received cards was 28 percent greater than that for 1938, and the number of nongovernmental investigators was more than doubled. In addition to these 4,202 visits, nearly 500 visits were made by persons who obtained information from or about records from the Division of Reference, though they did not themselves consult the records. Nearly 4,000 letters were written during the year to answer inquiries received from individuals in every State of the Union and in 9 foreign countries; and photostat, photograph, and microfilm copies were made of 22,672 pages of records, three-fourths of them for private individuals. Intensive use was made of the map and atlas collection, as over 2,000 items in that relatively small body of material were consulted; and 33 showings of motion pictures in the custody of the Archivist were held in the auditorium.

The records of nearly every Government agency represented in The National Archives were used at one time or another during the year, though the amount and nature of the use varied. The records of the Veterans' Administration, the Interior Department, the Treasury Department, and the State Department, in that order, were those most used by Government officials. On the other hand, the groups most used by private investigators, in the order of frequency of use, were those of the State Department, the Interior Department, the Veterans' Administration, and the War Department.

Government use of records.-Members of Congress continued to call upon The National Archives for assistance. In 160 instances they requested information or copies of documents, and the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs was furnished a collection of Executive orders relating to Indians and Indian reservations for the use of Charles J. Kappler in compiling the fifth volume of his Indian Affairs, Laws, and Treaties.

Most of the use of records by Government officials in the executive departments and agencies was for administrative rather than historical or research purposes. The Veterans' Administration, for example, used its records chiefly in connection with new claims for pensions or for other administrative needs. Records of the Office of Indian Affairs were drawn on heavily for legal and other administrative purposes, recent examples being the use of treaty council proceedings and a map in The National Archives as evidence in litigation over land assigned to the Yakima Indians and the use of other council proceedings as evidence in defense of traditional Indian fishing rights in the Northwest. The National Park Service also used records in The National Archives in connection with the restoration of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the development of various national parks. Treasury records were much used in connection with fiscal affairs, and the State Department records were

drawn upon for information regarding past official action. The Navy Department made use of ship plans, records dealing with ordnance and matériel, and other items of importance in the naval construction program, and sought such information as the types of guns on the U. S. Sloop-of-War Albany, which was needed to determine whether a certain vessel recently found in the Caribbean Sea was the long-lost Albany. In at least one instance the same records were needed simultaneously by two Government agencies, and the agency that had borrowed them returned them to The National Archives so that representatives of both agencies might have equal opportunities for consulting them.

The records preserved in The National Archives are especially valuable to the Government in defending claims against it. Their use in connection with pension claims and Indian litigation has already been mentioned. During the past year records were also used in connection with bills introduced in Congress for the return of portions of the three-quarters of a million dollars collected from wool dealers as excess profits during the World War; a claim for the return of taxes allegedly over-assessed against a railroad company, amounting to some $100,000; claims for alleged losses caused by Government control of grain elevators during the World War; and a claim by a foreign government for $33,000 for demurrage on a ship taking grain to needy civilians in European countries during the World War.

Besides these administrative uses of the records, several projects of major importance were carried on at The National Archives by Government agencies during the year. These included the selection and transcription of documents for the series of Territorial Papers published by the Department of State, the series of Naval Documents published by the Navy Department, a collection of messages and papers of the Presidents being compiled by the Historical Records Survey, and a collection of Indian treaties and related papers being assembled by the Department of Justice.

Several hundred orders were placed by Government agencies for photograph and photostat copies of treaties, letters, ship plans, early American imprints, and other documents, and the National Park Service had large quantities of documents microfilmed to serve as basic research material in its present program for developing the national parks, monuments, and historic sites. "The River" and "The Plow That Broke the Plains" were the two motion-picture films in the custody of the Archivist that were viewed most frequently by Government officials during the year.

These extensive demands made on The National Archives by Government agencies are due in large part to the increased serviceability of the records after they have been arranged, described, and ade

quately housed; and they may be expected to increase as more work is done on the records and as more officials become aware of the efficiency and variety of services available.

Private use of records.-Searchers from 42 States, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Canada, Cuba, France, Greece, and Mexico came to the building during the year to do their own investigating. Among them were faculty members and graduate students from colleges and universities, lawyers, genealogists, writers, and Government employees. To a much greater degree than in preceding years they worked upon projects, either personal or institutional, that involved extensive research of advanced character and may be expected to result in significant contributions to knowledge. Most of these projects can best be classified as historical or biographical, but an encouraging number of them were in such fields as economics, government, international law, education, anthropology, geology, art, or literature. Institutional projects included the selection and transcription of documents relative to the diplomatic relations of the United States with Canada for publication by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a study of Senate confirmation of appointments for the Committee on Public Administration of the Social Science Research Council. Motion pictures in the custody of the Archivist were viewed by a class on motion-picture techniques of American University, by authors who are writing books on war psychology and on services provided by the Government, and by an investigator who is writing a motion-picture script on immigrant contributions to the life of the Nation.

