the sundry civil appropriation act of June 25, 1910, which directed the transfer of the investigation of structural materials to the Bureau of Standards." A new organic act for the Bureau of Mines was approved on February 25, 1913, which, although increasing the scope of its work, did not affect its status as a bureau of the Interior Department." The office of Superintendent of Indian Schools was abolished on July 1, 1910, the Indian appropriation act of April 4, 1910, having failed to make provision for its maintenance." The Board of Pension Appeals in the office of the Secretary of the Interior was abolished by act of March 4, 1911, upon the recommendation of the Secretary of the Interior, and its duties transferred to the office of the Assistant Attorney General for the Interior Department, but three years later Congress made provision in the appropriation act of July 16, 1914, for three members of a Board of Appeals, to be appointed by the Secretary of the Interior."

Alaskan Engineering Commission; Solicitor; Superintendent for the Five Civilized Tribes. Under authority of an act approved March 12, 1914, which empowered and directed the President to locate, construct, and operate railroads in the Territory of Alaska, a commission of three engineers was appointed by the President to make the necessary surveys. This commission which became known as the Alaskan Engineering Commission, was directed to report to the Secretary of the Interior, under whom the President placed the general administration of the work. Construction of the railroad was begun in 1915, under general direction of the Secretary of the Interior." The title of the Assistant Attorney General assigned to the Interior Department was changed to the Solicitor for the Department of the Interior by act of July 16, 1914,

236 Stat. L., 369; 703, 765; Department of the Interior, Annual reports, 1910, 2, 24-25; Checklist, 471n, 557; Institute for Government Research, The Bureau of Mines (1922).

37 Stat. L., 681; Department of the Interior, Annual reports, 1916, 535. 33 36 Stat. L., 269, 272; Checklist, 497n; Department of the Interior, Annual reports, 1910, 44.

936 Stat. L., 1170, 1214; Department of the Interior, Annual reports, 1910, 52; 38 Stat. L., 454, 488.

40

38 Stat. L., 305; Congressional directory (December, 1921), 341; Institute for Government Research, The Alaskan Engineering Commission (1922).

while the act of August 1, 1914, enlarged the work of the Commissioner of the Five Civilized Tribes to include the administration of the affairs of the individual restricted Indians, and changed the title of that officer to Superintendent for the Five Civilized Tribes."

National Park Service. The various national parks, which had been placed under the exclusive control of the Secretary of the Interior upon their establishment, beginning with Yellowstone in March, 1872, were administered, prior to 1914, as separate reservations in charge of superintendents reporting directly to the Secretary of the Interior. On June 4, 1914, a General Superintendent and Landscape Engineer of National Parks was appointed by the Secretary of the Interior and given supervision over all the national parks and reservations. This officer maintained headquarters in the field for about two years, when he was called to Washington and a permanent office established in the Interior Department. Statutory provision for this office was made by Congress in a deficiency appropriation act of February 28, 1916, and in the sundry civil appropriation act of July 1, 1916.“

This arrangement for the supervision of national parks was a temporary one made by the Secretary of the Interior until Congress might deem it advisable to act upon his recommendation for the establishment of a National Park Service as a separate bureau in the department. Such a Service, in charge of a Director appointed by the Secretary of the Interior, was established by act of August 25, 1916. The Service was not organized, however, until April 17, 1917, as Congress failed to make appropriations for its organization and maintenance until that date. Commenting upon the establishment of this Service in his annual report for 1916, the Secretary said: "There has heretofore been no service to which the duty of administering the national parks has been delegated. The work has been done by a small and inadequate force in the Secretary's Office, the members of which had their regular departmental duties to perform and have given such time

41

38 Stat. L., 454, 497; 582, 598; Department of the Interior, Annual reports, 1915, II, 327.

42

39 Stat. L., 14, 23; 262, 309; Department of the Interior, Annual reports, 1914, 88; Institute for Government Research, The National Park Service (1922).

