CHARLOTTE J. HUSTED. LETTER FROM THE ASSISTANT CLERK OF THE COURT OF CLAIMS TRANSMITTING A COPY OF THE FINDINGS OF THE COURT IN THE CASE OF CHARLOTTE J. HUSTED AGAINST THE UNITED STATES. JULY 15, 1913.-Referred to the Committee on Claims and ordered to be printed. COURT OF CLAIMS, CLERK'S OFFICE, Hon. THOMAS R. MARSHALL, President of the Senate. SIR: Pursuant to the order of the court, I transmit herewith a certified copy of the findings of fact and conclusion filed by the court in the aforesaid cause, which case was referred to this court by resolution of the United States Senate under the act of March 3, 1887, known as the Tucker Act. I am, very respectfully, yours, JOHN RANDOLPH, Assistant Clerk Court of Claims. [Court of Claims of the United States. Congressional, No. 14194-274. Charlotte J. Husted, widow of Henry Husted, deceased, v. The United States.] STATEMENT OF CASE. This is a claim for payment of three months' extra pay proper alleged to be due claimant's decedent as one of the beneficiaries under Senate bill 9501, which was referred to this court March 3, 1909, by a resolution of the United States Senate for proceedings under the act of March 3, 1887, known as the Tucker Act. The first section of said bill is applicable to this case and reads as follows: "That the Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, to pay to each of the persons hereinafter in this section named, or, if deceased, to the party entitled thereto, the sum of $300, or so much thereof as may be necessary, being for three months' pay proper of the grade held by each of them when honorably discharged from the volunteer service of the United States after March third, eighteen hundred and sixty-five, namely, Henry Husted, * The claimant thereafter appeared in this court and filed her petition, in which she makes the following allegations: That she is a citizen of the United States, resident in the county of Butler, State of Ohio, and is the widow of Henry Husted, one of the beneficiaries eo nomine under said bill 9501. That said Henry Husted was in the volunteer service of the United States on March 3, 1865, and was thereafter honorably discharged as regimental quartermaster, Ninth Indiana Cavalry in May, 1865. That a claim for three months' extra pay proper was considered and disallowed by the accounting officers of the Treasury upon the ground that the case did not come within the terms of the act of March 3, 1865 (13 Stats., 497). That application was thereafter made to Congress for relief, and the claim was referred to this court as aforesaid. That there is no set-off to extinguish this claim; that there has been no assignment thereof, and that three months' pay proper of the grade held by said Husted when honorably discharged amounts to $190. The case was brought to a hearing on its merits on the 29th day of April, 1913. C. D. Pennebaker, Esq., appeared for the claimant, and the Attorney General, by B. W. Andrews, Esq., his assistant and under his direction, appeared for the defense and protection of the interests of the United States. The court, upon the evidence and after considering the briefs and arguments of counsel on both sides, makes the following FINDINGS OF FACT. I. The claimant, Charlotte J. Husted, is a citizen of the United States, residing at Liberty, Union County, Ind., and is the widow of Henry Husted, deceased. II. Said decedent was enrolled in the military service of the United States November 17, 1863, as a private, Ninth Indiana Cavalry, and was appointed regimental quartermaster sergeant January 1, 1865. He was commissioned first lieutenant and quartermaster March 5, 1865, and was mustered in as such April 23, 1865, and served until finally discharged, September 9, 1865, as first lieutenant and quartermaster. III. A claim for three months' extra pay proper under the act of March 3, 1865 (13 Stats., 497), as amended by the act of July 13, 1866 (14 Stats., 94), was presented to the accounting officers of the Treasury, and was disallowed on the ground that said decedent was not in service as a commissioned officer on March 3, 1865. Except as above stated the claim was never presented to any officer or department of the Government prior to its presentation to Congress and reference to this court as hereinbefore set forth in the statement of the case. CONCLUSION. Upon the foregoing findings of fact the court concludes that the claim herein is neither a legal nor an equitable one against the United States, and any amount that may be appropriated in payment of the demand rests in the bounty of Congress. Filed May 5, 1913. A true copy. Test this 14th day of July, 1913. [SEAL.] BY THE COURT. JOHN RANDOLPH, Assistant Clerk Court of Claims. O A RESPONSE TO A SENATE RESOLUTION OF JUNE 26, 1913. JULY 18, 1913.-Referred to the Committee on Finance and ordered to be printed. