Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1873.djvu/18

698, so great as during previous years. This is explained by the following statement of the Commissioner:

The publication of the Official Gazette of the office requires an annual expenditure of $40,000, but a small portion of which is at present returned to the office by subscription. It has been deemed advisable to publish an edition of 10,000 copies, although less than half of that number are now distributed. Subscriptions, however, are being constantly received, and the back numbers are invariably called for. The Commissioner expresses his conviction that the entire edition will be exhausted within a few years. During said year the cost of printing the current drawings for the office has been paid from the appropriations made for the Patent Office. Previously that expense had been defrayed from appropriations made for the Government Printing Office. This expense, amounting to $40,000 annually, has thus been added to the regular expenditures of the office; but it is, in effect, only a transfer from appropriations made for the Government Printing Office to those for the Patent Office. The sum of $60,000 has been expended in the reproduction of old drawings, but this amount appears to be no part of the current expenses of the office. The Commissioner states that in a few years all of the old drawings will be reproduced in such quantities as will supply the future demand for them. He considers the amount thus expended well invested, not only financially, but with reference to the intelligent advancement of the manufacturing interests of the country. The drawings are being sold for more than their actual cost, and it is believed that a greater amount will eventually be received from their sale than has been expended for their reproduction.

The items above referred to amount to $140,000, which sum has been added, during the year ending September 30, 1873, to the regular current expenses of the office in previous years, and has absorbed almost the entire amount of the excess of receipts over expenditures which would otherwise have existed.

The Commissioner again earnestly invites attention to the great want of additional room for the proper transaction of official business, stating that it is utterly impossible to properly classify the work of the office, in order to insure its being economically and properly done, in the present crowded state of the files, records, and exhibits.

There are now borne upon the pension-rolls the names of 445 widows of soldiers in the revolutionary war, a decrease of 26 since the last annual report. The names of 1,105 widows and children of soldiers who served in the wars subsequent to the Revolution and prior to the late rebellion, excepting the war of 1812, are borne on the rolls, being 52 less than the preceding year.

During the year ending June 30, 1873, there were examined and allowed 6,422 original applications of soldiers for invalid pension, at an aggregate