Mr. CRIST. In January, I should say, because the January and February and March papers did not come in from some of the State courts for two or three months.

The CHAIRMAN. Are the clerks of the State courts now paying postage?

Mr. CRIST. Yes; they are now paying postage.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you allow it to them?

Mr. CRIST. No, sir; we can not allow it in the returns. We have had that passed upon to see if we could do so, and it has been decided that we can not reimburse them, although we can reimburse them for cost of registry.

ADDITIONAL SERVICES IN WASHINGTON.

The CHAIRMAN. Now, you are asking out of this appropriation $36,000 additional for services in Washington.

Mr. CRIST. Yes, sir; that is because when the doors are opened for this volume of work to come through the clerks of courts it throws correspondingly increased burdens upon the examining force and the bureau force. The bureau has been literally swamped.

The CHAIRMAN. We provide for the departmental service specifically, do we not?

Mr. CRIST. Yes; you provide for that in the legislative appropriation bill.

The CHAIRMAN. What employments are you asking for out of this appropriation?

Mr. CRIST. We asked in the letter that came up for $36,000 to provide for 30 clerks at $1,200. That was a lump estimate.

The CHAIRMAN. We do not mix up these services like that.

Mr. CRIST. Originally we got a lump appropriation of $100,000 to organize in Washington, and on account of the unusual war conditions we have included this in here.

Mr. BYRNS. This is intended to provide 30 additional clerks at $1,200 each?

Mr. CRIST. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you anything else?

EQUIPMENT AND RENT IN DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

Mr. CRIST. There is one item I think you might have overlooked— that is that after this $36,000 there is a provision for the purchase of equipment and rent of offices in the District of Columbia.

The CHAIRMAN. How much was included for that? You do not want to rent any offices, I suppose?

Mr. CRIST. I doubt if we can get along with our present quarters. The CHAIRMAN. You have just got a new building, and you got a whole floor more than you estimated you would need.

Secretary WILSON. A whole floor more than we originally had money to get.

The CHAIRMAN. I understood you made an estimate of what you required, and through an error which was made they gave you an additional story.

Secretary WILSON. What happened, Mr. Chairman, was this: All the Congress was willing to give us was $24,000. They were not willing to give us $26,000, which was asked for. They said to us,

"Take the $24,000 for five years and go out and get the best quarters you can for it." We did that and we got more than we expected. The CHAIRMAN. And more than they intended to give you, too? Secretary WILSON. Yes; more than they intended, I presume. The CHAIRMAN. I understand they made a miscalculation and put on an extra story.

Secretary WILSON. They made a miscalculation on the size of the lot. They agreed to give us nine stories. They made a miscalculation of the size of the lot, and after they discovered their miscalculation they came back to us and said that there would be as much space in the eight floors as they originally calculated there would be in the nine, although they had contracted with us to give us nine floors. Having made the contract with them, we felt that we could not, in justice to the Government, back out of it, and so we insisted upon the nine floors. They thought it was to their own advantage to build it on the space they had rather than build it on the original space which they thought they had.

The CHAIRMAN. And the result was that you got about 8 per cent more space than you estimated you would have?

Secretary WILSON. Yes; that we originally expected when we signed the contract.

TEMPORARY ADMISSION OF ALIENS FOR AGRICULTURAL PURPOSES.

(See p. 186.)

Mr. CANNON. Mr. Secretary, I am not sure I understood you about one matter. Under the law a Mexican citizen for agriculture can come over and remain during the war?

Secretary WILSON. Not quite that, Mr. Cannon. Under the law the Secretary may admit any aliens temporarily under such regulations as he may prescribe, even though they may be otherwise inadmissible. Utilizing that discretion, I authorized, as the Secretary of the department, the admission of Mexicans and Canadians temporarily for agricultural purposes; that temporary period to be at the discretion of the Secretary, but not longer than the duration of the war.

