law for the prompt trial and final adjustment, before a judicial tribunal or commission, of all claims based upon Mexican grants. is not just to an intelligent and enterprising people that their peace should be disturbed and their prosperity retarded by these old contentions. I express the hope that differences of opinion as to methods may yield to the urgency of the case.

The law now provides a pension for every soldier and sailor who was mustered into the service of the United States during the civil war and is now suffering from wounds or disease having an origin in the service and in the line of duty. Two of the three necessary facts, viz, muster and disability, are usually susceptible of easy proof; but the third, origin in the service, is often difficult, and in many deserving cases impossible to establish. That very many of those who endured the hardships of our most bloody and arduous campaigns are now disabled from diseases that had a real but not traceable origin in the service I do not doubt. Besides these there is another class composed of men many of whom served an enlistment of three full years, and of re-enlisted veterans who added a fourth year of service, who escaped the casualties of battle and the assaults of disease, who were always ready for any detail, who were in every battle line of their command, and were mustered out in sound health, and have, since the close of the war, while fighting with the same indomitable and independent spirit the contests of civil life, been overcome by disease or casualty.

I am not unaware that the pension-roll already involves a very large annual expenditure, neither am I deterred by that fact from recommending that Congress grant a pension to such honorably discharged soldiers and sailors of the civil war as having rendered substantial service during the war are now dependent upon their own labor for a maintenance, and by disease or casualty are incapacitated from earning it. Many of the men who would be included in this form of relief are now dependent upon public aid, and it does not, in my judgment, consist with the national honor that they shall continue to subsist upon the local relief given indiscriminately to paupers instead of upon the special and generous provision of the nation they served so gallantly and unselfishly. Our people will, I am sure, very generally approve such legislation. And I am equally sure that the survivors of the Union Army and Navy will feel a grateful sense of relief when this worthy and suffering class of their comrades is fairly cared for.

There are some manifest inequalities in the existing law that should be remedied. To some of these the Secretary of the Interior

has called attention.

It is gratifying to be able to state that by the adoption of new and better methods in the War Department the calls of the Pension Office for information as to the military and hospital records of pension claimants are now promptly answered, and the injurious and vexatious delays that have heretofore occurred are entirely avoided. This will greatly facilitate the adjustment of all pending claims.

The advent of four new States, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Washington, into the Union under the Constitution, in the same month, and the admission of their duly chosen representatives to our National Congress at the same session, is an event as unexampled as it is interesting.

The certification of the votes cast and of the constitutions adopted in each of the States was filed with me as required by the eighth section of the act of February 22, 1889, by the governors of said Territories respectively. Having, after a careful examination, found that the several constitutions and governments were republican in form and not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, that all the provisions of the act of Congress had been complied with, and that a majority of the votes cast in each of said proposed States was in favor of the adoption of the constitution submitted therein, I did so declare by a separate proclamation as to each; as to North Dakota and South Dakota on Saturday, November 2; as to Montana on Friday, November 8, and as to Washington on Monday, November II.

Each of these States has within it resources the development of which will employ the energies of, and yield a comfortable subsistence to, a great population. The smallest of these new States, Washington, stands twelfth, and the largest, Montana, third, among the forty-two in area. The people of these States are already well trained, intelligent, and patriotic American citizens, having common interests and sympathies with those of the older States, and a common purpose to defend the integrity and uphold the honor of the

nation.

The attention of the Interstate Commerce Commission has been called to the urgent need of Congressional legislation for the better protection of the lives and limbs of those engaged in operating the great interstate freight lines of the country, and especially of the yard-men and brakemen. A petition, signed by nearly ten thousand railway brakemen, was presented to the Commission, asking that steps might be taken to bring about the use of automatic brakes and couplers on freight cars.

At a meeting of State railroad commissioners and their accredited representatives, held at Washington in March last, upon the invitation of the Interstate Commerce Commission, a resolution was unanimously adopted, urging the Commission "to consider what can be done to prevent the loss of life and limb in coupling and uncoupling freight cars, and in handling the brakes of such cars." During the year ending June 30, 1888, over 2,000 railroad employés were killed in service, and more than 20,000 injured. It is competent, I think, for Congress to require uniformity in the construction of cars used in interstate commerce, and the use of improved safety appliances upon such trains. Time will be necessary to make the needed changes, but an earnest and intelligent beginning should be made at once. It is a reproach to our civilization that any class of American workmen should, in the pursuit of a necessary and useful vocation, be subjected to a peril of life and limb as great as that of a soldier in time of war.

