During the year 69,349 applications for patents, including reissues and designs, and 196,946 amendments in pending cases were filed. The number of letters constituting the miscellaneous correspondence received and indexed was 282,100. The number of printed copies of specifications of patents sold was 2,741,621, for which a revenue of $121,559.70 was received by the office. In addition to this, 1,100,090 copies were shipped to foreign countries and 202,907 copies were furnished for governmental use. The office received for record 31,129 deeds of assignment, an average of 456.83 words per deed. Typewritten copies of records aggregating 27,517,400 words were furnished, at 10 cents per hundred words, and for certifying certain of these copies, $1,161.50 was received. For 61,353 photostat copies of foreign patents, the office received $11,968.75. Respectfully submitted. The SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR. THOMAS EWING, Commissioner of Patents. STATEMENT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, BUREAU OF EDUCATION, Washington, October 1, 1915. SIR: I have the honor to submit the following statement of the operations of this office for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1915: FUNCTIONS AND ORGANIZATION OF THE BUREAU. The bureau has no administrative functions except those connected with the expenditure of the funds appropriated by the Federal Government for the maintenance of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts in the several States and in Hawaii and Porto Rico, and those connected with the education, support, and medical relief of natives of Alaska. To the extent that funds appropriated for its use will permit, it performs higher and more important functions than could be performed by any administrative Federal education office. Definitely it attempts to do the following things: (1) To serve as a clearing house for accurate and comprehensive information in respect to all educational agencies and all forms of education in the United States and all foreign countries, and to disseminate this information among school officers, teachers, students of education, and all others directly interested in any form of educational activity. To this end it publishes an Annual Report in two volumes, the first containing an interpretative survey of the progress of education within the year in the United States and all other countries, the second containing statistics of education in the United States; studies specific problems of education, school legislation, State and city school systems, colleges and universities, libraries, and all other agencies of education in the United States and elsewhere, and publishes the results in printed bulletins, multigraphed circulars, and letters to school journals and the public press; carries on an extensive correspondence with school officers, teachers, and others, and sends its experts to speak at meetings of National, State, and local associations. (2) To serve as a clearing house for the best opinions on school organization and administration, courses of study, methods of teaching, and many other matters connected with popular education. For each of these subjects there are a few men and women in the 8161°-INT 1915-vol 1-25 385 United States and elsewhere whose opinions, because of their greater knowledge of the subject, are most valuable. This bureau tries to find for each subject who these persons are and to make lists of expert advisers whom it may consult and to whom it may refer others. It also undertakes, after correspondence and personal conference with these experts, to formulate the consensus of expert opinion. In carrying on this part of its work the bureau's experts attend and participate in congresses and conferences of educators. The commissioner also calls special conferences at the office of the bureau in Washington and elsewhere. Last year he called nine of these conferences, eight national and one sectional. (3) To advise legislatures, school officers, teachers, and others engaged in promoting and directing education. Its experts, upon request, address legislatures, meet with legislative committees and commissions, with State, county, and city school boards, with boards of trustees and faculties of normal schools, colleges, and universities, with library commissions, and with other similar bodies. It makes or directs surveys of State, county, and city school systems, and of individual schools or groups of schools, and reports its findings, together with constructive suggestions, to the proper officials. Within the year it has been engaged in nine such surveys, most of which are not yet completed, and has promised to make other similar surveys within the present fiscal year. In response to thousands of letters asking advice on specific subjects the bureau makes hundreds of studies in its library and elsewhere and gives the results of these studies in individual and circular letters. (4) To promote on its own initiative and to assist education officers and the people of the several States and local communities in promoting what it believes to be necessary and desirable tendencies in education and in the organization of educational agencies, to the end that there may be full and equal opportunity of education for all. Within the year definite work has been done for the lengthening of school terms in rural communities; for the better preparation of teachers for rural schools; for more adequate salaries for teachers in schools of all kinds and grades; for better attendance laws in some States and for the better enforcement of attendance laws in all States; for readjusting courses of study in rural schools; for working out a better method of teaching children to read than is now in common use and in promulgating this method; in working out plans for teaching English in rural schools; in promoting education in agriculture, trades, and industries, and for home making; in the establishment of kindergartens; in the consolidation of rural schools and in making homes for teachers and school farms parts of the equipment of rural schools; in making sentiment for the promotion of teachers in graded schools from grade to grade with the children, |