Mr. CANNON. And the war may last one year or five-I hope it will not; now, have you changed those regulations?

Secretary WILSON. NO.

Mr. CANNON. Well, the crop season is not a very long one. It would not be over one-third of a year or half of a year as the case may be. These people then could seek employment in mines or otherwise; in other words, when the war ends you would change your regulation possibly. You could not tell until it did end, and that would also be true as to the Canadians. The crop season in New York and the Dakotas and Minnesota and Michigan is shorter than in the South, so that they may seek employment otherwise.

Secretary WILSON. Yes. Those people have been in the habit of coming across the boundary line for a short distance, such as those that work in the potato fields in Maine, those who work in the wheat fields in the Dakotas and Minnesota, those who have been working in agricultural pursuits along the Mexican border; they have been coming over temporarily for the season. They have not penetrated to any great distance in the interior, and when the season was over they have gone back. Now, we have permitted that to take place

temporarily, notwithstanding the literacy test and the contract-labor provisions of the law.

Mr. CANNON. And temporarily means, under the regulationsSecretary WILSON (interposing). That is within the discretion of the Secretary, but is not to be longer than the duration of the war. Mr. CANNON. There is a great dearth of labor down on these southern railrods.

Secretary WILSON. That is true. That matter is now receiving the attention of the department.

Mr. CANNON. If the regulation is not changed, you would not require them, of course, to go back the moment the crop season closed?

Secretary WILSON. We have exercised our discretion in that respect as to whether we would or not. We think possibly that the overcrowded condition of Porto Rico, which has been known to the Government for a long time, might relieve this emergency by bringing the surplus of the white laborers from Porto Rico to help in the railroad situation in the Southwest, and possibly the colored Porto Rican laborers to help in the cotton-picking sections of the South.

Mr. CANNON. Have you ever been in Porto Rico?

Secretary WILSON. I have not.

Mr. CANNON. If you go down there, you will find 80 per cent of them are counted white, and those counted black amount to about 20 per cent. If they are pure Africans, they are counted black, and if they are not pure Africans they are counted white, and I do not think they would be half as good as the Mexicans. Secretary WILSON. Well, maybe not.

THURSDAY, JULY 19, 1917.

BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS.

STATEMENT OF MR. ROYAL MEEKER, COMMISSIONER OF LABOR STATISTICS.

SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS DURING THE WAR.

The CHAIRMAN. You had an appropriation of $64,090, and you are asking for $250,000 additional.

Mr. MEEKER. I can be very brief, Mr. Chairman, if you will permit me to be brief.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, that depends on what you say.

Mr. MEEKER. This estimate was made at the request of the Secretary because of labor emergencies that had grown out of the war. It is an emergency estimate. Of course it will be necessary for a good deal of shifting in industry to take place, and that means a shifting of the labor force. Now, in order to effect that shifting through the employment service or by any other means, we must locate the available labor supply and the labor demand.

The CHAIRMAN. I thought that was what the other money was asked for.

Mr. MEEKER. That is for the placement service itself.

The CHAIRMAN. But the two have got to go together. You can not have one force finding out where the labor is and another force distributing it.

Secretary WILSON. That would be only incidental. The one big purpose that we want this additional money for is this: Everybody must be up at their fullest tension during the period of the war. Everybody must do all that they possibly can do during the period of the war. That means that sooner or later we will have to do some changing of existing standards. It means that we have got to take into consideration what the British Government had to take into consideration, what the French Government had to take into consideration, what the Italian Government had to take into consideration, and what the German Government has had to take into consideration, the question of the fatigue of the workers; what they can stand. It means a closer examination into our industrial affairs than we have ever undertaken in a Federal way before, and it becomes a Federal obligation because of the fact that it will have to be done for Federal purposes. In a nutshell that is the reason for this additional money that we are asking for. It reaches out into a multitude of ramifications. For instance, the speeding up of workers means more danger to the workers. It means a greater injury to their health. The desire for greater production means greater driving force on the part of the management. To what extent that is injurious to the country at large is a subject matter that ought to be known, and known promptly, to the Government of the United States in order that it may take such action as may be necessary to protect its welfare.

