEF CLERK.

TRANSFER OF APPROPRIATION FOR SHELVING FROM GENERAL LAND OFFICE TO PATENT

OFFICE.

Mr. SHERLEY. There has been submitted in House Document No. 308 the following item:

General Land Office Building: For dismantling and rebuilding wooden shelving for the storage of patents, including necessary labor and material, $5.000. to continue available during the fiscal year 1918.

It appears by the statement of the Commissioner of Patents that this appropriation will not be used by reason of the fact that the General Land Office Building is specified, which building has been assigned to the use of the War Department, and he requests, therefore,

that Congress be asked to authorize the expenditure in the Patent Office Building of the money thus appropriated.

Mr. WOOLARD. Mr. Sherley, Mr. Ewing, the commissioner, will retire from his office within a very few days and he asked me, as the chief clerk of the office, to come up and present this matter to the committee.

When the appropriation was asked for our plans for the occupation of the Land Office Building had been arranged. Since that time the outbreak of the war has deprived us of the use of that building, by reason of its having been assigned to the use of the War Department. The copies of patents are scattered everywhere through the Patent Office and it is very difficult to secure any systematic arrangement of them, because we have to put them wherever we can find the space. There will be some rooms in the basement of the Patent Office Building vacated in a little while, and our proposition is to bring these còpies from the galleries, the corridors, the rooms, and wherever they may be and place them in the basements, where they can be easily accessible.

Mr. SHERLEY. You are not expecting to stay there?

Mr. WOOLARD. We are in the Patent Office Building and expect to remain there.

Mr. SHERLEY. Permanently?

Mr. WOOLARD. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHERLEY. You are not going to move over to the General Land Office Building?

Mr. WOOLARD. We can not tell when; we do not know when we will have access to that building.

Mr. SHERLEY. At present you are getting along just as you did previously?

Mr. WOOLARD. Yes, sir; in a very much congested condition, with great handicap to the work by reason of the fact that we have no good arrangement of these copies. If we could build the shelves in the basement rooms and arrange the copies in the order in which they should be and in the order in which we intended to arrange them in the Land Office Building, the work would be facilitated very much.

Mr. SHERLEY. Subsequently you will want to move them again when you move over to that building?

Mr. WOOLARD. If the time ever comes when we can move into that building.

Mr. SHERLEY. What sort of storage do you propose to have there? Mr. WOOLARD. Just to construct cases in the rooms which will become vacant.

Mr. SHERLEY. Can you use the same material?

Mr. WOOLARD. We can use the material, much of it-the material which is in the cases which are now scattered all through the building, on every floor and in every corner. It will be a great economy if the copies can be arranged so that they can be drawn without the loss of time which we now suffer.

Mr. BYRNS. I should like to ask whether or not it was originally contemplated that the Patent Office should use both buildings, or whether you were going to move across the street altogether?

Mr. WOOLARD. Our plans looked to the occupation of part of the building across the street; that is, the Land Office Building. Some

of our divisions were to go over there, and among those divisions, this division which has charge of the distribution of the copies of the patents.

Mr. BYRNS. Are there any other bureaus of the Interior Department in the present Patent Office Building?

Mr. WOOLARD. No, sir.

Mr. BYRNS. It is occupied exclusively by the Patent Office?

Mr. WOOLARD. Yes, sir. There are only some of the branches of the supply division of the Interior Department, but they are going up to the new building. The supplies will go out, and in time we will have the entire building.

Mr. BYRNS. Some of the bureaus of the Interior Department were in that building.

Mr. WOOLARD. Only the Secretary's office. The Secretary vacated about 35 rooms, which have been used by the Patent Office. We have expanded a little bit, not as much as we wanted, because we intended to move six or eight divisions from the Patent Office Building to the Land Office Building across the street.

Mr. BYRNS. You must have been very congested if 35 rooms do not afford any relief?

Mr. WOOLARD. The working conditions were almost intolerable.

BINDING FOREIGN PATENTS.

The commissioner asked me to call another matter to the attention of the committee and to present this letter:

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

Hon. JOHN J. FITZGERALD,

UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE,
Washington, D. C., August 11, 1917.

Chairman Committee on Appropriations,

House of Representatives.

MY DEAR Mr. FITZGERALD: The sundry civil act, approved June 12, 1917, contained an item as follows: "For binding in classified order one set of German patents now in the Patent Office Library, $20,000.”

It is now found that the work of binding this set of German patents can probably be completed at a cost of not exceeding $14,000. This has been brought about by reducing somewhat the cost of materials used and changing the manner of binding.

There are now in the Patent Office classified sets of foreign patents by other countries, particularly Austria, and it is desired that the appropriation be modified so as to permit of the use of the unexpended balance for binding in classified order the patents of foreign countries, other than German.

Yours, very truly,

THOMAS EWING, Commissioner of Patents.

