to go to Persia as minister, but I did not go. I surmise there have been other cases.

Mr. ROGERS. The only one that occurs to you in a quarter of a century is the case you have given.

Mr. MOORES. Was Mr. Shuster in the Consular Service?
Mr. SKINNER. I think not.

Mr. ROGERS. There is one other question, and we will see whether or not it is a matter that should remain in the record. One of the most intolerable things that I have come across in connection with inquiries into the foreign service is the fact that some of the little secretaries who have the background of a social position and money have the effrontery to look down upon the Consular Service and on big men in the Consular Service who have grown distinguished and experienced in that work.

Is it your experience, Mr. Skinner, and you can answer this off or on the record, that there is a considerable amount of that petty snobbery on the part of the Diplomatic Service as regards the Consular Service, and is it further your impression that in so far as it exists the present bill would assist in removing that condition?

Mr. SKINNER. Well, Mr. Chairman, I have numerous friends among those secretaries, and many of them are ambitious, efficient, able, and attractive young fellows. This snobbery that you describe undoubtedly does exist and has existed, but it is by no means invariably so. The personal weaknesses to which you allude seem to me to be the almost inevitable consequence of a defective system. The really serious men among the secretaries deplore the manifestations you describe and avoid them themselves.

Mr. ROGERS. I do not at all suggest that the condition of which I speak is universal or even general. But I fear it is at least occasionally found. My own belief is that, considering the defects in our system, our corps of secretaries is. on the whole. remarkably efficient.

Mr. LINTHICUM. Coming back to the question of commercial attachés, are they housed in the embassy building?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes.

Mr. LINTHICUM. When inquiries are made, what line of inquiries is designated to them for attention?

Mr. SKINNER. I am not familiar with the rules of the Department of Commerce. We operate separately and distinctly. We know nothing of their operations in detail, except as we learn of them by means of social intercourse and such casual information as may drift in to us.

Mr. LINTHICUM. How many employees are under the Department of Commerce in London in connection with commercial attachés?

Mr. SKINNER. My recollection is that there may be about a dozen. I could not say positively-something like that.

Mr. ROGERS. Now, you may go on with your statement. Mr. SKINNER. I had spoken of our general department and the commercial department. We have a shipping department. The shipping department is

one of the most interesting branches of our work at the present time, in view of the great interest taken in the mercantile marine. We have six employees in it, also a surgeon of the United States Public Health Service. In this department the clearance of vessels, shipment and discharge of seamen, execution of quarantine laws, checking of alien passports, correspondence relating to shipping matters, and consular reports on the same subject are handled. During the year ending June 30, 1922, we issued 640 bills of health in London. That means 640 different ships went to the United States; the quarantine officer looked after the health of 640 vessels, and all sorts of operations in connection with those ships.

Mr. COLE. Those were American vessels?

Mr. SKINNER. No; vessels of all descriptions. In the same manner we cleared 232 American vessels, a very different matter. We received 228 marine notes of protest, which, of course, related to an infinite variety of casualties, minor and important. We shipped 364 seamen, discharged 210, looked after 4 who died, relieved 112, and viséed 582 crew lists relating to several thousand men. That is a very cold statement about a branch of our work that is really wonderfully interesting. We receive Yankee skippers every day, and it is really inspiring to see them. Not very long ago a ship came in, owned by the captain and the watch officers. They had reverted to the old-fashioned way when the captain owned the ship.

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The most of our vessels that come into London are tramps. But we have also first-class American passenger ships that come into London, ships of over 10,000 tons, mostly one-cabin ships on which the fare is but $100 and they are sailing full.

Mr. COCKRAN. I suppose you can not tell us whether that $100 covers the cost of the service, or whether there is something supplied by taxation.

Mr. SKINNER. I understand those particular liners much more than carry their own operating expenses. They appear to be doing well and are very popular with the public.

Mr. COCKRAN. Passage at $100?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes; about that. The whole mercantile fleet of the world was built up on the proposition that immigrants should be carried for from $25 to $40. The money in shipping is to be found in carrying numbers at comparatively low prices. I think our people are pursuing a wise policy in providing what are called "cabin ships" on which fares can be obtained at quite moderate prices.

