material is spread over a larger area and that there is a great deal more ground to be covered by the attendants. I asked for four $600 positions last year.

Mr. GILLETT. You had the new stack then?

Mr. PUTNAM. Yes. The new stack was not finished then.

Mr. GILLETT. It was not finished last year?

Mr. PUTNAM. It came in about the middle of last winter. I asked for four $600 positions, and asked for them because there is a double day to be covered. I was given two.

Mr. BINGHAM. You mean day and night?

Mr. PUTNAM. Yes. I was given two of those. Now, I want the other two.

Mr. BINGHAM. Let me ask you this: Do you find that what might be called your popular service, the service to the people who require evening service, as well as the general daily service, has increased?

Mr. PUTNAM. Yes; the evening service represents the heaviest pressure of the day; the reading room is full and the periodical room is full in the evening.

Mr. BINGHAM. But is it not an irregular service?

Mr. PUTNAM. Well, there is a pretty steady volume of business. Mr. BINGHAM. Well, taking the whole day long, day and evening, has it increased?

Mr. PUTNAM. I think it has; it is about normal, but I think it has increased slightly; I mean in point of numbers. On Sundays in winter we can not accommodate the crowd applying.

DOCUMENTS.

Mr. BINGHAM. Now, what about your document division?

Mr. PUTNAM. That is simply on account of the volume of the material which they are handling. About 40,000 to 50,000 volumes a year come into that division alone, nearly three times as much as when the division was given its present staff.

Mr. BINGHAM. That is copyright matter?

Mr. PUTNAM. It is from international exchange and official exchange of documents and some purchases of documentary matter of a certain sort. For instance, we may buy a set of the Cape Parliamentary Debates or a set of the Private Acts of Great Britain. Occasionally we purchase documents, but for the most part they come from exchange.

Mr. BINGHAM. How many have you in that document room?

Mr. PUTNAM. They have at present, besides the chief, one assistant, a stenographer and typewriter, a junior assistant, and a junior messenger, only four.'

Mr. BINGHAM. Four?

Mr. PUTNAM. Yes.

Mr. BINGHAM. And you want another?

Mr. PUTNAM. We want another.

Mr. BINGHAM. Do they all get a thousand dollars?

Mr. PUTNAM. No, sir; the chief assistant to the chief gets $1,400; the stenographer and typewriter gets $900; there is an assistant at $720 and a junior messenger at $360. We have to help them by occasional details also.

Mr. BINGHAM. What would you do with this $1,000 man?

Mr. PUTNAM. The $1,200 man should be a college graduate; he would have a good knowledge of languages and could help in handling the foreign material.

Mr. BINGHAM. Have you been weakened at all in your general administration of affairs by the force you now have?

Mr. PUTNAM. The mass is beyond their capacity; the mass is beyond their capacity to receive and handle scientifically and efficiently and to do with it what should be done. I should make a distinction, however, between this 1,200 position and the two $600 positions in the reading room; they are positions that embarrass immediately our service to the public. This position at $1,200 does not stand on that basis.

MUSIC.

Mr. BINGHAM. What about music? How are you handling music now?

Mr. PUTNAM. The same as the documents; it rests on just the same basis. The volume of material, and its efficient administration, seem to require additional help.

LAW LIBRARY.

Mr. GILLETT. How about the law library?

Mr. PUTNAM. That we can not really get along without. That library is over here. It ought to be the greatest law library in the world.

Mr. LIVINGSTON. Why should it be the greatest?

Mr. PUTNAM. It is the law library of the Supreme Court of the United States. Of course, I am speaking of the collection as a whole, not merely for that part of it which is for the time being over here. The literature of the common law is put here and the chief of the library is here. The foreign material is, for the time being, necessarily over there, because there is no room for it here. We ought to be increasing the collection now, but we have not, in proper order, the material now in hand; it isn't equipped with the proper apparatus, classified or catalogued. We must build up the collection, of course, partly by purchase, partly by gifts, and in either case there must be considerable correspondence, which, as is shown in the case of the document division, must be done, in the first instance, from the law division itself. Now, they have no stenographer or typewriter

Mr. BINGHAM. Have they in the document division?

