consolidated index it can be seen at once on which lists the name appears, thus reducing to a minimum the time and expense required in making the change. The Division has installed also a record of issues of publications, by consulting which it can be seen at a glance how many copies of any publication have been printed, how many have been issued and when, and how many are on hand. Not only is this information available for each publication, but also for stated periods for all publications issued by a bureau and for all publications issued by the Department. This kind of information it was not formerly possible to procure, although frequently called for, without considerable delay and much clerical labor on the part of the several bureaus. As anticipated by the Department, the centralization within one division of the work incident to the distribution of all the publications of the Department has resulted in many economies and advantages to the service. Many thousands of dollars have been saved in the cost of stencils, containers or wrappers, labor, hauling, etc., while equally large savings have come from reductions in the mailing lists as a consequence of thorough revisions of them. And, more important still, there has been brought about a higher degree of efficiency in an important line of departmental work—that of disseminating information. SALE OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. I have each year in my annual report had a word to say in favor of placing a nominal price on certain classes of public documents, because I am thoroughly convinced that it would restrict excessive demands from sources which frequently can not possibly be benefited by the publications, and thus leave the distribution of necessarily limited editions to those for whom they have the greatest interest or value. Already Tide Tables, Coast Pilots, and Coast Charts, issued by the Coast and Geodetic Survey; Heads of Families, First Census of the United States, 1790, issued by the Bureau of the Census; and World Trade Directory, issued by the Bureau of Manufactures, are being sold by the Department or by the Superintendent of Documents. Steps will probably soon be taken by the Department to limit the distribution of copies of the Bulletin of the Bureau of Standards to those who are willing to pay for them a sum which will cover the actual cost of their production, though reprints of papers from the Bulletin will continue to be supplied free of charge. This rule could. with advantage be extended to many others of the technical and scientific publications issued by the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Bureau of Fisheries, and the Bureau of Standards, as well as to many of the costly statistical publications issued by the Bureaus of the Census, Statistics, and Manufactures. Practically all European countries have adopted the practice of placing a very low limit to the free distribution of public documents, and no doubt our Government will come to realize that in this way only can an effective check be placed on the extravagance and waste in public printing which has for so long been a source of complaint both in and out of the Congress. OFFICE OF THE SOLICITOR. The following is a condensed summary of work done by the Office of the Solicitor during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1911: Legal opinions rendered, formal and informal (memorandum).... Claims, injured employees compensation act (involving examination as to law and facts)... 505 3,055 Contracts examined (indeterminate amounts; fuel, supplies, etc.)...... Contracts examined (approved, disapproved, drafted, redrafted, modified; involving expenditures amounting to $1,453,503. 89).. 408 84 159 204 73 Bonds, contract, examined (approved, disapproved, etc.; amounting to $647,345.50). Bonds, official, examined (approved, disapproved; amounting to $285,000).. Insurance policies, construction, examined (approved, disapproved; amounting Total number of matters disposed of.. 1,580 6 968 7,042 BUREAU OF THE CENSUS. Much the greater part of the work of the Bureau during the fiscal year has been on the tabulation of the results of the Thirteenth Decennial Census. The usual annual investigations regarding statistics of cities, production and consumption of cotton, vital statistics, and forest products have been carried on, but none of the special investigations authorized by the permanent census act and intended to be pursued primarily during the intercensus period has occupied the attention of the Bureau. FIELD WORK. For these reasons the Bureau has had very little field work during the year. The field work on the population and agricultural statistics had been completed during the preceding fiscal year and also the greater part of the field work on the manufactures statistics. A considerable number of special agents were, however, employed during part of the year in the collection of statistics of irrigation called for by an amendment to the Thirteenth Census act, and a large expense was incurred in securing returns from institutions for the defective and delinquent classes. The usual annual field work on the collection of cotton statistics and the collection of statistics of cities has also been pursued. The greater part of the permanent force of the Bureau, however, has been employed in the office at Washington in connection with the tabulation of the results of the decennial census, upon which work also a large number of temporary clerks have been employed. GENERAL SCHEME OF CENSUS PUBLICATIONS. During the year a general plan for the arrangement, publication, and distribution of the information derived from the census has been devised and is in process of carrying out. This scheme differs in important respects from that employed in connection with previous decennial censuses. The principal aim has been to disseminate the important results of the census in a form more convenient and intelligible to the ordinary reader than that heretofore used. The plan also contemplates a reduction in the expenditure for the distribution of the more detailed results of the census, which are of use