BUREAUS OF THE INTERIOR DEPARTMENT.

The Department of the Interior was established by the act of March 3, 1849 (9 Stat. L., 395).

GENERAL LAND OFFICE.

Organized as a bureau of the Treasury Department under act of April 25, 1812 (2 Stat. L., 716).

First commissioner, Edward Tiffin, of Ohio; appointed May 7, 1812.

Became a bureau of the Interior Department when that department was organized under the act of March 3, 1849 (9 Stat. L., 395).

INDIAN OFFICE.

Organized as a bureau of the War Department under act of July 9, 1832 (4 Stat. L., 564).

First commissioner, Elbert Herring, of New York; appointed July 10, 1832. Became a bureau of the Interior Department when that department was organized.

BUREAU OF PENSIONS.

Organized as a bureau of the War Department under act of March 2, 1833 (4 Stat. L., 622).

First commissioner, James L. Edwards, of Virginia; appointed March 3, 1833. Became a bureau of the Interior Department when that department was organized.

PATENT OFFICE.

Organized as a bureau of the State Department under act of March 4, 1836 (5 Stat. L., 117).

First commissioner, Henry S. Ellsworth, of Connecticut; appointed July 4, 1836.

Became a bureau of the Interior Department when that department was organized.

BUREAU OF EDUCATION.

Organized under act of March 2, 1867 (14 Stat. L., 434).

Became a bureau of the Interior Department July 1, 1869, under act of July 20, 1868 (15 Stat. L., 106).

First Commissioner, Henry Barnard, of Connecticut; appointed March 14, 1867.

GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.

Organized as a bureau of the Interior Department under act of March 3, 1879 (20 Stat. L., 394).

First Director, Clarence King, of New York; appointed April 14, 1879.

RECLAMATION SERVICE.

Organized under act of June 17, 1902 (32 Stat. L., 388), under the Director of Geological Survey, Charles D. Walcott.

First Director, F. H. Newell, of Pennsylvania; appointed March 9, 1907.

BUREAU OF MINES.

Organized as a bureau of the Interior Department under the act of May 16, 1910 (36 Stat. L., 369).

First Director, Joseph A. Holmes, of North Carolina; appointed September 3, 1910.

REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

WASHINGTON, November 20, 1915.

SIR: In presenting an outline of the year's work I make bold to express the hope that no other policies of this Government may be allowed to stay the internal development of this country. There is a fear, how general I do not know, that this Government will halt in carrying out its full and needed program of legislation affecting home affairs because of the immediate need for strengthening our national defenses. This apprehension arises, I am confident, out of no lack of sympathy with the plan to increase the Army and the Navy, but out of a feeling that the Government in both executive and legislative branches will be so immersed in matters military and naval as to overlook these matters of less dramatic and perhaps less immediate concern.

NATIONAL PRIDE IN DEVELOPMENT.

Any such course would, I am sure, offend the most deep-seated instinct of our people, for in the development of this continent, the discovery of its resources and their highest utilization, there is a fascination to the American which is superlative. It is indeed our life, and has called out the most sterling qualities in our character. Those foreigners who write of our country often engage in facetious if not scornful comment upon our bombastic manner of telling the story of our growth and of the things achieved or possessed. They fail unfortunately to see far enough into the secret of our pride. To have taken the prize for the largest pumpkin at the county fair, or to have milled more ore in a day than any other mine, or to have

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built the highest dam in the world' such things are to us adventures, which make the game of opening a new country worth while.

No one would smile when told that a foreign army had made an unprecedented number of miles in a day's march, or had brought into action a gun of unrivaled caliber, or built a ship of unequaled displacement or power. These are the very things on which nations pride themselves as revealing their capacity, ingenuity, and resourcefulness. They make for national self-respect and self-confidence. And so it is with the American. His place in the scheme of things is to reveal to the world what can be done in the development of a new country, and every crop raised, every schoolhouse built, every rail laid, every nail driven is evidence that the work he is sent to do is being done. Instead of being the petty boasting of a parochialminded provincial, this spirit is of the very essence of the highest creative quality.

It is not a figure of speech to say that every American has it in his heart that he is in a small sense a discoverer; that he is joining in the revelation to the world of something that it was not before aware of and of which it may some day make use. Men work for what they think worth while, and if they find their joy in proving that land has coal, or will raise wheat, or that a refractory ore may be reduced at a practicable cost, and tell about it proudly, they may be serving themselves, but they are also serving the world. The clerk in the store or the mechanic in a mill may not consciously engage in any enterprise which makes this appeal, but when he learns that the Government of which he is a part has within the year opened a town on the shores of the North Pacific which now has nearly

1 The Arrowrock Dam was completed two years ahead of time and for more than a million dollars less than the estimated cost. This dam was constructed to supply the lands around Boise, Idaho, with water for irrigation. The dam will bear the following plate: "Arrowrock Dam. Maximum height 348.5 ft. Height above river bed 260 ft. Thickness at base 240 ft. Thickness at top 15.5 ft. Length along crest 1,100 ft. Length of spillway 400 ft. Concrete in dam 585,200 cu. yds., in spillway 25,400 cu. yds. Capacity of reservoir 244,300 acre feet, 79,642,000,000 gallons. Construction authorized in January, 1911, by R. A. Ballinger, Secretary of the Interior, upon recommendation of F. H. Newell, Director, and A. P. Davis, Chief Engineer of the United States Reclamation Service. Designed and built under general direction of F. E. Weymouth, supervising engineer, Idaho district, with Charles H. Paul, construction engineer, in direct charge, and James Munn, superintendent of construction. Completed November, 1915, under the administration of Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior."

