Evening star., 1936-06-07
FIRST DOCUMENTS
SENT TO ARCHIVES
Thousands of Pension Rec
ordS Go Into Trays at
New Building.
Rr the Associated Press.

~ the Associated Press.
The first of the long line of his
torical documents that will fill the
air conditioned compartments ar
ranged fer them in the National
Archives Building have started on
their way to that new storage place.
In the first group to go are thou
sands of pension records, the docu-
mentS assembled by the old Wicker
sham Commission, those of the war
time Food Administration, which
brought Herbert Hoover on the ma
tional scene, and records of the now
defunct N. R. A.
The first batch of pension records
covers a little less than 100 years
from about 1915 to around 1900. The
War of 1912 was excluded from this
list. Nor are the records of the Revo-
lutionary War among them.
4,50O,00O Individual Records.
Some 10000 metal trays including
about 4,5O0,o00 individual records are
in the first batch being brought from
the dusty corners of Washington ga
RACES to their new, permanent resting
place.
In them are the pension claims of
most of those who were injured in the
Indian Wars and who. fought with
Grant and Sherman and the other
Federal generals.
They represent cases that are closed
and in which there is no current in
terest. Despite this, however. in the
few days that have been used in
transferring the records from their
old, inaccessible storage places to the
Archives Building, there have been
almost half hundred requests from
private individuals to see particular
records in the group. Most of these
requests came from research workers.
While the records represent one Of
the most glamorous portions of Ameri-
can history, there is little drama or
glamor that peeps through the state
mentS in the documents themselves.
They are a simple recital of wounds
received which the claimant felt en-
titled him to pension.
Records of Muster Massacre.
Only from the plainly-worded ref
erences to wounds, stripped bare of
adjectives, could be cleaned the pic
ture of the arrows that flew when
Jackson went against the Seminoles
in the Florida swamps. Claims by
widows bore evidence Of few of the
277 who went down with Custer in
that fierce day of blood and war
whoops that signalized their meeting
with Sitting Bull.
Back of other simply-worded re-
ports of missing arms and legs and
torn bodies lay stories of valor at
Missionary Ridge and Bull Run and
Gettysburg.
They will fill row upon row of dark
green cabinets in the new Archives
Building, each document story unto
itself, but story so stripped of de-
tails as to hold interest now chiefly
for the research worker or the gen.
ealogist.
Documents In Index.
The documents go into numbered
and lettered filing cases. A card index
will tell how each may be found. And,
to further facilitate the indeXing,
Photographic record is kept of the
cards. A photographing machine,
into which the cards are fed, auto
matically photographs them at the
rate of some 5000 an hour, putting
them on a film just one-seventeenth
the size of the cards.
The Food Administration records
are principally those of the Washing
ton office. Later its foreign records
will be brought in to keep in perma-
nent files the official story of the
organization work in Russia, Ger
many, Belgium and throughout the
war-torn areas of the World War.
The N. r. A. records comprise the
official agreements that were signed
by industries to adhere to wage and
hour regulations during the days be-
fore the Blue Eagle was smothered by
the Supreme Court
The Wickersham Commission made
q study of all phases of crime and
made wide range of recommends
tions for dealing with criminals, but
its chief fame and publicity hinged
upon its study of prohibition.