STATE OF NEW JERSEY. CHAPTER 42. AN ACT to ratify and confirm a compact or agreement between the States of New Jersey and Delaware respecting the Delaware River and Bay, and to authorize the execution thereof. (This act is identical in recitals and enactment with that of Delaware, adding a third section.) 3. This act shall take effect immediately. Approved March 21, 1905. STATE OF NEW JERSEY. DEPARTMENT OF STATE. I, S. D. Dickinson, secretary of state of the State of New Jersey, do hereby certify that the foregoing is a true copy of an act passed by the legislature of this State and approved by the governor the 21st day of March, A. D. 1905, as taken from and compared with the original now on file in my office. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and affixed my official seal at Trenton this 7th day of March, 1906. [SEAL.] S. D. DICKINSON, STATE OF NEW JERSEY. I, Edward C. Stokes, governor of the State of New Jersey, do hereby certify that S. D. Dickinson, esq., who hath signed the annexed certificate, and whose official seal is thereto annexed, was, at the doing thereof, and now is, secretary of state of the State of New Jersey, duly appointed, commissioned, and sworn, and that full faith and credit are to be given to his official attestations; that the said signature is in the proper handwriting of the said S. D. Dickinson, and the seal his seal of office, and that the said certificate is in due form of law and by the proper officer. In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the great seal of the State of New Jersey to be hereunto affixed, at the city of Trenton, in said State, this seventh day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and six, and of the Independence of the United States the one hundred and thirtieth. CONGRESS RESURVEY OF LAND IN COLORADO. JANUARY 19, 1907.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed. Mr. FORDNEY, from the Committee on the Public Lands, submitted the following REPORT. [To accompany S. 1178.] The Committee on the Public Lands, to whom was referred the bill (S. 1178) for the resurvey of township 16 south of range 71 west of the sixth principal meridian, in Fremont County, Colo., having had the same under consideration, respect fully submit the following report: This bill is an ordinary bill for a resurvey of lands, based upon the statement that the original monuments have been lost or are obliterated, with the result that it is impossible to determine the location of the Government subdivisions involved. The Senate Committee on Public Lands referred this bill to the Interior Department, and in the Senate report, which accompanies this report, there is the finding of the Land Office with reference thereto. Subject to the limitation suggested by the Commissioner, there can be no objection to the passage of this bill. This limitation is that before any resurvey is made the General Land Office cause an examination and inspection of the lands in controversy to be made by an agent of the Department, and that the survey be dependent upon his report that a necessity for the same exists. With this limitation, which was incorporated in the Senate bill, your committee recommend that said bill do pass. [Senate Report No. 2557, Fifty-ninth Congress, first session.] The Committee on Public Lands, to whom was referred the bill (S. 1178) providing for the resurvey of a township of land in Colorado, having had the same under consideration, report it back with an amendment and recommend that as amended the bill do pass. The suggested amendment is as follows: At the end of the bill add the following: "Provided further, That before any survey is ordered it shall be made to appear to the Secretary of the Interior that the former official survey of said lands is so inaccurate or obliterated as to make it necessary to survey the land, and only such parts of the land where the survey is so inaccurate or obliterated shall be surveyed." The bill as amended meets with the approval of the Interior Department, as will appear from the following letters of the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of the General Land Office: DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, SIR: I have received, by reference from your committee, a copy of S. 1178, entitled "A bill providing for the resurvey of a township of land in Colorado," with a request for the views of the Department thereon. The letter was referred to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, and for your information I inclose a copy of his report thereon under date of the 31st ultimo. The Commissioner has stated therein that he is unable to report as to the necessity for the resurvey, and he has recommended that the defects of the original survey be first ascertained by an examiner of surveys, and he has incorporated in his report a proviso which will effect that end if added to the DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, GENERAL LAND OFFICE, SIR: I am in receipt, by your reference dated January 26, 1906, for report in duplicate, with recommendation and return of papers, of Senate bill 1178, providing for the resurvey of a township of land in Colorado, which was referred to the Committee on Public Lands and by that committee referred to the Department with request for its views thereon. The text of the bill is as follows: "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Interior be, and he is hereby, authorized to cause to be made a resurvey of the lands in township numbered sixteen south of range numbered seventy-one west of the sixth principal meridian, in Fremont County, in the State of Colorado; and all rules and regulations of the Interior Department requiring petitions from all settlers of said township asking for resurvey and agreement to abide by the result of same, so far as these lands are concerned, are hereby abrogated: Provided, That nothng herein contained shall be so