3,000 inhabitants, and has driven a railroad nearly 40 miles inland toward the Arctic Circle on its way to the coal fields of the Matanuska and the gold fields of the Tanana, he has a feeling that he, too, is participating in the making of this new world. One might say that this was nothing more than sentimental pride. There is a truer and a more dignified word for this quality; it is the expression of the American instinct for improvement. We have a passion for going into the unknown, for answering the puzzles that are put to us. Our imagination is challenged by difficulty. And the result has been a century of growth, which in its magic and in its largeness casts a spell upon the mind.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF POWER.

Some months since I sought to learn what I could of the assets of this country as they might be revealed by this department; where we were in point of development, and what we had with which to meet the world which was teaching us that war was no longer a set contest between more or less mobile armed forces but an enduring contest between all the life forces of the contesting parties, their financial strength, their industrial organization and adaptability, their crop yields, and their mineral resources, and that it ultimately comes to a test of the very genius of the peoples involved. For to mobilize an army, even a great army, is now no more than an idle evidence of a single form of strength if behind this army the nation is not organized. An army is no longer merely so many rifles and men, cartridges and horses; but chemists and inventors, mines and farms, automobiles and roads, airships and gasoline, barbed wire and turning lathes, railroads and weather prophets indeed, the complete machinery of an industrial nation's life. And out of the reports then made these facts stand out:

With the exception of one or two minor minerals, the United States

Minerals.

produces every mineral that is needed in industry, and this can be said of no other country. We produce 66 per cent of the world's output of petroleum, 60 per cent of its copper, 40 per cent of its coal and iron, and 32 per cent of its

lead and zinc. Tin in small quantities is produced in Alaska and platinum in Oregon, Nevada, and California, manganese in Virginia, Georgia, Arkansas, and California; but of these latter minerals, as of nickel and some others of less importance, our supply is altogether inadequate for our consumption. We can build a battleship, or an auto

Fertilizers.

mobile (excepting the tires), a railroad or a factory, entirely from the products of American mines and forests. To replenish the soil we have phosphorus in abundance, potash is known to exist in the deposits of Searles Lake, California, which, however, is not yet commercially available, and in alunite where it is combined with aluminum and deposits of which are found in several States; and nitrogen can be extracted from the air by cheap hydro-electric power as is now done in Germany, Norway, and elsewhere. So that we can feed the earth and keep it sustained. Our soil and climate are so varied that we can produce all the grains, fruits, vegetables, and fibers known to the Temperate Zone, and some found in the semitropics. And to crown all these we have water power that can be made to generate perhaps as much as 60,000,000 horsepower.

Climate.

Water power.

1 For a full presentation of the mineral resources of the country see pp. 153 to 211. The adaptability and resourcefulness of American chemists and engineers has been proved during this war as never before. A few illustrations will point this fact: Barium salts, needed for a variety of purposes, were formerly imported in large quantities, although the raw material, barytes, occurs in extensive deposits in this country. We now manufacture these salts in California, Colorado, Illinois, Pennslyvania, New York, Tennessee, and West Virginia, the new industry not only meeting the domestic demand but also furnishing large quantities of barium compounds for export, and we are substituting domestic barytes for the foreign material for all purposes. The substitution of sodium cyanide for potassium cyanide in the treatment of gold ores to the extent of more than half a million pounds in Colorado alone illustrates how the potash shortage is being met throughout the mining States. Tungsten, an absolutely essential constituent in high-speed tool steel, is being mined at more points than ever before to meet the special demand in the steel-working industry; a tin smelter has been erected to reduce Bolivian ores; cobalt, which is a recent and valuable acquisition to the family of steel-alloying metals, is now being produced in quantity sufficient to lower the market price; American antimony is quoted in the metal market for the first time, and from Alaska alone more antimony ore has been shipped this year than was ever before produced from American mines in any one year; cadmium, formerly imported, is now an article of export; and in other minor metals full independence of foreign supplies is being worked out. Practically all the crude platinum from Colombia and part of the New Zealand output is coming to the United States for refining. The position of American zinc in the world market is most striking; in the first half of 1914 the exports from the United States were $109,000, in the second half, $8,650,000, and in the first half of 1915, $11,963,000, or more than a 100-fold increase over the same period in 1914, and the increase continues.