99 43

as has been possible to the park work. Each of the national parks has been created by law differing more or less from the law creating each of the other parks, and heretofore they have been administered as individual reservations with no particular relation to each other. This method of handling the parks has, for reasons that are quite apparent, been both inefficient and unsatisfactory.'" War Work. The war work of the Department of the Interior was confined largely to the duties performed by the Geological Survey and the Bureau of Mines, in coöperation with the War and Navy departments and with special war agencies. Thus the Geological Survey was engaged in geologic investigations, topographical surveys, and water resources investigations, of value to other departments and services, while the Bureau of Mines was engaged in chemical warfare investigation, regulation of explosives, war mineral investigations, metallurgical investigations, and the study of petroleum and natural gas problems. The chemical warfare investigation work was transferred to the Chemical Warfare Service of the War Department by Executive order dated June 25, 1918.“

War Minerals Relief Commission; Alaskan Advisory Commission; Superintendent of Capitol Buildings and Grounds Again Becomes the Architect of the Capitol. Under authority of an act of March 2, 1919, authorizing the Secretary to adjust claims for losses incurred in procuring or preparing certain minerals during the World War, a War Minerals Relief Commission of three members was appointed by the Secretary of the Interior to assist him in the adjustment of such claims. Following the resignation of the members of this commission, the work was placed in charge of a single commissioner by the Secretary of the Interior on June 6, 1921. An Alaskan Advisory Commission was appointed by the Secretary of the Interior on April 22, 1920, composed of representatives from the Interior, Post Office, and Agricultural Departments, and the Shipping Board, to advise the Secretary as to the

43

45

39 Stat. L., 535; Department of the Interior, Annual reports, 1916, 85-86.

"Department of the Interior, Annual reports, 1918, 32-33, 104.

45

'40 Stat. L., 1272, 1274; Department of the Interior, Annual reports, 1919, 120; I92I, IOI.

immediate steps that should be taken to better conditions in Alaska." The title of the Superintendent of Capitol Buildings and Grounds was again changed to the Architect of the Capitol by act of March 3, 1921, and the office was removed from the jurisdiction of the Interior Department, except in the disbursement of its appropriations, by act of March 20, 1922, which gives it an independent status, subject to Congressional supervision."

Distinctive Characteristics of Organization. Since its establishment in 1849, the administrative organization of the Department of the Interior has been characterized by the arbitrary grouping of a number of unrelated services into one department, under the general supervision of the Secretary of the Interior. Most of these services, however, are concerned with matters which come within the broad category of domestic or internal affairs. As noted in a previous chapter dealing with this department, the organic act of 1849 did not give the Department of the Interior exclusive jurisdiction over this branch of administration, while the establishment of the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce and Labor resulted in the transfer to those departments of several bureaus and offices previously located in the Interior Department. Still other services, at present under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Interior, might well be assigned to other departments, such as the Patent Office to the Department of Commerce, the Bureau of Pensions to the War and Navy departments or to the Veterans' Bureau, the Office of the Architect of the Capitol to the Supervising Architect's Office in the Treasury Department, and the supervision of certain eleemosynary institutions to the Commissioners of the District of Columbia."

Another characteristic of the administrative organization of the Interior Department which deserves notice is the large degree of

"Department of the Interior, Annual reports, 1920, 201.

47

"41 Stat. L., 1252, 1291; 42 Stat. L., 422, 430; Secretary of the Interior, Annual report, 1922, 138. The office of Superintendent of Library Buildings and Grounds was abolished by act of June 29, 1922, and its duties transferred to the Architect of the Capitol.-42 Stat. L., 715.

19 Secretary Ballinger, in his annual report for 1910, called attention to the advisability of the transfer of such services in the Interior Department to other departments or establishments.-Department of the Interior, Annual reports, 1910, 5-6.

independence possessed by the heads of the major bureaus or subdivisions of the department over the conduct of their respective services, subject only to the supervisory and appellate powers of the Secretary of the Interior. In this respect the Interior Department is somewhat similar to the Treasury Department without, however, furnishing equally valid considerations for such a serious departure from the departmental system of administrative organization. Secretary Garfield in 1907 sought to establish a closer relationship between the various bureau chiefs or commissioners and the Secretary by dealing directly with the heads of those bureaus instead of through the medium of divisions established in the Secretary's Office by administrative order. Further steps might well be taken with the approval or at the direction of Congress, to centralize administrative control within that department, by giving to the Secretary of the Interior a larger degree of supervision and direction over the personnel and organization of its several bureaus.

Finally, attention is called to the division of work in connection with the administration of Indian affairs between three separate agencies, namely, the Office of Indian Affairs, the Board of Indian Commissioners, and the Superintendent for the Five Civilized Tribes, and to the differentiation of scientific activities in the department by the separation of the work in connection with reclamation projects and mine investigations from the Geological Survey, and their establishment as separate services in the department. There seems to be no reasonable justification for this division of work in connection with the Indian Affairs between agencies entirely independent of each other, and the question might also be raised as to the advisability of placing under one directing head all of the scientific work of the department, retaining of course, the present organization of the Geological Survey, the Reclamation Service, and the Bureau of Mines, which would constitute branches of one scientific or technical bureau.