construed as to impair the present bona fide claim of any actual occupant of any of said lands so occupied." I have the honor to report that the survey of this township was executed in 1880, prior to the field examinations now required, by Deputy William Murray. It appears from the records of this office that only about one-tenth of the land in this township has been entered for agricultural purposes, this portion being in the north and west. The greater part of the lands appear to be mountainous. I am unable to report as to necessity for the resurvey, as the office has on file no recent complaints of defective or fraudulent surveys in this township. I recommend, therefore, that the defects in the original survey be first ascertained by an examiner of surveys. In Nebraska certain surveys were authorized at the last session of Congress, the act for which contained the following proviso: "That before any survey is ordered it shall be made to appear to the Secretary of the Interior that the former official survey of said lands is so inaccurate or obliterated as to make it necessary to survey the land, and only such parts of the land where the survey is so inaccurate or obliterated shall be surveyed." The adoption of a similar proviso in connection with bill No. 1178 would secure the examination recommended by this office. No. DEVELOPMENT OF THE AMERICAN MERCHANT MARINE AND AMERICAN COMMERCE. JANUARY 19, 1907.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed. Mr. GROSVENOR, from the Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries, submitted the following REPORT. [To accompany S. 529.] This measure is not a general ship-subsidy bill. It does not give a dollar of subsidy or bounty to cargo vessels of the "tramp" type. It does not give a dollar of subsidy or bounty or mail subvention, or anything else, to any company for operating a fast passenger service to Europe. It is an ocean mail bill pure and simple, with incidental provision for a naval reserve, approved by the Navy Department and Admiral Dewey. Enrollment in this naval reserve is voluntary with each officer and man of the merchant service, while it is optional with each ship to carry or not to carry these naval reserve men-so that all fear of conscription," as suggested by the sailors' unions, is removed. The steamships to perform this postal service, as existing law requires, must be built in the United States on designs approved by the Navy Department with a view to use as auxiliary cruisers or transports, and they must be held at the disposal of the Government in war. They must carry crews a certain increasing proportion of whom one-half after five years-are American citizens. They must carry a certain number of American boys as cadets. All these steamships must be of the highest rating known to maritime commerce. WHERE THE LINES WILL RUN. This ocean mail bill confines its provisions to lines to South America, Australasia, and the Orient. There are seven of these proposed services one from the Atlantic coast to Brazil; one from the Atlantic coast to Argentina; one from the Gulf coast to the Isthmus of Panama; one from the Pacific coast to the Isthmus of Panama, Peru, and Chile; one from the Pacific coast to Samoa, New Zealand, and Australia; one from the Pacific coast via Hawaii to Japan, China, and the Philippines, and one from the North Pacific coast to Japan, China, and the Philippines. The total maximum cost of these seven services will be $3,750,000 a year, most of which is offset by the $3,000,000 a year which the United States now receives in profit from its ocean mail business. The seven lines proposed and their compensation are as follows: Atlantic coast to Brazil, 16-knot steamers Gulf coast to Isthmus of Panama, 14-knot steamers Pacific coast to Isthmus of Panama, Peru, and Chile, 16-knot steamers steamers North Pacific coast to Japan, China, and the Philippines, 16-knot steamers a Fortnightly and weekly. bOnce in three weeks. e In addition to present compensation of $283,000. This postal payment to these seven lines is not a bonus or a gift outright; it is essentially compensation in return for services rendered or to be rendered. It is to be paid out not unconditionally, but under the terms of a rigid and exacting contract awarded by the Post-Office Department in each case to the lowest responsible bidder, precisely as is done in our domestic postal arrangements. This proposed ocean mail legislation follows authoritative national precedents; there is nothing new or experimental in it; it does not depart one hair's breadth from the established policy of the United States Government. It is in fact as in form an amendment and extension of existing law-the ocean mail act of March 3, 1891. NOT FOR EXISTING LINES." This bill is emphatically not a measure for the benefit of existing lines or already prosperous companies. Everyone of the ships required for the South American service in either Atlantic or Pacific will have to be designed and built--for not one American steamship of any kind now runs in that South American commerce. On the trans-Pacific routes there are now afloat perhaps one-half as many American steamers as would be needed to undertake these contracts. Responsible shipowners have stated that unless this bill or an equivalent is passed some, if not all, of the vessels composing this skeleton of a Pacific fleet will have to be laid up or abandoned to foreign nations which can and do sustain their merchant marine. Both the War Department and Navy Department, in formal statements, have declared that the United States would be helpless in a serious war because of a lack of merchant steamships so indispensable as transports, supply ships, and auxiliary cruisers. This bill would provide steamers of a high class, designed and built for this especial service. If the bill is not enacted we shall inevitably lose most of the few ships of this kind which we now have. |