Mr. PUTNAM. Yes; but not in the law library; there is the ordinary business which requires correspondence there all the time.

Mr. BINGHAM. How many are in the law library; I mean at both locations?

Mr. PUTNAM. Well, we have had to draw upon the other divisions to help out in the administration of the foreign law; that is, in the main building; they have actually at work here five people, including the law librarian, and one of those five alternates, somewhat, with the collection at the main building.

Mr. BINGHAM. How many have you there?

Mr. PUTNAM. Well, we have two; that is, we have the man who is in charge, and he has a junior assistant at $360.

Mr. BINGHAM. Outside of calls made by congressional people, do you have much call on your law library work?

Mr. PUTNAM. It is open to all members of the bar; the members of the bar are using chiefly the literature of the common law at the main building; the people who are using the collection are, in part, government officials who are looking into foreign laws and, in part, what we call research investigators, men who are engaged in investigations, in jurisprudence in the larger sense. The value of the man over there,

in connection with that work, was so well known that he was taken to The Hague as an assistant to one of the counsel who appeared before the recent fisheries tribunal; taken by the State Department. Now he is interpreting the collection over there, and we are occasionally aiding him with a little stenographic assistance. This $900 position needed here, this stenographer, is for the ordinary routine of administering the collection here.

Mr. BINGHAM. You always seem to speak of aiding one of your divisions in the library by taking from another, and so forth.

Mr. PUTNAM. Yes.

Mr. BINGHAM. Why should that not be perfectly natural to do; to aid them in that way? Why should it be looked upon as a deprivation in some way?

Mr. PUTNAM. Well, it is merely this; that the other divisions may be able to stand the loss temporarily, but there comes a time when they can not stand it any longer.

Mr. BINGHAM. I understand that fully.

Mr. PUTNAM. There will always be details, and, as I understand it, they are perfectly legal, and it is our duty to make them. When Í speak of an embarrassment resulting from it I only mean that the division which has had to stand the loss can not stand it any longer. Mr. BINGHAM. How many messengers have you?

Mr. PUTNAM. There is one at $480 there, and we want a boy at $360. They have to send boys after books all over the Capitol.

COPYRIGHT OFFICE.

[Also page 6.1

Mr. BINGHAM. Now, go to the copyright office.

Mr. PUTNAM. Last year-that is, for the present year-you gave us certain additional positions in the copyright office. There were three asked for that were not given; we have dropped the request for one; that was for a chief clerk.

Mr. BINGHAM. How much?

Mr. PUTNAM. Two thousand five hundred dollars; we dropped that. But the $1,600 position and the $480 position we need very much. Now, the increase in fees last year was $20,000 over the preceding year, which meant a net profit, if you call it such, to the Government of $15,000 for the year.

Mr. BINGHAM. You cleared from that office $15,000?

Mr. PUTNAM. Yes. Well, now, this year the receipts, upon the basis of the receipts for the last quarter, will be about $12,000 to $15,000 more than they were last year.

Mr. GILLETT. The business is growing all the time?

Mr. PUTNAM. Yes, at the rate of from 10 to 15 per cent; under our new law our receipts are increasing materially, because we charge $1 for every entry, but that means we furnish a certificate in every case, and that means additional business for the office.

Mr. GILLETT. It does not mean, then, that the business has grown, but the fees have grown?

Mr. PUTNAM. Yes; it is not so much an increase in the number of entries as in the work connected with each, as evidenced by the increase in the fees.

Mr. GILLETT. Then the business has not grown?

Mr. PUTNAM. I should have explained that by "business" I meant the work of handling the business. The new copyright law has added considerably, however, in the number of entries of continental books as against those in English, because under the new law a book in German may be copyrighted here even if there is no edition manufactured here. Now, of course, the correspondence involved in these entries from the Continent is quite intricate, and some of it involves foreign languages; the work is more intricate than that of the ordinary English or American entries. So the business has grown in some ways; it is a little more complicated. It is the additional business which they have to do that requires these two people, and, of course, it leaves the net profit to the Government far beyond the expenditures.