The CHAIRMAN. Is this the bureau through which such inquiries are made?

Secretary WILSON. Yes; it is really a bureau-of-labor information.

THURSDAY, JULY 19, 1917.

BOARD FOR STANDARDIZATION OF FIRST-AID

METHODS.

STATEMENT OF DR. W. C. RUCKER, ASSISTANT SURGEON GENERAL, PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE.

The CHAIRMAN. For standardization of first-aid methods you want $5,000. Have you this item, Dr. Rucker?

Dr. RUCKER. Yes, sir; I have it under Dr. Meeker.

The CHAIRMAN. I understood that first-aid methods were already standardized?

Dr. RUCKER. No, sir; first-aid methods decidedly are not standardized.

The CHAIRMAN. We gave you the money that was asked for, and they said it was all ready to be published.

Dr. RUCKER. You gave us the money to go to work and collect a lot of data, which we have collected, and now it is necessary to go further into this matter than we considered at first. It is not only necessary to consider it in view of first aid as a whole but with special reference to special industries. At the present time with the speed

ing up of industry all over the country there are going to be a greater number of accidents; and it is going to be very valuable for us to be able to get together a lot of data which we can place in the hands of laymen so that they can apply first-aid methods pending the arrival of the physician or the surgeon of the company or of the municipality. The CHAIRMAN. The reason I asked if the work had not all been done is because this matter was first called to my attention by Dr. Fauntleroy, who was on the committee representing the Navy Department, and my understanding was that the whole matter was in such shape that for $2,000 they would be able to do the necessary clerical work and prepare a publication of the statements. Now, after you get that you start all over again. It was stated that $75 a month was for a clerk, $100 to buy stationery, and the other money was to go toward the publication of a little book on standardization of first aids. I told him to take it up with the Labor Department so that the estimate would come through that department. The committee was organized, one representing the War Department, one representing the Navy Department, and I do not know whether the Public Health Service was represented or not.

Dr. RUCKER. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. And also the industrial establishments were represented?

Dr. RUCKER. Yes; a committee was appointed consisting of Dr. Richard Hart, of Philadelphia, who is the chairman; Col. La Garde, who represented the War Department, who is the vice chairman; myself, representing the Public Health Service, as secretary; and then there was Dr. J. B. Kaster, who is the chief surgeon of the Santa Fe Railroad: Dr. Samuel C. Plummer, who is the chief surgeon of the Rock Island Railroad; Surg. A. M. Fauntleroy, who represented the Navy; and Dr. J. Shelton Horsley, of Richmond, Va., who is a recognized authority on industrial injuries in general; and Maj. R. U. Patterson, of the Medical Corps of the Army, who represented the Red Cross. Dr. Hart is now in Europe in charge of a base hospital unit, as is also Maj. Patterson. Surg. Fauntleroy is in Japan, but his place on the board has been taken by Surg. T. M. Richards, United States Navy. The committee went to work and after studying over the problem which confronted it sent out a questionnaire to a large number of the industrial surgeons throughout the country to find out what was considered the best general practice in regard to handling different things, burns, scalds, scratches, dislocations, fractures, drowning, electric shocks, and things that are ordinarily met with in first-aid work.

The viewpoint that we took was that it was not necessary to standardize emergency surgery because that was a technical thing done by technical men; but what were the things that should be done by the laymen pending the arrival of medical and surgical assistance? We have collected that data. That required a great deal of labor and a great deal more labor than we ever imagined would be required. We have got this data, and this work has ceased for lack of appropriation, except just such work as can be carried on by the committee itself.

The CHAIRMAN. What stage has been reached?

Dr. RUCKER. It has reached a stage now where we are ready to go to work and write a general first-aid manual; but what we want to