The new headquarters at Fort Snelling have been completed, excepting some of the minor buildings. The Quartermaster-General has lately inspected them, and reports them excellent buildings, of economical construction.

The Quartermaster-General renews his recommendation for the erection of a building for the safe-keeping of records of the executive departments not in frequent use. Such a building need not be costly; it should be fire-proof and safe, and so arranged that the records of the different departments could be stored in separate fire-proof rooms. There can be no doubt as to the value and economy of such a building, and the Quartermaster-General has submitted a design for such an one. An appropriation therefor has passed the Senate unanimously, but in the last hours of the late Congress it failed in conference.

Congress, at the last session, passed a law providing for the erection of a new building for the Pension Office. As the law imposed upon the Quartermaster-General of the Army the duty of selecting a site, subject to the approval of the Secretaries of War and of the Interior, he reports the progress made thereunder. It seems to have been the intention of

the authors of this measure to provide, by the appropriation of $250,000 which was made, for the purchase of a site AND for the erection of the building, but the omission, apparently an accident, of the word and in the law has prevented any attempt to construct a building, and the whole matter has therefore remained undetermined, and needs further legislative action. The Quartermaster-General has, under the law, performed his duty of selecting and submitting for approval a site; he has also submitted plans for such a building as he believes, on information, to have been intended by the authors of this law; but in consequence of the omission of the important word noted above, preventing the construction of such a building as was believed by the Secretary of the Interior and myself to have been actually intended by Congress, it was not thought advisable by us to select a site until further legislation is had.

There are eighty national military cemeteries declared and established under the law, in which there have been 318,859 interments. These are independent of the cemeteries at military posts, which generally cannot be considered permanent, being vacated on the abandonment of posts as the frontier passes beyond them.

It is expected that the public road from Vicksburg to the military cemetery will be completed this fall. Further appropriations are asked to complete the roadways to the Fort Scott and to the Chattanooga military cemeteries, as the sums granted by Congress were not sufficient for the completion of either.

An appropriation for repairing the road from the capital to the Arlington Cemetery is recommended. The Quartermaster-General renews his recommendation that this cemetery, containing 208 acres, in which few more military interments are probable in the future, be constituted and

established by law a national official cemetery for interment of officers of the government, members of Congress, and others in the public service, dying at Washington or elsewhere, whose friends may desire their interment in a cemetery maintained by the nation. There is space for this purpose. The cemetery is sufficiently remote from the city to be unobjectionable on the score of health, and yet near enough for easy communication. Being separated from the city by a great river, it is not liable to be encroached upon and ultimately destroyed by the growth of population.

Under the law of July, 1864, 3,813 claims for quartermaster's stores were investigated during the year by the agents of the Quartermaster's Department. Their amount as presented was $2,287,729.22. The cost of this work was $139,604.63. The total number of these claims on file for examination was 22,935, calling for $12,034,750.29. Of these the Quartermaster-General reported to the Third Auditor 1,149 with recommendation for settlement at $227,680.39, which is $344,898.93 less than claimed. During the year 1,995 claims, calling for $1,885,173.32, were rejected. The Quartermaster-General has not during the year been able to take up 2,018 other claims which had been prepared for such action. Thus, 5,162 cases were prepared during the year for adjudication.

The Quartermaster's Department moved, during the year, 46,658 persons, 10,355 beasts, and 136,632 tons of material.

Some of the railroads which purchased on credit, under executive orders, railroad material at the close of the war, continue in default. Attention is called to the fact that, while appropriation has been made to pay land-grant railroads for service rendered in the years ending June 30, 1880 and 1882, no provision has been made in appropriations for paying for such service rendered in the year ending June 30, 1881. This inflicts loss upon those companies which have faithfully done their duty to the government during that and other years.

