EXECUTIVE MANSION, January 26, 1891. To the Senate and House of Representatives: I transmit herewith a letter of the Secretary of the Interior, accompa nied by a letter from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, who transmits a draft of a bill for compensating the Indians of the Crow Creek Reservation for the loss sustained by them by reason of their receiving less land per capita in their diminished reservations than is to be received by Indians occupying other diminished reservations. The matter is presented for the early consideration of the Congress. BENJ. HARRISON. EXECUTIVE MANSION, January 31, 1891. To the Senate and House of Representatives: The sudden death of the Hon. William Windom, Secretary of the Treasury, in New York, on the evening of the 29th instant, has directed my attention to the present state of the law as to the filling of a vacancy occasioned by the death of the head of a Department. I transmit herewith an opinion of the Attorney-General, from which it will be seen that under the statutes in force no officer in the Treasury Department or other person designated by me can exercise the duties of Secretary of the Treasury for a longer period than ten days. This limitation is, I am sure, unwise, and necessarily involves in such a case as that now presented undue haste and even indelicacy. The President should not be required to take up the question of the selection of a successor before the last offices of affection and respect have been paid to the dead. If the proprieties of an occasion as sad as that which now overshadows us are observed, possibly one-half of the brief time allowed is gone before, with due regard to the decencies of life, the President and those with whom he should advise can take up the consideration of the grave duty of selecting a head for one of the greatest Departments of the Government. Hasty action by the Senate is also necessarily involved, and geographical limitations are practically imposed by the necessity of selecting some one who can reach the capital and take the necessary oath of office before the expiration of the ten days. It may be a very proper restriction of the power of the President in this connection that he shall not designate for any great length of time a person to discharge these important duties who has not been confirmed by the Senate, but there would seem to be no reason why one of the assistant secretaries of the Department wherein the vacancy exists might not discharge the duties of Secretary until a successor is selected, confirmed, and qualified. The inconvenience of this limitation was made apparent at the time of the death of Secretary Folger. President Arthur in that case allowed one of the assistant secretaries, who had been designated to act in the absence of the Secretary, to continue in the discharge of such duties for ten days, then designated the same person to discharge the duties for a further term of ten days, and then made a temporary appointment as Secretary, in order to secure the consideration that he needed in filling this important place. I recommend such a modification of the existing law as will permit the first or sole assistant, or, in the case of the Treasury Department, where the assistants are not graded, that one who may be designated by the President, to discharge the duties of the head of the Department until a successor is appointed and qualified. To the Senate: BENJ. HARRISON. EXECUTIVE MANSION, February 10, 1891. I transmit herewith the correspondence called for by the resolution of the Senate of the 6th instant, relating to the conduct of Commander Reiter in connection with the arrest and killing of General Barrundia. BENJ. HARRISON. EXECUTIVE MANSION, February 13, 1891. To the Senate and House of Representatives: The Admiral of the Navy, David Dixon Porter, died at his residence in the city of Washington this morning at 8.15 o'clock, in the seventyeighth year of his age. He entered the naval service as a midshipman February 2, 1829, and had been since continuously in service, having been made Admiral August 15, 1870. He was the son of Commodore David Pofter, one of the greatest of our naval commanders. His service during the Civil War was conspicuously brilliant and successful, and his death ends a very high and honorable career. His countrymen will sincerely mourn his loss while they cherish with grateful pride the memory of his deeds. To officers of the Navy his life will continue to yield inspiration and encouragement. BENJ. HARRISON. EXECUTIVE MANSION, Washington, D. C., February 14, 1891. To the Senate and House of Representatives: I transmit herewith the sixth annual report of the Commissioner of Labor. This report relates to the cost of producing iron and steel and the materials of which iron is made in the United States and in Europe, and the earnings, the efficiency, and the cost of living of the men employed in such production. BENJ. HARRISON. EXECUTIVE MANSION, February 14, 1891. To the Senate and House of Representatives: The death of William Tecumseh Sherman, which took place to-day at his residence in the city of New York, at 1 o'clock and 50 minutes p. m., is an event that will bring sorrow to the heart of every patriotic citizen. No living American was so loved and venerated as he. To look upon his face, to hear his name, was to have one's love of country intensified. He served his country, not for fame, not out of a sense of professional duty, but for love of the flag and of the beneficent civil institutions of which it was the emblem. He was an ideal soldier, and shared to the fullest the esprit de corps of the Army; but he cherished the civil institutions organized under the Constitution, and was a soldier only that these might be perpetuated in undiminished usefulness and honor. He was in nothing an imitator. A profound student of military science and precedent, he drew from them principles and suggestions, and so adapted them to novel conditions that his campaigns will continue to be the profitable study of the military profession throughout the world. His genial nature made him comrade to every soldier of the great Union Army. No presence was so welcome and inspiring at the camp fire or commandery as his. His career was complete; his honors were full. He had received from the Government the highest rank known to our military establishment and from