DISTRIBUTION OF CARD INDEXES.

Mr. BINGHAM. The next relates to card indexes. Are there any questions on that?

Mr. PUTNAM. We want an increase in that. There has been an increase in the business of 15 to 18 per cent a year, and that increase in the appropriation we must have.

Mr. GILLETT. This more than pays for itself?

Mr. PUTNAM. Yes. The expenditure for service last year was $18,800; I believe the receipts were $28,000, and they are increasing regularly.

Mr. GILLETT. That was 1910?

Mr. PUTNAM. That was 1910.

LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS (AGAIN).

[Also page 5.]

Mr. BINGHAM. Go to the next page.

Mr. GILLETT. We have finished that, have we not? Or would you like to say anything about your own salary?

Mr. PUTNAM. I dislike to say anything about an increase in the Librarian's salary, although I did put it in for three reasons, only two of which have any concern to the committee. The first reason is that I think the position justifies the increase, and really, in its own interest permanently, requires it. The second reason is that I have occupied this position for nearly twelve years now, and, although it is not for me to say this, perhaps, reasonably filled it. The third reason is because I need the increase; but that is a consideration that the committee, of course, has no concern about.

Mr. LIVINGSTON. I think if you can not live on $6,000 a year you ought to have the increase.

Mr. PUTNAM. Well, I receive $6,000 now, and I have no other source of income. I left a position at $6,000 twelve years ago and took this for a year at $5,000, at that temporary sacrifice. It is not, of course, pertinent, but had I stayed there I suppose I should have received $7,500 there. The qualifications which this place requires can not be a determining consideration with the committee; yet it must be conceded that it is an office requiring the kind of executive ability and some other of the qualities that have a considerable commercial value. I can not say it requires vast learning, because if it did require that I haven't it; but it does require a substantial general education, a sufficient knowledge of the technique to enable the incumbent to understand intelligently the problems and to select the right men to handle them, and these men are specialists, which means on the part of their chief a sympathetic understanding of the specialists as well as of the problem. It requires the ability to administer a business which is considerable. At the same time the Library of Congress is an institution which has now a prestige throughout the world. It is necessarily visited by every foreigner who comes to Washington, eminent professionally or in literature, science, or affairs, or merely as a tourist. These men must be met suitably. The library is the ranking library of this country and the librarianship is the ranking librarianship. Now, librarians in general are not people given to luxuries; they are content to live modestly; but they ought not to have to live penuriously. The Librarian of Congress does not have to entertain largely, but he ought to be able to show some attention, because when he goes elsewhere in behalf of the Government he receives attention. The merely moderate necessities of such a position, it would seem to me, would justify a salary of $7,500, as against $6,000. Those are the general considerations. In my own case, I am nearing 50; I could not save out of the salary of $6,000; and I have a family. These considerations apply to many people in the government service besides myself. Dropping myself out of the question, however, I should think it very unfortunate for the position itself if its salary should not be at least $7,500. I think that the librarianship of our national library, the ranking librarianship of this country, should be paid as much as the librarianship of the city of Brooklyn.

Mr. BINGHAM. Is that all you desire to say on that subject?
Mr. PUTNAM. Yes; that is all.

PRINTS, CHIEF OF DIVISION.

Mr. BINGHAM. What have you to say about the chief of division, prints, an increase of $1,000?

Mr. PUTNAM. Well, that is for uniformity; to put it on the same basis as the others.

Mr. BINGHAM. That is a big price to pay for uniformity?

Mr. PUTNAM. It is also in consideration of the requirements of the position. I have not urged that at any time at which it has been before you, since the man himself has independent means and is not particularly concerned about it; so I have not pressed it. But I felt that I did not want to come back to this committee, as time should go on, with new suggestions as to readjustments in the organization, and I have put the whole scheme in at once.