About 10,500 horses and the same number of mules are kept in the military service. The loss of animals during the year was 2,056 horses and 1,281 mules. The proceeds of sales thereof, deposited in the Treasury in the year, and not available under existing laws to replace those died, lost, or sold, was $80,207.97. The average cost of 1,438 cavalry and artillery horses purchased during the year was $125.12-total $179,926.71. The cost of 1,006 mules and 29 draft-horses purchased for the trains was $117,074.80; the average being for mules $111.07 each, and for draft-horses $183.79. Thus the sales of animals, worn out, produced about one-fourth of the cost of replacing them.

The duty of supplying lights to the Army, heretofore performed by the Subsistence Department, having been transferred to the Quartermaster's Department, contracts for mineral oil and for lamps have been made, and the first distribution thereof to the military posts is in progress. So far as can be at present estimated, the new method of light

ing will cost about $2,500 per annum more than the old. As the Argand burner used gives the light of sixteen candles, the comfort of the troops will be very much increased by substitution of mineral oil for candles. The morale of the troops is reported to have improved at posts where the new lights have been introduced. The men, being able to read without injury to their eyes, spend more time in rational amusements and less time at the sutler store, at the grog-shops, and in the guardhouse.

The law which abolished issue of fuel to officers causes great hardship to those who are stationed at military posts in inclement climates and on the prairies, where fuel is scarce and costly. It is much to be desired that this allowance be restored. It is considered by officers of the Army even more unjust to those in the wilderness than the abolition of the forage-ration was to those living east of the Mississippi. That complaint has been put an end to by the law of February 24, 1881, but the question of fuel has failed to meet Congressional remedy.

SUBSISTENCE DEPARTMENT.

Attention is invited to the clause in the appropriation acts requiring ten per centum to be charged officers and enlisted men in excess of original cost price to the United States on all subsistence stores sold them, and, as this addition is considered by officers and enlisted men to be onerous and unjust to them, legislation is recommended by the Commissary-General by which sales will hereafter be made to officers and enlisted men at cost prices, as was formerly the case.

The existing system of furnishing tobacco to enlisted men, by causing the small money values of the quantities drawn by each man to be charged on the pay-rolls and collected by the paymasters, to be subsequently transferred to the credit of the appropriations of the Subsistence Department upon the books of the Treasury on settlements made in the offices of the accounting officers, entails a very considerable expense to the government for clerical services in the Pay and Subsistence Departments which might, to a great extent, be saved by so modifying existing laws as to cause tobacco to be placed on sale in the Subsistence Department in the same manner as other articles are held for sale to officers and enlisted men under section 1144, Revised Statutes. This can be easily effected by repealing sections 1149 and 1301, Revised Statutes, and inserting the words "including tobacco" in section 1144. The issues of subsistence for the Subsistence Department of the Army to Indians during the fiscal year 1881 are tabulated by the Commissary-General of Subsistence. It is a matter of annual recurrence that if, from any cause, an appropriation of the Indian Bureau for the support and care of an Indian tribe becomes at any time exhausted, re⚫ quests are immediately made upon the War Department to furnish subsistence with which to feed the band or tribe unprovided for until an appropriation can be obtained from Congress; and, although section

3678, Revised Statutes, prescribes that "all sums appropriated for the various branches of expenditure in the public service shall be applied solely to the objects for which they are respectively made, and for no others," the overruling dictates of reason and sound policy toward these savages, who are capable of inflicting such untold misery upon individuals and expense upon the government, force executive officers to the adoption of expedients which are of doubtful legality. Such an instance occurred in May and June last in respect to certain Indians in the Indian Territory, who, for want of necessary funds on the part of the Indian Bureau, had to be subsisted from the appropriation for the subsistence of the Army until the appropriation for the fiscal year 1882 became available. This was done upon the express promise of the Inte rior Department to "present the subject to Congress upon the earliest opportunity, and urge upon that body the necessity for an appropriation to reimburse the War Department for such expenditures as shall be incurred in providing for these Indians." It would appear that the War Department should not be left, by inadequate provision for the Indian Bureau, to be made subject to contribution for the maintenance of the Indians whenever the appropriations for the Indian Bureau become, for any reason, exhausted.

