There is always more or less carpenter work to be done in and about the building, and a good carpenter ought to be employed.

With these additions to the working force of the superintendent's branch the work of the office would be greatly facilitated.

In your last annual estimate you asked for the following amounts for the purposes stated:

For the purposes above specified appropriation has been made as follows:

The amount asked for putting in a coal vault was not allowed, and I desire to again call your attention to the manner in which the coal consumed for heating purposes in this building is stored. Now we are compelled to give up about one-fourth of the entire basement for this purpose, and this, too, at the extreme east end of the building, a distance of nearly 300 feet from the furnaces. In cold weather it requires the labor of one and sometimes two men, owing to the inconvenience of getting to and from the rooms where the coal is stored and the furnaces to keep the fires going. This is a great inconvenience, and can only be remedied by building a coal vault close to the furnaces. This can be done at a comparatively trifling expense. It will cost about $3,000 to do this work, and I recommend that that sum be asked for.

One elevator in this building will not accommodate the employés of the Bureau and the great number of visitors and persons daily having business with the office. I therefore respectfully recommend that an additional $4,000 be asked for to put in a second elevator.

In a special report made since the opening of the present session of Congress you asked for an appropriation for doors cutting off the rooms from the court, but for some reason no action was taken. The experience of two winters demonstrates beyond all question that doors are an absolute necessity, and without them in very cold weather the business of the office must be greatly retarded, to say nothing of the suffering and inconvenience entailed upon the employés of the Bureau. During the coldest days of last winter there was much suffering among the employés of the office, and many of them were excused and permitted to go home, notwithstanding the heating apparatus of the building was pushed to its utmost capacity. Every consideration demands that doors be put in, and that, too, with as little delay as possible. The work of placing corrugated iron upon the ceiling of the roof over the court remains in the same condition it was left by the architect when the building was turned over to the Department. It seems to me that this work ought to be finished as soon as possible. There is a considerable quantity of iron and other materials on hand, and to complete the work ought not to cost to exceed $2,000.

For repairs of building during the year other than above specified $5,000 will be required.

The bulk of the furniture in the Pension Office is old and worn out and ought to be thrown aside. The cast-off desks, tables, chairs, etc., of the Census Office and other bureaus have, from time to time, found their way into this office. These desks and tables are of every kind and description, most of them poorly constructed and inconvenient. To replace this old trappery with new and appropriate furniture will cost about $12,000.

I invite your attention to the condition of the walls in the rooms of this building. They are rough plastered and were never whitened, and, as a consequence, give the rooms a dark and gloomy appearance. These walls ought to be kalsomined, and I respectfully recommend that an appropriation of $1,500 be asked for this purpose. All of which is respectfully submitted for such action as you may see proper to take. Yours, respectfully,

General J. C. BLACK,

Commissioner.

W. F. SCHUCKERS, Acting Superintendent of Building.

REPORT

OF THE

INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION.

Hon. WILLIAM F. VILAS,

Secretary of the Interior:

SIR: The undersigned, Commissioners appointed under the act to regulate commerce, approved February 4, 1887, in submitting this their second annual report as required by the twenty-first section of said act, have the honor to say:

From the best information now available, the railroad mileage of the country on the 30th day of June, 1888, is estimated at 152,781, of which 2,312 miles had been completed and brought into operation within the six months preceding that day. The railway construction in 1886 was 8,471 miles; in 1887 it was 12,688 miles. The number of corporations represented in the mileage is 1,251, but by reason of leases or other contract arrangements many corporations hold control of and operate one or more roads owned by other corporations, and the whole number making reports of operation at the date named was 665.

WHAT CARRIERS ARE SUBJECT TO THE ACT.

"engaged

The carriers who are subject to the act are those who are in the transportation of passengers or property wholly by railroad, or partly by railroad and partly by water when both are used, under a common control, management, or arrangement, for a continuous carriage or shipment, from one State or Territory of the United States or the District of Columbia to any other State of the United States or the District of Columbia," etc.

There are many railroads whose lines are entirely within the limits of a single State or Territory which are controlled or managed with complete independence, but it is doubtful if, with the exception of the municipal street and elevated roads and such roads as are purely adjuncts of mines or other local interests, there is one which does not to some extent engage in interstate traffic. All of them have traffic arrangements of some sort, under which they issue passenger tickets over other roads, or honor those which other carriers issue, or issue or accept through bills of lading, or in some other way participate in interstate business. To render the roads most useful to the stockholders and most convenient to the public this becomes a necessity. But when this is done by any road, the Commission understands that the act to regulate commerce applies to the party operating it; that such party should respond to the call for an annual report, and in the management of its interstate business should conform to the principles which the act prescribes.

There may, nevertheless, be some question as to the right of a state road which engages in interstate traffic to restrict its participation at pleasure, and thereby escape obligations which the act imposes.

In the performance of its duties during the past year it has been made apparent to the Commission that the opinion is prevalent in many quarters that railroad companies whose lines are wholly within a single State and are managed independently are not subject to the act to regulate commerce, except in so far as by entering into joint arrangements with other companies they engage in interstate traffic, and that even in such cases the regulation to which they are subject is limited to the traffic which is covered by the joint arrangements.

In numerous cases the officers of such companies expressed surprise when they were called upon to make the annual report contemplated by section 20, and were at first inclined to insist upon their legal right to exemption. But the right of Congress to require from any corpora tion or organization which to any extent is engaged in interstate commerce a report upon such commerce, and upon all matters respecting the conditions and the work connected therewith which it may be important to have known, in order that the commerce may be most intelligently and effectually regulated, would seem to be very clear. And if any report may be required it would seem equally clear that it may be made to cover, in the case of a carrier whose line is entirely within a State, all the particulars in respect to organization, capital, debt and working operations, which carriers whose lines are interstate are required to furnish.

State traffic and interstate traffic are so intimately and inseparably blended in the provisions which the carriers make therefor; in the carriage, the management, the handling, and the rates imposed upon the one are so likely to affect those charged upon the other, that for the proper regulation of either species of traffic as carried on by a carrier engaged in both, it is indispensable that a complete exhibit as to both shall be made. And it is but just to say here in behalf of all the carriers who were at first inclined to object to making a report that when its importance was presented to them in correspondence, and especially the desirability of making the railroad statistics throughout the entire country as complete as possible, not merely for the immediate objects of the Commission but for the purposes of permanent public record, courteous response was in general made and report furnished or a promise of it given. The work of the statistician was nevertheless very much delayed by the necessary correspondence, and even yet it is not so complete as it would have been if all the companies had recognized from the first that the obligation to make report existed.

Another topic in this connection which has been the subject of thought concerns the responsibility of a carrier operating a State line when for any reason in participating in interstate traffic it elects to limit the participation to one or to a few species of traffic. The claim has been made by some carriers that the participation may be limited or extended at pleasure; that they may form traffic arrangements for some classes of business and decline to make them as to others; and that over their discretion in the matter there can be neither control nor supervision. The fact that traffic arrangements and joint rates must necessarily be the subject of negotiation and agreement between carriers, and that no authority has in terms been conferred by law for the making of joint rates for them against their will is supposed to be conclusive in favor of this view.

The Commission has not believed this view to be correct. It has believed and still believes that when a carrier is engaged in interstate commerce to even a limited extent it must conduct such commerce under the requirements of the act. It must not give undue or unreasonable preferences or advantages to any particular description of traffic; it must afford reasonable, proper and equal facilities for the interchange of traffic; it must not be guilty of unjust discrimination. Now, if one species of traffic were provided for by a common arrangement between two or more roads, and the same roads should decline or for any reason neglect to make corresponding arrangements in respect to traffic that would be competitive, the unjust discrimination would in some cases be very plain. Whenever it should appear a violation of law would be equally plain, and the party wronged would clearly, it is believed, be entitled to legal remedy. But when the proper remedy came to be considered it might possibly, on investigation, appear very plain that nothing would give effectual relief except a requirement that the carriers guilty of the wrong should carry the competing traffic at rates prescribed for them, but measured, nevertheless, by those which they themselves had established for the traffic they had undertaken to favor. If this may not be done the law against unjust discrimination might in a great many cases be rendered futile and favoritism be practiced by interstate carriers at discretion. But unjust discrimination might not be altogether limited to cases like those supposed; it might be practiced in refusing to make joint rates for a traffic not competitive to any that was actually provided for by the joint arrangements. The act applies to the carriers as legal entities and prescribes for them the obligation of relative fairness; and when it is made to appear that they are guilty of subjecting "any particular species of traffic to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage in any respect whatever," it intends that the wrong shall be corrected. It does not apparently intend that the carriers shall be at liberty to make provision for every branch of trade but one and leave that one to be crushed with a burden of successive and combined local rates. In all this there is no hardship whatever to the carriers. The rule prescribed by the statute is one of common justice, and the more fully it is complied with the greater will be the claim of the carriers upon the public favor. It is a rule that ought to be voluntarily applied, regardless of any requirement of law on the subject.

In one case decided by the Commission it appeared that a railroad company chartered for the building of a short road wholly within one State had built and was still owning it, but had never provided itself with rolling stock, and never itself operated the road. Instead thereof the road was used and operated as a means of conducting interstate traffic from certain coal mines upon it by companies owning connecting interstate roads. Owners of other mines on the short road offered interstate traffic for carriage and it was refused on the claim that the road was not subject to the act to regulate commerce. The Commission,on complaint being made to it, held this claim to be unfounded. It was its opinion that the road thus used was one of the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, and the carriers operating it in respect to the traf fic offered them were subject to the same responsibilities and duties that they would be if in ownership it constituted a part of their lines. This decision was promptly accepted and conformed to, and the cause of complaint was thereby removed.