the people unstinted gratitude and love. No word of mine can add to his fame. His death has followed in startling quickness that of the Admiral of the Navy; and it is a sad and notable incident that when the Department under which he served shall have put on the usual emblems of mourning four of the eight Executive Departments will be simultaneously draped in black, and one other has but to-day removed the crape from its walls. BENJ. HARRISON. EXECUTIVE MANSION, February 26, 1891. To the Senate and House of Representatives: I transmit herewith a report of the Secretary of State and accompanying documents, in relation to the execution of letters rogatory in foreign countries. BENJ. HARRISON. EXECUTIVE MANSION, February 26, 1891. To the Senate of the United States: I transmit herewith, in reply to the resolution of the Senate of the 9th instant, a report from the Secretary of State, accompanied by the papers relating to the commercial arrangement recently entered into with Brazil. BENJ. HARRISON. To the Senate: EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 3, 1891. In accordance with the resolution of the Senate of this date, I return herewith Senate bill 1453, to provide for the purchase of a site and the erection of a public building thereon at Saginaw, in the State of Michigan. BENJ. HARRISON. To the Senate: VETO MESSAGES. EXECUTIVE MANSION, December 24, 1890. I return to the Senate, in which it originated, with my objections, the bill (No. 544) "to provide for the purchase of a site and the erection of a public building thereon at Bar Harbor, in the State of Maine." The statement of a few facts will show, I think, that the public needs do not justify the contemplated expenditure of $75,000 for the erection of a public building at Bar Harbor. Only one public office, the post-office, is to be accommodated. It appears from a report of the Postmaster-General that the rent paid by the United States for a room containing 875 square feet of floor space was in 1888 $300 and the expenditure for fuel and lights $60. One clerk was employed in the office and no carriers. The gross postal receipts for that year were $7,000. Bar Harbor is almost wholly a summer resort. The population of the town of Eden, of which Bar Harbor forms a part, as taken by the census enumerators, was less than 2,000. During one quarter of the year this population is largely increased by summer residents and visitors, but for the other three quarters is not much above the census enumeration. The postal receipts for 1890 by quarters show that for more than half the year the gross receipts of the post-office are about $8 per day. The salary of a janitor for the new building would be more than twice the present cost to the Government of rent, fuel, and lights. I can not believe that upon reconsideration the Congress will approve the contemplated expenditure. BENJ. HARRISON. EXECUTIVE MANSION, January 26, 1891. To the House of Representatives: I return herewith without my approval the bill (H. R. 12365) entitled "An act to authorize Oklahoma City, in Oklahoma Territory, to issue bonds to provide a right of way for the Choctaw Coal and Railway Company through said city." This bill authorizes the corporation of Oklahoma City to issue corporate bonds to the amount of $40,000 for the purpose of providing the right of way for a railroad company through the city, if the proposition shall receive the assent of a majority of the legal voters at an election to be called for that purpose. It is attempted to distinguish this case from the ordinary case of a municipal grant to a railway company by the fact that this railway company had located its line through the lands afterwards settled upon under the town-site law before such settlement, and that the route thus located cuts the plat of the city diagonally and in a way to be very injurious to property interests. Upon an examination of the facts it appears to me to be clear that no legal location was made by the railway company prior to the acquisition of the lands by the occupying settlers. Some preliminary surveys had been made, but no map of location had been filed with the Secretary of the Interior. If the rights of this company at this point of its road as to right of way are derived from the general statute of the United States upon that subject (U. S. Revised Statutes, Supplement, p. 87), then section 4 distinctly saves the right of any settler who had located prior to the filing of a profile of the road and the approval by the Secretary of the Interior thereof. And if, on the other hand, the rights of the company at the point indicated are derived from the act of Congress of February 18, 1888, "to authorize the Choctaw Coal and Railway Company to construct and operate a railway through the Indian Territory, and for other purposes," section 6 of that act also plainly protects the right of any occupying claimant. The latter statute, it seems to me, was intended to grant a right of way only through Indian lands, and if these lands were not such the general statute to which I have referred would apply; but in either event the conclusion is the same. It appears from the report of the committee that its favorable action, and, I must assume, the favorable action of Congress, proceeded upon the theory that there was a real controversy, doubtful as to its issue, as to the right of the railroad company to hold the line of its survey through the city. Stripped, then, of this claim the proposition is nakedly one to authorize Oklahoma City to donate $40,000 to the Choctaw Coal and Railway Company. The general statute of the United States prohibits such grants, and this must stand until repealed as a continuing expression of legislative opinion. If a departure from this rule is to be allowed at all, certainly it should only be where the circumstances are exceptional. Such circumstances, in my opinion, do not exist in this case. Already I have received from other cities in the Territory protests against special legislation of this sort, accompanied by the suggestion that if this policy is admitted other cities shall also be allowed to encourage the building of roads by donation. Oklahoma City, according to the report of the Census Office, has a population of about 4, 100, and this donation would be equivalent to nearly $10 per capita. Very little real estate, whether town-site or country |