The introduction of enlisted cooks into the Army, to prepare the rations of the companies, troops, and batteries, under such regulations as may be prescribed under section 1174, Revised Statutes, is recommended.

The question of the sufficiency or insufficiency of the Army ration for satisfying the requirements of the soldier for food is ably discussed, by officers who have given great attention to the subject, in reports appended to the annual report of the Commissary-General. The outcome of the whole discussion would seem to indicate the sufficiency of the present ration as a whole, if issued to and consumed by the men, or if the product of such of it as may be sold is applied exclusively to the purchase of food for the men.

MEDICAL DEPARTMENT.

The number of deaths of soldiers was 130 from disease, and 67 from wounds and injuries, being 9 per 1,000 of mean strength, the fatal results in cases treated being as 1 to 190.

The number of new official demands upon the Record and Pension Division during the fiscal year, for information as to the cause of death in the case of deceased soldiers and the hospital record of invalids, was 55,040. The average number of such demands, during the previous ten years, had been 22,245 annually, and the number during the fiscal year terminating June 30, 1880, was 39,241; the number received during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1881, being an increase of 40 per cent. over the previous fiscal year, and of 147 per cent. over the annual average of the previous ten years.

At the commencement of the fiscal year 6,964 cases remained unanswered, making 62,004 cases to be disposed of during the year.

Search was made and replies furnished to the proper authorities in 40,596 of these cases, leaving 21,408 unanswered cases on hand on the 1st of July, 1881.

This work becomes more difficult as the period elapsed since the close of the war increases, for the reason that claimants are in many cases unable to furnish accurate or definite data as to time and place of treatment; also, the volumes of hospital records on file in this office are becoming so very dilapidated, from constant handling, that the utmost care must be exercised in order that the entries contained therein may not be irretrievably lost, the clerical force not having been sufficient during the past fiscal year, or at any previous time, to permit of the copying of these original records.

The clerical force of the office was increased by forty clerks last March, under the provisions of the act of Congress approved March 3, 1881, but as, on account of the peculiar nature of the work, newly appointed clerks experience considerable difficulty in learning it, some time must necessarily elapse before they can be expected to perform it with the facility and accuracy exhibited by those who, from long experience, are more familiar with the records.

The Surgeon-General again invites attention to the necessity for a new fire-proof building for the Army Medical Museum and Library, and refers to the following extract from the message of the President to Congress at the commencement of its last session, and requests that the subject be again brought to the attention of that body:

The collections of books, specimens, and records constituting the Army Medical Museum and Library are of national importance. The Library now contains about 51,500 volumes and 57,000 pamphlets relating to medicine, surgery, and allied topics. The contents of the Army Medical Museum consists of 22,000 specimens, and are unique in the completeness with which both military surgery and the diseases of armies are illustrated. Their destruction would be an irreparable loss, not only to the United States, but to the world. There are filed in the Record and Pension Division over 16,000 bound volumes of hospital records, together with a great quantity of papers, embracing the original records of the hospitals of our armies during the civil war. Aside from their historical value, these records are daily searched for evidence needed n the settlement of large numbers of pension and other claims, for the protection of the government against attempted frauds, as well as for the benefit of honest claimants. These valrable collections are now in a building which is peculiarly exposed to the danger of destruction by fire. It is therefore earnestly recommended that an appropriation be made for a new fire-proof building, adequate for the present needs and reasonable future expansion of these valuable collections. Such a building should be absolutely fire-proof; no expenditure for mere architectural display is required. It is believed that a suitable structure can be erected at a cost not to exceed $250,000.

PAY DEPARTMENT.

The Paymaster-General reports the receipt by the Pay Department, during the last fiscal year, of $15,630,967.80; all of which is accounted for without loss.