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY, SIR: By direction of the President, I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of the following resolution of the Senate, under date of June 26, 1913: IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, June 26, 1913. Resolved, That the Secretary of Commerce be directed to furnish, for the use of the Senate, detailed information First. To show how the figures referring to cotton goods in the table on page 39 of the report of the Department of Commerce entitled "Foreign Tariff Systems and Industrial Conditions" were obtained; and Second. To establish, if possible, the correctness of the statements that it takes 504 horsepower in the United States to add the same value to cotton goods as 114 horsepower does in the United Kingdom, and that 47 wage earners in the United States add as much to the value of cotton goods as 255 do in the United Kingdom. Attest: JAMES M. BAKER, Secretary. The resolution was referred to the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce and to the Division of Foreign Tariffs therein, in which division the data to which the resolution refers were prepared and their reply follows. $ D-63-1-vol 21-19 Before quoting it, however, permit me, in justice to my predecessors, by whom this work was authorized and by whose appointees the figures were gathered and the report prepared from beginning to end, to suggest what seems to be misapprehensions in the resolution itself adopted by the Senate. It may be stated also that the work was well advanced before the department came under my charge. The resolution speaks of " the report of the Department of Commerce entitled Foreign Tariff Systems and Industrial Conditions."" The Department of Commerce took no initiative with respect to this report. The publication bearing this title is a committee document published by the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, containing a report prepared at the request of that committee by the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, as the title of the pamphlet shows. The Committee on Ways and Means kindly gave to the Department of Commerce 150 copies of the pamphlet; a brief summary, a single page prepared by the authors of the report, was given to the press by the department on May 13, 1913. No edition of the pamphlet was issued by the Department of Com merce. The resolution mentions "the statements that it takes 504 horsepower in the United States to add the same value to cotton goods as 114 horsepower does in the United Kingdom." If reference is made to page 39 of the pamphlet this language does not quite accurately represent what there appears. It is stated in the table on page 39 that there are 504 horsepower capacity of engines in the United States for every $100,000 added by manufacture, and that there are 114 horsepower capacity of engines in the United Kingdom for every $100,000 added by manufacture. It is respectfully pointed out that the statement of the resolution that it "takes 504 horsepower in the United States to add the same value as 114 horsepower in the United Kingdom is another and very different thing from the statement that there are 504 horsepower capacity of engines in the United States for the same value of output for which there are 114 horsepower capacity of engines in the United Kingdom. It is one thing to have the horsepower capacity exist; it is another and different thing to state that its full use is required for a certain result. The Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Division of Foreign Tariffs, advises: First. The figures shown in the table on page 39 of the report, with the exception of the last column, are averages based on the statistics presented in the table on pages 36-37. The method adopted for calculating the amount of wages in the United Kingdom, shown in the last column, is fully explained in the third paragraph on page 38. Second. The averages for the engine capacity in the United Kingdom and the number of wage earners in the United States for every $100.000 added by manufacture in the case of cotton goods are incorrect. For the former the correct amount. derived from the returns on page 36, is 571 horsepower and for the latter 147 wage earners. The corrected statement should therefore be that there are 504 horsepower capacity of engines in the United States for every $100,000 added by manufacture as compared with 571 horsepower capacity of engines in the United Kingdom for every $100,000 added by manufacture, and that there are 147 wage earners in the United States for every $100,000 added by manufacture, as compared with 255 wage earners in the United Kingdom for every $100,000 added by manufacture. Justice to the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce requires me to point out that the printing of the figure 47, clearly a typographical or clerical error, may perhaps be accounted for by the repetition of the figure 47 in the second line above of the same column of the same table. In view of the corrections thus brought to the attention of the department a rigorous reexamination of all the statistics contained in the report of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce to the Committee on Ways and Means was ordered. Several other purely clerical errors have been discovered, the more significant ones being as follows: (1) Tin plate, capacity of engines in the United Kingdom 707 horsepower (instead of 105 horsepower) for every $100,000 added by manufacture; (2) Butter, cheese, condensed milk, and oleomargarine, 112 (instead of 49) wage earners in Canada for every $100,000 added by manufacture, and $321 (instead of $141) as wages in Canada for every $1,000 added by manufacture. Neither has adverse bearing on the question of relative industrial efficiency in the United States. As soon as the work of review is completed, such errata as exist will be communicated to the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, by whose direction the report was printed. The general comparisons shown on pages 41 and 42, under the heading of "Relative industrial efficiency," are not appreciably affected by any of the changes. Neither are the comparisons by industries, on page 39, modified to the disadvantage of the United States in respect to industrial efficiency, save in the change in the relation of wage earners in the cotton industry from 47 to 255 in favor of the United States to 147 to 255, also in favor of the United States. |