Then we come to the American citizenship department. Here we have five employees. Here we grant emergency passports, take applications for depart mental passports and consular certificates, register births, and handle the manifold correspondence arising out of that. In connection with that we deal with the law of citizenship, and have a great many cases of expatriation, and all sorts of legal problems. As I was saying before some of the Members came in, it is in working out those problems that the future diplomat should get a better practical knowledge of what he is to do in the higher regions of the service than anywhere else. In this department, in the last fiscal year, we either extended or amended 4,371 passports; we granted 999 passports and we received 1,117 applications for new passports; reported 43 births and 160 registrations. This is a very dull statement but it represents a great deal of work. Then we come to the alien visé department. You hear a great deal about that in the United States at present. Here we see all aliens proceeding to this country. We have eight employees in this department. We pass upon the suitability of every immigrant proceeding to the United States, and that means a face-to-face inquiry into the various circumstances of his life.

The CHAIRMAN. How effective do you think that inspection is?

Mr. SKINNER. I think that the inspection is most useful. I have not the slightest doubt that the proper working of our immigration laws requires that the visé shall be granted at the place of departure. It seems to me very unfair to the individual to let him close out his home, invest his money in steamship tickets, and go through all the heart-breaking process of getting off to New York, remain there two weeks, and be turned back, when you might just as well turn him back on the other side.

Mr. COLE. You fill out his papers?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. The service in this respect has been developed during the last three or four years, has it not?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. I will say for your information, Mr. Cole, that when we increased the visé fee Mr. Carr gave orders to all of our representatives abroad to make these investigations of alien's vicéing papers in the interest of fairness, as Mr. Skinner suggests.

The CHAIRMAN. No.

Mr. TEMPLE. Of course these investigations do not take the place of the investigation by the immigration authorities after they arrive at an American port?

The CHAIRMAN. No.

Mr. SKINNER. The whole thing is defective. There is really something absurd about it. You would suppose that in the case of an immigrant going to an American consul for a vicé he would ask whether he might go to the United States, and that the consul would say you may go or you may not go. It is reality the other way around. When the immigrant comes to us we look him over and say, perhaps : "You are not a suitable person to have a vicé, and you will be rejected when you get to New York. We warn you not to go." He says in effect: "I know all that but I care nothing about your warning; you have got to give me my vicé and I am going." And we do have to give him his papers. He anticipates being able to break down the legal objections to his admision through pressure exerted by his friends and relatives after landing.

Mr. FISH. Why is it compulsory? Can you not use discretion about granting a vicé?

Mr. SKINNER. Our powers are limited because the law, as it stands, requires that the eligibility of the alien to enter the United States shall be determined only upon the actual arrival of the alien in the territory of the United States. Mr. FISH. Is it not time we made some law suitable to change that? Mr. MOORES. The President in a message the other day said so.

Mr. FISH. Only yesterday I was notified by one of my constituents whose relative had arrived and been declared insane. Had he received a visé from the State Department on the other side?

Mr. SKINNER. He undoubtedly received a visé.

Mr. TEMPLE. You would not grant the visé if you knew the man was insane? Mr. SKINNER. I might be compelled to do so. As a matter of fact, in certain extreme cases I have taken the liberty of actually refusing, but only very - exceptional circumstances would warrant that.

Mr. MOORES. Have you an alienist or psychological expert attached to the corps?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes; we have a Public Health Service surgeon. We could perfect our administration and undoubtedly would if we had proper legal powers. However, even as matters now stand we clear up a great many bad cases. The flagrant cases come to us, and, of course, we advise them not to go, and if they are sensible they act upon our advice. But in many other instances they do go.

Mr. TEMPLE. I ran into a number of cases in which a diplomatic officer has absolutely refused to grant visé.

Mr. SKINNER. We can refuse in the case of an anarchist, for example, but those cases are extremely rare. We also refuse to act when the quota of a country is exhausted. The numerous cases are what we call immigration cases, where a man may be unfit, liable to become a public charge, a contract laborer, and so on.

The CHAIRMAN. What advantage is there in having the visés if you have no discretionary power? For instance, an alien presents himself who is a victim of glaucoma, an excludable disease, and it is perfectly obvious he suffers from that?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Have you not the power, without assigning any reason, to refuse to visé his passports?