only to libraries and a comparatively small number of individuals and institutions. It is conceived that most citizens interested at all in statistical matters desire to know the details with regard to the population, agriculture, manufactures, and mining industries of their own State and of their own county and community, and to know the principal facts with regard to other States and the country as a whole. Ordinarily they are not interested in a mass of details with regard to other States or other local communities. With this conception in mind the Bureau of the Census proposes to issue a series of bulletins giving details for each State and a series of general bulletins giving the principal facts for the country as a whole, by States and by leading cities. The detail bulletins for any given State will in general be distributed only to the citizens of that State, while the bulletins containing the more general information will be distributed throughout the country. Later there will be prepared a series of bound compendiums, one for each State. The compendium for a given State will contain all the material in the separate bulletins for that State and all the material in the general United States bulletins, together with some additional information and text discussion which will perhaps not have been issued at all in bulletin form. The compendium of any given State will thus be a convenient volume, containing perhaps three or four hundred pages, which will be of great practical value to the people of that State. It will be much easier for them to find the information desired in a small volume of this character than to pick it out of a long series of bulky volumes. Moreover, owing to the comparatively small cost of such State compendiums, they can be distributed in a larger edition than the Government could afford to publish of the complete census. While the proposed State compendiums will cover all three of the main branches of the census, namely, population, agriculture, and manufactures, mines and quarries, the nature of their contents can best be understood by describing the part which will relate to population only. For any given State the section of the compendium relating to population will contain (1) the number of inhabitants, for three censuses, by minor civil divisions (counties, cities, townships, precincts, wards, etc.); (2) facts with regard to the sex, color, general nativity, country of birth, citizenship, illiteracy, and school attendance of the population of each county, so arranged as to bring all the facts with regard to any one county into immediate juxtaposition; (3) similar detailed facts for each municipality of 2,500 or more inhabitants; (4) facts classified in somewhat greater detail with reference to the subjects above specified, and also with reference to other subjects, for the population of the State as a whole, it being desirable to publish a more complete statistical analysis for the State as a whole than for its smaller subdivisions; (5) statistics on similar subjects, with reference to cities of 25,000 or more inhabitants, in somewhat greater detail than for counties and smaller cities, but in less detail than for the State as a whole. The various tables above mentioned as appearing in the State compendiums will contain approximately all the information which appears in the final reports with reference to that particular State and its subdivisions. There will, however, be another section (6) of the compendium for each State, which will present for all of the States comparative figures on the various subjects covered by the population census, only the more important items on each subject being included. In other words, this section will constitute an abstract of the population census by States. There will further be a similar abstract (7) for all cities in the United States of 25,000 or more inhabitants; likewise (8) a table showing the population of each county of the country and (9) a table showing the population of each incorporated place of 2,500 or more inhabitants. The material with reference to population contained in the State compendiums will, as above stated, be largely issued in advance in the form of bulletins. One series of State bulletins on population is already in process of publication, the bulletins for numerous States having been issued and the remainder about to appear. This first series of State population bulletins deals exclusively with the number of inhabitants without presenting their characteristics; it gives the population of counties and minor civil divisions, together with comparative statistics of the distribution and growth of urban and rural population. An introductory text is written in connection with each of these State bulletins, so as to make the figures more intelligible. A second series of bulletins, giving the principal characteristics of the population, by counties and for the State as a whole, will be begun shortly. The complete sets of final reports of the census, which, as before stated, are intended only for limited distribution, will comprise all of the material in detail for all of the States. These final reports will consist of two classes of volumes. In the volumes of the first class will be bound up together the contents of the several State compendiums. They will thus constitute a geographical presentation of the census material on all subjects with regard to each State and its subdivisions appearing in one place. The second set of volumes in the final reports will consist of subject presentations, in which the facts on any given subject will be published together, the data for each State or for each city being placed in comparison with those for other States and cities. There will thus be to some extent a duplication of the material in the final reports, the same data appearing once under the geographica! arrangement and again under the subject arrangement. This duplication will not, however, be very great; for, in the first place, the details with regard to the population of individual counties or of the smaller cities will appear only in the volumes based on geographical |