For completing the equipment of field and siege batteries now in service, and for fully equipping four additional siege batteries according to the requirements of general orders of the War Department under date of February twenty-fourth nineteen hundred, one hundred and fifteen thousand one hundred and forty dollars. PROVING GROUND, SANDY HOOK, NEW JERSEY. For current expenses and maintenance of the ordnance proving ground, Sandy Hook, New Jersey, including expenses incident to the transportation of men and material therefor, general repairs and alterations, and accessories incidental to testing and proving ordnance, including hire of assistants for the Ordnance Board, skilled mechanical labor, purchase of instruments and other supplies, building and repairing butts and targets, clearing and grading ranges, thirty-seven thousand dollars. For the necessary expenses of officers while tempororily employed on ordnance duties at the proving ground and absent from their proper stations, at the rate of two dollars and fifty cents per diem while so employed, and the compensation of draftsmen while employed in the Army Ordnance Bureau on ordnance construction, eighteen thousand seven hundred dollars. For sidings on the Government reservation adjoining the Highland Beach Station of the Central Railroad of New Jersey, three thousand four hundred dollars. For repairs of railroad tracks connecting the proving ground with the Central Railroad of New Jersey, three thousand dollars. WATERVLIET ARSENAL, WEST TROY, NEW YORK. For replacing portion of metal roof of main storehouse and shops, for general repairs on roof and cornice of gun shop, including interior gutters, and so forth, repairing metal roof of blacksmith shop, and inclosing wall and bridges, eighteen thousand eight hundred dollars. BOARD OF ORDNANCE AND FORTIFICATION. To enable the board to make all needful and proper purchases, experiments, and tests to ascertain, with a view to their utilization by the Government, the most effective guns, small arms, cartridges, projectiles, fuses, explosives, torpedoes, armor plates, and other implements and engines of war, and to purchase or cause to be manufactured, under authority of the Secretary of War, such guns, carriages, armor plates, and other war material as may, in the judgment of the board, be necessary in the proper discharge of the duty devolved upon it by the Act approved September twenty-second, eighteen hundred and eighty-eight; to pay the salary of the civilian member of the Board of Ordnance and Fortification provided by the Act of February twenty-fourth, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, and for the necessary traveling expenses of said member when traveling on duty as contemplated in said Act; for the payment of the necessary expenses of the board, including a per diem allowance to each officer detailed to serve thereon, when employed on duty away from his permanent station, of two dollars and fifty cents a day; and for the test of experimental guns, carriages, and other devices procured in accordance with the recommendation of the Board of Ordnance and Fortification, one hundred thousand dollars: Provided, That before any money shall be expended in the construction or test of any gun, gun carriage, ammunition, or implements under the supervision of the said board, the board shall be satisfied, after due inquiry, that the Government of the United States has a lawful right to use the inventions involved in the construction of such gun, gun carriage, ammunition, or implements, or that the construction or test is made at the request of a person either having such lawful right or authorized to convey the same to the Government. That all material purchased under the foregoing provisions of this Act shall be of American manufacture, except in cases when, in the judgment of the Secretary of War, it is to the manifest interest of the United States to make purchases in limited quantities abroad, which material shall be admitted free of duty. EMERY CARRIAGE. To enable A. H. Emery to complete and erect the twelve-inch elevating carriage he is building for the Government, the Secretary of War is hereby authorized and directed to increase the contract price of said carriage and its foundations from one hundred and ten thousand dollars to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and to enable the Secretary of War to make therefor, the sum of forty thousand dollars is hereby appropri ated: Provided, That of the one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to be paid for the carriage and its foundations, ten thousand dollars shall be paid towards the construction of the foundations, of which sum one-half shall be paid to the said Emery as soon as needed by him to pay bills for materials used and labor performed in its construction and erection and the other half of this ten thousand dollars shall be paid to him when the foundations are erected ready for the carriage and all bills for the whole cost thereof entirely satisfied. Of the one hundred and forty thousand dollars balance of this money to be paid for the carriage and its foundations, advances shall be made as heretofore for material and finishing the same as provided in the contract, until such advances shall reach, for materials and finishing and erecting the same, not exceeding ninety per centum of this sum. Of the balance of the said one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, fourteen thousand shall be advanced to the said Emery, after the passage of this Act, as fast as it is needed to pay bills made and to be made in connection with the work of this contract. The ten thousand dollars authorized to be paid A. H. Emery on the supplemental contract provided for in the Fortification appropriation Act approved June sixth eighteen hundred and ninety-six, shall be due and paid as soon as the carriage and loading apparatus provided for in said supplemental contract are completed according to contract and ready for erection. After the carriage herein provided for is completed and tested and all moneys due the said A. H. Emery thereon have been paid, the Government shall have the right to build any and all such other disappearing carriages as it may choose under any or all United States patents obtained at any time by the said Emery on his inven tions embodied in this carriage. The royalty to be due and paid him or his legal representatives on all carriages built by or for the Government or carriages which they build, excepting the type carriage now under construction, embodying any of the said specified inventions, shall not exceed six per centum of the cost of the erected carriage in which such inventions are used; payment of the royalty on any such carriage to be due when such carriage is completed. SEC. 2. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized and directed to make partial payments under the contracts now existing with the War Department for the purchase and erection of pneumatic dynamite guns, carriages, and so forth, and ammunition for same, the said payments to be proportioned to the amount of work done and material furnished to date under said contracts: Provided, That the contractors furnish a satisfactory bond, equal to the amount of all payments to be made, indemnifying the Government against loss in case the said dynamite guns, fittings, and so forth, shall not fulfill the contract requirements: Provided further, That the aggregate amount of partial payments made under the contract shall not exceed eighty per centum of the work done and material furnished to date of payment. Approved, May 25, 1900. BY COMMAND OF MAJOR GENERAL MILES: H. C. CORBIN, |