That appropriation was made in the act of June 12, I think, based upon a careful estimate by the Public Printer that the work could be done for $20,000. His first estimate was $32,000. We reduced that to $20,000 and secured the appropriation. Now, the matter has been further discussed with the Public Printer and we find that the binding can be simplified, material a little less expensive used, and the volumes made a little bit larger, so that it will reduce the cost of binding to about $14,000. We have in the office other foreign patents which are just as much in demand as the German patents, the Austrian, Norwegian, and French patents. They are loose and it

is very difficult to keep track of them in that state. The commissioner would like to have that appropriation modified so that he can use it for binding foreign patents, without specifying particularly the German patents.

Mr. SHERLEY. And he wants the $6,000 for that purpose?

Mr. WOOLARD. Yes, sir. It will be a great accommodation to the public and to the office if we can get them put in that permanent form. It is difficult to keep track of the loose copies. What we ask is merely a modification of an existing appropriation and not a new appropriation.

MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 1917.

TERRITORY OF ALASKA.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES A. SULZER, THE DELEGATE IN CONGRESS FROM THE TERRITORY OF ALASKA,

CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE OF MILITARY AND POST ROADS IN ALASKA.

Mr. SHERLEY. Mr. Sulzer, you wanted to make a statement before the committee in connection with some suggested legislation to the effect that "hereafter, so long as the construction and maintenance of military and post roads in Alaska, and other roads, bridges, and trails in that Territory, shall remain under the direction of the Secretary of War, he be authorized to submit such estimates for the consideration of Congress as are in his judgment necessary for a proper prosecution of the work." Now, if you will just state what you desire to accomplish by this legislation and the reason for it, we will be glad to hear you.

Mr. SULZER. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I would like to say that there is not anything of more importance to the people of Alaska than the construction of roads and trails. We have a vast territory up there of 600,000 square miles, and the greater part of it, of course, is inaccessible to development. The moment you get away from the riverways it is impossible to make much progress without roads and trails, and I have a great many very urgent requests to help in any way I possibly can to get the work of building roads and trails extended in Alaska.

Under the law, as originally passed, creating the Alaska Road Commission, in 1905 I believe it was, there was no provision made for any appropriations by Congress. The funds for this commission were to be obtained from what is known as the Alaska fund, which is collected by license taxes throughout Alaska, and a certain portion of that fund by this act was to be paid over to the Alaska Road Commission for the building of roads and trails in Alaska; but it became apparent at once that those funds were not sufficient to enable the commission to do any adequate work, and Congress supplemented those funds by making annual appropriations, and they were made in sums of from $100,000 to $150,000 up until last year without any objection being raised. But during the last Congress, in the House, when this item came in, in the Army appropriation bill, there was

objection made and it was ruled out upon a point of order to the effect that there never had been any authorization of estimates for these items. Therefore, if it is possible to have inserted that proviso in any deficiency bill which may be reported, simply authorizing the Secretary of War to make estimates for this work, we would certainly appreciate it very much, because it would prevent the point of order being raised in the future. Of course, in this particular instance the item was replaced in the Senate, but it seems to me that if this work is under the Secretary of War, and if the Alaska Road Commission is expected to perform this work the Secretary of War should be authorized to make estimates such as are required and needed, and that is all this language provides for.

Mr. SHERLEY. Mr. Sulzer, the language of your proviso would not really accomplish what you desire. If I understand you, what you desire is to make in order, under the rules of the House, appropriations upon the Army bill for road work in Alaska?

Mr. SULZER. Yes, sir.

Mr. SHERLEY. An authorization of the Secretary of War to submit estimates would not be a sufficient authorization for appropriations to take care of the point of order. Of course, that is a matter of drafting detail, but that language, in order to accomplish what you desire, would have to be changed, and would practically result in legislation authorizing the expenditure in Alaska of sums in the way of road building. Did we not make provision in the good-roads law for road building in Alaska?

Mr. SULZER. No, sir; the only provision that I know anything about is the creation of the Alaska Road Commission.

Mr. BYRNS. Was there not an appropriation of several million dollars for Alaska?

Mr. SULZER. There was an appropriation of $500,000 this year in the Army appropriation bill.

Mr. BYRNS. NO; I mean in the law to which Mr. Sherley refers. Mr. SHERLEY. We are looking that up now. It may be that that law was confined to the States and did not embrace the Territory of Alaska. Of course, this is legislation that is partly within the domain of this committee, particularly in connection with a deficiency bill. It is a matter that more properly would belong to the Committee on Territories in the way of legislation. Then after they had legislated it might be that this committee would have consideration, or the Military Affairs Committee, of the appropriation.

Mr. SULZER. Mr. Chairman, it does not appropriate any money. It simply authorizes the Secretary, if he sees fit, to submit an estimate

to you.

Mr. SHERLEY. It will be subject to a point of order if we report it, because this committee has no legislative power at all. Of course, the proposed draft would not change the situation at all, because the Secretary now can submit estimates whether he is authorized to submit them or not.

Mr. SULZER. A point of order can be made against them.

Mr. SHERLEY. Yes. The language of the provision would have to be so changed as to authorize the expenditure of money. Then pursuant to that he would submit estimates, and then it would not be subject to a point of order. The difficulty that confronts this committee is a jurisdictional one, because this committee has no power