Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/71

Rh absolute necessity. The Patent Office alone will in the course of time, with its accumulating records and models, occupy the whole of the present Interior Department building.

I am informed that similar complaints come from other departments of the government; that the Post-Office Department finds its present quarters insufficient; that a large portion of the force of the Treasury Department is located outside of the main building; that the Department of Justice is in a rented house; and that the new edifice erected for the Departments of State, War, and of the Navy will not be large enough to accommodate all the offices belonging to those branches of the public service. Under such circumstances it appears that the exigencies of the government call for the erection of not only one but of several public buildings, for the Interior Department, for the Post-Office Department, for the accommodation of the Department of Justice, and for different offices connected with the War and Navy Departments which do not find accommodation in the buildings now existing and in progress of construction.

In view of this fact I beg leave to repeat some remarks I had the honor to address to the Hon. George L. Converse, chairman of the Committee on Public Lands, House of Representatives, on the 18th of May last, in reply to a letter of inquiry from him: