The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-02-25
WORK CUT OUT
FOR CORTELYOU
Secretary of the New Department Has Plenty of
1t Before Him.

wide field of activity for the new
secretary. Then from the State De-
| partment will be transferred to the
| new department the Bureau of For
! eign Commerce, which has rapidly BE-
| come most valuable adjunct to bust
| ness men by furnishing consular and
other reports about industrial progress
| and opportunities in foreign lands.
| The State Department is now issuing
| daily bulletins, almost as large as a
! small newspaper, regarding business
conditions in foreign lands all over the
world. The consular reports, from
| which this information is culled will
necessarily still continue to be made
| to the State Department but the new
Secretary of Commerce will be fur
mshed with all the available inforuna-
| ton Tor the issuance of these bulletins
Furthermore the new secretary will
| nave charge of several other bureaus
which have hitherto been independent
of any department of the government.
perhaps the most important of these
| Independent bureaus is the Depart
ment of Labor, so called, which in
| reality is only bureau, although call
ed a department. The efficient head of
the labor work for some years has
peen Hon. Carroll D. Wright, whose
| fame as an economist and thinker on
sociological questions has become al
most International. While not a large
bureau in the number of people en-
ployed, it has accomplished a great
deal of wide interest and Importance
10 the laboring and the industrial
world. The experts of this bureau
nave been constantly collecting infor-
nation about the condition of en-
ployes, legislation of different states,
ana on scores of allied subjects. which
are published from time to time as bull
! letins. The direction of this impor-
| tant work, now regarded as indispen-
sable, will come under Secretary Cor
telyou Mr.. Wright has accepted the
presidency of an Eastern college and
in the course of some months will quit
the bureau, which he has been very
largely instrumental in upbuilding
Still another important independent
bureau to come under the new depart
ment is that of the Fish Commission
and the office of the commissioner of
flsh and fisheries Scattered over
the country are numerous fish hatch
cries, where the government encour-
ages the propagation and distribution
OF different species of fresh and salt
water fishes. Millions of these fishes
are planted annually in brooks
streams, and lakes under government
supervision, sometimes in cooperation
of the state fish commissions. An ap-
preparation of $4,000 has lust been
completed for building a lobster hatch
cry on the coast of Maine and that
will in due season be increased so as
to authorize the Matching of cod
there. This work has grown to great
magnitude, so that every senator and
member of Congress has a quota of
little fish to distribute annually among
his constituents. The commission has
Sc &c
peculiar work and the government
funds expended by it annually total
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In that connection there is an inter
esting paragraph in the new law by
which the Department of Commerce is
given jurisdiction, supervision and
control, now possessed and exercised
by the Department of the Treasury,
over the fur seal, salmon, and other
fisheries of Alaska, and over the i'm
migration of aliens into the United
States, it's waters, territories and any
| place subject to the jurisdiction there
Of" The fur seals of Alaska and the
salmon fisheries of that territory have
been subjects of frequent annoyance
! here in Washington and many efforts
at legislation have been made. The
problems incident to those questions
now pass to the new secretary.
Incident to immigration the new de-
partment will have jurisdiction over
the enforcement of the Chinese eXclu-
sion laws. These duties have hither-
to rested with one of the assistant sec
retaries of the treasury. They are ardu-
Gus in many particulars, for the laws
now on the statute books are of very
rigid character as enacted by the last
session of Congress and provide for the
registration of every Chinaman now in
the country. Public sentiment in some
sections and the labor organizations in
nearly all sections demand the vigorous
enforcement of this law against the
constant efforts to smuggle. Cinnamon
into the United States
Still another troublesome question
for the new secretary to unraVel will
be business-like arrangement of the
statistical bureaus of the government.
At present different departments, or
some of them, have acquired bureaus
of their own for the collection of diff
ferent statistics. In very many in
stances the work has been duplicated
and not infrequently the work has been
performed in such manner as to be
! of no practical value. Thus there has
| been a large waste of public money
and the outcries on the part of Con-
gress have been often very pronounced,
although efforts to correct the evils
have, for different reasons, been diff
cult The organic act for the new De-
partment of Commerce contemplates
placing much of this statistical work on
a more systematic and economic basis.
Necessarily much of the work of the
department in promoting commerce
must be in the collection of data and
the expectation is that experts of the
highest efficiency will soon have charge
| of such work and that the results they
I work out will be of such thorough
| character as to be regarded authorita-
tive. However the Department of Ag-
riculture is allowed for the present to
retain its statistical work, particularly
regarding certain crops, because it's fig
| ures have gained a wide reputation for
I accuracy and because a tremendous
| quarrel arose between the Department
and the Census Office some months
| ago. in which the department got The
best of it. The President is also au-
thorized from time to time, as he sees