The foreign relations of the United States were a major interest of searchers, and over half of the requisitions sent from the search rooms to the custodial divisions were for records of the Department of State. Studies were undertaken on one or more phases of the diplomatic relations of the United States with Canada, Hawaii, Japan, Morocco, Haiti, and Mexico and with Latin America generally. Other studies concerned the origins of the Genet Mission, the diplomacy of the United States during the Civil War, the Chinese educational commission to the United States, 1871-81, the participation of the United States in the settlement of Latin American boundary disputes, the diplomacy of American territorial expansion, the influence of sugar on American diplomacy, and the foreign policy of Grover Cleveland. The history of the trans-Mississippi West was also popular with searchers, doubtless because of the presence of the invaluable War Department and Indian Office records. Projects in this field were concerned with Mormon settlements in the mountain desert regions, Apache Indian chiefs, frontier defense in the Southwest, Indian reservations in western Oklahoma, the statehood movements in Oklahoma,

New Mexico, and Arizona, irrigation problems on Indian reservations, Indian missions in Montana, education among the Navahos, the Hudson's Bay Company in Oregon Territory, the Bear Flag Revolt in California, and the St. Louis whiskey frauds. The War Department records were also useful in various Civil War studies, including those dealing with the Mississippi Gunboat Squadron, Pennsylvania and the War Department, the activities and control of the Northern press, Hungarian soldiers in the Union Army, recruitment and enlistment in Illinois, and Rhode Island in the Civil War.

The prevalent interest in economic and social history is reflected in many of the studies undertaken. Among the subjects of such studies were the southern iron industry before the Civil War, the working of Napoleon's continental system as revealed by American commerce, the building of steamboats in the Ohio Valley, early American shipping, the foreign trade of the United States from 1789 to 1815, the social and economic history of the seaboard States of the Confederacy, the economic history of the lower Rio Grande Valley, and the social contributions of the petroleum industry.

Projects relating specifically to the activities of agencies of the United States included histories of the Regular Army, the Revenue Cutter Service, the Public Health Service, the Department of Labor, the Committee on Public Information, and the branch mint at Charlotte, N. C., and studies of the investigatory functions of the Department of Justice, the Union and Confederate aeronautical services during the Civil War, business pressure for reform of the Consular Service, the administration of continental Territories of the United States, the amending provisions of the Constitution, the institutional history of the judiciary of the Old Northwest, and the operation of the Federal courts in North Carolina during the reconstruction period. Among the subjects of biographical studies by searchers were Presidents of the United States, diplomats, cabinet officers, Army and Navy officers, officials of the Confederacy, and other persons as different as Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee alphabet, Thomas A. Scott, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and Louis A. G. Bosc, French naturalist. Investigations of the histories of two families in their relation to certain phases of American history were undertaken, and numerous searches for genealogical information were made.

Of particular note, in view of the fact that The National Archives has custody only of official records of the Government of the United States, with the exception of certain motion pictures and sound recordings, were a number of studies of historical developments in which the United States Government participated only slightly or not at all. In many cases information on these subjects was obtained

from reports of American diplomatic or consular officers abroad. In this group were studies of Puerto Rico in the pre-annexation period, Madagascar in relation to Anglo-French rivalry, the rubber boom in the Amazon region, early Cuban families, the international status of Korea, treaty ports and foreign concessions in China, Denmark and Napoleon's continental system, the historical and social development of the family in Puerto Rico, the transition in Jamaica from slavery to freedom, English nonconformist sentiment regarding the American Civil War, and English republicanism.

More than half of the inquiries answered by letter by The National Archives during the fiscal year 1939 were concerned with the establishment of dates and places of birth, marriage, or death or other data relative to personal history. Possibly half of the requests for information of this character were from State social security agencies, which sought evidence of the age of applicants for old-age pensions, and many others were from the individuals concerned. In numerous cases The National Archives was able, through consultation of pension and other records, to furnish documentary proof of age or citizenship that was of great assistance to old and needy persons. Similar in nature were numerous requests for aid in the establishment of the citizenship of persons either in or from Germany, which could sometimes be furnished from passport or consular or diplomatic records, and for aid in determining the degree of blood or tribal status of an individual claiming to be an Indian, upon which depended his right to share in tribal assets.

Correspondence with historical and other scholarly investigators involved in general two types of services. The first of these required the making of surveys for the purpose of determining what materials were available in The National Archives for the study of general subjects, such as a survey of the materials relating to Latin America for use in a reference book or a survey of the manuscripts signed or written by Abraham Lincoln for use in building up the collection of Lincolniana at Brown University. The second type of service called for the furnishing of detailed information on specific subjects, such as the state of the weather in Washington, D. C., on July 9 and September 7, 1846.

Photostats or photographic copies of documents made for unofficial use were usually intended for study, evidence, exhibit, or the illustration of books, newspaper articles, and the like. One interesting group of documents relating to the career of John Hay was photostated and supplied to the Washington County (Ind.) Historical Society in compliance with a Congressional resolution that authorized the Archivist to furnish copies of documents to the society for use in commemorating the centennial of the birth of Hay. A copy