measures for which it is responsible, it depends very largely upon the coöperation of other agencies, especially the customs officers and the Coast Guard. The Bureau of Navigation is specially charged with the decision of questions relating to the registry, enrollment, and licensing of vessels, and the filing of these documents; with the supervision of laws relating to the admeasurement, letters and numbers of vessels; and with the final decision of questions concerning the collection and refund of tonnage taxes. It may change the names of vessels and must prepare an annual list of them. It renders each year a report to the Secretary of Commerce upon the operation of all laws relating to navigation. Every four years the Commissioner of Navigation also compiles and issues a copy of all the laws administered by the Bureau, to which a supplement is added annually upon the adjournment of Congress.

Furthermore, the Bureau has supervision over the Shipping Commissioners, who are stationed at all the principal American ports. Their duties are to supervise the shipping articles or contracts between seamen and masters regarding wages, description of voyage, and term of service. They also enforce the laws for the protection and relief of seamen in matters such as the provisions of vessels, damages for unjust treatment, discipline and punishment of mutiny, and other crimes. At the smaller ports, the duties of shipping commissioners are performed by customs officers.

Within the Bureau of Navigation also is the radio service for the enforcement of the acts of Congress and of the International Convention concerning apparatus and operators for radio communication on ocean steamers and at coast stations. The functions of this service are to inspect apparatus, license stations and operators, and assist in securing improvements in equipment and in standards of operation.

Steamboat-inspection Service. - The United States government provided for the inspection of steamboats as early

as 1839. The service was reorganized by an act of 1852 and placed under the general direction of the Secretary of the Treasury. It was transferred in 1903 to the new Department of Commerce and Labor, and ten years later to the Department of Commerce. This service is charged with the duty of inspecting steam vessels and the licensing of ship officers, and has general administration of the laws relating to vessels and their officers as far as they have to do with the protection of life and property. At the head of the service is the supervising inspector general; under him are eleven supervising inspectors, each of whom has control over local inspectors within an assigned district. Besides, there is a corps of assistant inspectors and four traveling inspectors. The supervising inspector general and the supervising inspectors constitute a board which meets annually at Washington and establishes regulations for carrying out the provisions of the laws respecting steamboat inspection, disciplining officers, and other matters falling within the jurisdiction of this service.

Bureau of Lighthouses. This branch of the national administration was organized in 1789; but the scheme of organization has changed several times since that date. The administrative duties of the Lighthouse Service include the construction and maintenance of lighthouses, light vessels, lighthouse depots, beacons, fog signals, buoys, and other aids to navigation on the coasts of the United States, as well as the preservation of all records and property appertaining to the lighthouse establishment. As now constituted the Service is directed by the Bureau of Lighthouses established in 1910. This is a bureau in the Department of Commerce headed by the Commissioner of Lighthouses, and including an engineering construction division, a naval construction division, a hydrographic division, and a general office force. Outside Washington, the service is divided into nineteen districts

each in charge of a lighthouse inspector with a central office, and each having one or more lighthouse depots for the storing and distribution of supplies and apparatus, and a technical force for the construction and upkeep of land structures and floating equipment. All positions are governed by the civil service rules, and appointments and promotions are on a merit basis. The report for 1921 showed a total personnel of about six thousand and a total of about sixteen thousand aids to navigation in operation.

Coast and Geodetic Survey. The origin of the Survey dates from a recommendation of President Jefferson in 1807, its scientific organization from 1832, and its present name from 1878. It was transferred from the Treasury Department to the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903, and since 1913 has been a Bureau in the Department of Commerce. As now organized the general management is in the hands of a superintendent with numerous assistants. The Bureau is charged with the survey of the coasts of the United States, and its work includes base measure, triangulation, topography and hydrography, the survey of rivers to the head of tide-water or ship navigation, deep-sea soundings, temperature and current observations along the coast and throughout the Gulf and Japan streams, magnetic observations and researches, gravity research, determination of heights, the determination of geographic positions by astronomic observations for latitude, longitude, and azimuth, and by triangulation to furnish reference points for state surveys. The publications of the Survey comprise annual reports, charts upon various scales, including sailing charts of the coasts and harbors, tide tables issued annually in advance, sailing directions covering all navigable waters, etc.

United States Public Health Service. The United States Public Health Service is a bureau in the Treasury Department in direct charge of the Surgeon General. It owes its origin

to an act of Congress in 1798 authorizing a marine hospital service for the care of sick and disabled seamen of the American merchant marine. By successive enactments, the functions of the Service have been increased until they cover a wide range. They include management of marine hospitals and relief stations for patients of the merchant marine, coast guard, and other federal beneficiaries; supervision of the national quarantine stations at American ports and of quarantine enforcement at certain consulates abroad; medical inspection of immigrants; investigation and other measures for the suppression of epidemics and plagues; the collection and dissemination of mortality statistics and sanitary information; scientific studies of the diseases of man and other public health problems; and a continuous campaign of public health education. The marine hospitals are located in all important internal and external ports of the United States, including the ports of its insular possessions. The number of these institutions and the volume of hospital work were enormously increased by virtue of the disabilities among the soldiers, sailors, and marines in the World War.

United States Coast Guard. By an act of Congress passed in 1915, the former Revenue Cutter Service and the former Life-saving Service were combined to form the Coast Guard. It constitutes a part of the military forces of the United States, but it operates under the Treasury Department in time of peace and as a part of the Navy in time of war. Its headquarters is at Washington, and the chief officer is the commandant, selected from the line officers of the service, appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and under the immediate supervision of an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. Under the commandant is an authorized commissioned personnel of 270 officers trained at the Coast Guard Academy and a total authorized force of 5474.

As the successor of the Life-saving Service, the Coast

Guard is concerned with the saving of life and property along our shores. The coast line is divided into districts, each under an experienced superintendent who selects keepers for all stations in his district and is responsible for their efficiency. These two hundred stations are located at selected points of danger to shipping and vary somewhat in character according to their environment and the nature of the service demanded of them.

As the successor of the Revenue Cutter Service, the duties of the Coast Guard consist primarily in the enforcement of statutes relating to national maritime interests, either independently or in coöperation with the Department of Commerce and other agencies. It is to protect the customs revenue; it is to enforce, not only the laws against smuggling, but those relating to national quarantine, neutrality, navigation, life-saving appliances on merchant vessels, suppression of piracy, robbery, and mutiny on merchant vessels, protection of seal fisheries, illegal traffic in firearms, suppression of the slave-trade, and the protection of wrecked property and timber reserves of the United States. During dangerous and inclement weather Coast Guard cutters are required to cruise along the coasts and render assistance to vessels in distress; and, during the season of iceberg hazards, they are employed as the American quota in the international ice patrol provided for by several nations under the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, signed in 1914. The Coast Guard operates more than a hundred vessels of various types cruising cutters, inshore patrol cutters, harbor cutters, harbor launches, and station ships for the performance of these duties and the rendering of emergency service at the call of any department having "special work of a maritime nature for which no other vessels are especially maintained." Other Public Agencies. While a comprehensive treatment of all the organs of government touching in some way