The creation of an Executive Department, to be known as the Department of Agriculture, by the act of February 9, last, was a wise and timely response to a request which had long been respectfully urged by the farmers of the country. But much remains to be done to perfect the organization of the Department so that it may fairly realize the expectations which its creation excited. In this connection attention is called to the suggestions contained in the report of the Secretary, which is herewith submitted. The need of a law officer for the Department, such as is provided for the other Executive Departments, is manifest. The failure of the last Congress to make the usual provision for the publication of the annual report should be promptly remedied. The public interest in the report and its value to the farming community I am sure will not be diminished under the new organization of the Department.

I recommend that the Weather Service be separated from the War Department and established as a Bureau in the Department of Agriculture. This will involve an entire reorganization both of the Weather Bureau and of the Signal Corps, making of the first a purely civil organization and of the other a purely military staff corps. The report of the Chief Signal Officer shows that the work of the corps on its military side has been deteriorating.

The interests of the people of the District of Columbia should not be lost sight of in the pressure for consideration of measures affecting the whole country. Having no legislature of its own, either

municipal or general, its people must look to Congress for the regulation of all those concerns that, in the States, are the subject of local control. Our whole people have an interest that the National Capital should be made attractive and beautiful, and above all that its repute for social order should be well maintained. The laws regulating the sale of intoxicating drinks in the District should be revised with a view to bringing the traffic under stringent limitations and control.

In execution of the power conferred upon me by the act making appropriations for the expenses of the District of Columbia for the year ending June 30, 1890, I did, on the 17th day of August last, appoint Rudolph Hering, of New York, Samuel M. Gray, of Rhode Island, and Frederick P. Stearns, of Massachusetts, three eminent sanitary engineers, to examine and report upon the system of sewerage existing in the District of Columbia. Their report, which is not yet completed, will be in due course submitted to Congress. The report of the Commissioners of the District is herewith transmitted, and the attention of Congress is called to the suggestions contained therein.

The proposition to observe the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by the opening of a world's fair or exposition in some one of our great cities will be presented for the consideration of Congress. The value and interest of such an exposition may well claim the promotion of the General Government.

On the 4th of March last the Civil Service Commission had but a single member. The vacancies were filled on the 7th day of May, and since then the commissioners have been industriously, though with an inadequate force, engaged in executing the law. They were assured by me that a cordial support would be given them in the faithful and impartial enforcement of the statute and of the rules and regulations adopted in aid of it.

Heretofore the book of eligibles has been closed to every one, except as certifications were made upon the requisition of the appointingofficers. This secrecy was the source of much suspicion, and of many charges of favoritism in the administration of the law. What is secret is always suspected; what is open can be judged. The Commission, with the full approval of all its members, has now opened the list of eligibles to the public. The eligible lists for the classified post-offices and custom-houses are now publicly posted in the respective offices, as are also the certifications for appointments. The purpose of the civil-service law was absolutely to exclude any other

consideration in connection with appointments under it than that of merit as tested by the examinations. The business proceeds upon the theory that both the examining boards and the appointing-officers are absolutely ignorant as to the political views and associations of all persons on the civil-service lists. It is not too much to say, however, that some recent Congressional investigations have somewhat shaken public confidence in the impartiality of the selections for appointment.

The reform of the civil service will make no safe or satisfactory advance until the present law and its equal administration are well established in the confidence of the people. It will be my pleasure, as it is my duty, to see that the law is executed with firmness and impartiality. If some of its provisions have been fraudulently evaded by appointing-officers, our resentment should not suggest the repeal of the law, but reform in its administration. We should have one view of the matter, and hold it with a sincerity that is not affected by the consideration that the party to which we belong is for the time in power.

My predecessor, on the 4th day of January, 1889, by an executive order to take effect March 15, brought the Railway Mail Service under the operation of the civil-service law. Provision was made that the order should take effect sooner in any State where an eligible list was sooner obtained. On the 11th day of March, Mr. Lyman, then the only member of the Commission, reported to me in writing that it would not be possible to have the list of eligibles ready before May 1, and requested that the taking effect of the order be postponed until that time, which was done, subject to the same provision contained in the original order as to States in which an eligible list was sooner obtained.

As a result of the revision of the rules, of the new classification, and of the inclusion of the Railway Mail Service, the work of the Commission has been greatly increased, and the present clerical force is found to be inadequate. I recommend that the additional clerks asked by the Commission be appropriated for.

The duty of appointment is devolved by the Constitution or by the law, and the appointing-officers are properly held to a high responsibility in its exercise. The growth of the country and the consequent increase of the civil list have magnified this function of the Executive disproportionally. It can not be denied, however, that the labor connected with this necessary work is increased, often to the point of actual distress, by the sudden and excessive demands that are made upon an incoming administration for removals and appointments. But, on the other hand, it is not true that incum