Mr. SKINNER. We have not the power. Under the regulations we advise him not to go; if he, nevertheless, insists upon going, we inform the immigration people on the other side. We endeavor to get a report to New York or elsewhere prior to the arrival of that individual, and then he may be excluded. The trouble is that once the unfit alien has landed in America all sorts of pressure is applied to overcome the reasons for his rejection. We had rather a notorious case a few days ago of a young girl who was invited to proceed to the United States by a British actor in New York, who was a married man. This girl went. We cabled over and reported the facts. She was met as the steamer came in, was not allowed to land, was turned back, and her parents were overjoyed that she was saved from the fate which awaited her. Such cases are arising all the time. It can not be doubted that the visé system, even though imperfect, yields very valuable results.

That summarizes the subject of the alien visé. Next is the accounting department of our organization, where we take in the money. Here we have eight employees. During the year ended June 30, 1922, we dealt with 37,554 consular invoices. That represented, you might say, about half of all the British goods that entered the United States. Of course, there is a great deal of work connected with that.

Mr. LINTHICUM. How many employees are in your office?

Mr. SKINNER. We have 55.

Then we come to our notarial department. Here we have only two employees. We take depositions and perform notarial services of a varied kind and carry on the correspondence arising therefrom. During the year ended June 30, 1922, this department performed 8.270 separate services. That covered every activity that a man might conceivably think of.

Then we come to our war claims department. I suppose that in no other consulate in the world is there such a department as a war claims department. That is a product of the war. We have here three employees. From the beginning of the war, we have made up the record of every claim of com

mercial character for seized goods, seized ships, etc. We have followed the cases through. representing many of these claimants in the courts, and have collected hundreds of thousands of dollars for different people. We have collected, incidentally, the whole prize court history of the war, having classified every prize court judgment that has been handed down. I do not know whether that will serve anybody in the future, but we thought that something might arise when the concrete commercial history of the war as distinguished from the broader aspects of it might be of utility.

Then we come to the filing, mailing, and statistical department.

Mr. MOORES. Is your prize court material in such shape that it could be published; and, if so, how much of a report would it make?

Mr. SKINNER. There is an enormous volume of material, but it is all concrete and deals with particular claims, the history of each particular claim. Of course, the prize court jurisprudence is interwoven through this material.

Mr. MOORES. I imagine it would be of immense value.

Mr. SKINNER. I hope there will never be a war that might cause it to be referred to. We dealt with thousands of cases during the war. The British Government took the position that they would not decide certain matters until the claimant had exhausted his legal remedies. There were thousands of cases in which the claimant was absent from the scene or too poor or something of that sort. He could not go to the expense of hiring lawyers and pushing it through in the usual way. So we got an arrangement with the president of the prize court by which we, as consular officers, might enter appearance on behalf of the claimant and so get a decision without any expense on his part. We dealt with a great many cases of that kind.

Mr. BROWNE. Who presides over these prize courts?

Mr. SKINNER. He is called the president of the prize court.

Mr. BROWNE. Is he under the consular department?

Mr. SKINNER. I thought you meant the British officer. Vice Consul De Vault happens to be the present head of our war claims department.

Mr. TEMPLE. The cases are tried in the regular court?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes. But, as you can well understand, there is more done outside of court than inside by private representation, negotiation, etc.

In our statistical department we follow the movement of exports from the United Kingdom to the United States. At any moment of the day we can tell you the value of wool or any other commodity that has been exported as represented in our invoices. In this department is also handled the outgoing corre spondence. During the year ended June 30, 1922, we sent out 43,208 letters from our office. In the same time 903 instructions were received from the Department of State and we sent out 1,732 dispatches or formal reports. Mr. COCKRAN. Can you give us the amount of these 37,000 invoices? do they aggregate in the year?

What

Mr. SKINNER. For the 11 months of 1922 the aggregate exports from London to the United States reached 29,663,287 pounds plus $8,924,681. Some of our invoices are expressed in pounds, some in dollars, and on account of the varying rates of exchange we are embarrassed because you can not reduce those pounds to dollars and get a fair statement of the facts, so we follow the practice of expressing our statistics in the currency in the invoices as stated.

Mr. COCKRAN. So that your actual invoices for the 11 months of 1922 covered $160,000,000.

Mr. SKINNER. Yes; about that figure. That is a considerable increase over previous year, 1921, the total for 11 months of which was £13,761,806. In 1920 the total was £54,555,536. The reason the figures are low now is because values have come down greatly. You may be interested to know that thus far this year the value of precious stones exported from London amounts to £2,975,646. Mr. COLE. What portion of this $160,000,000 exports from London were dutiable? Have you the figures on that?

Mr. SKINNER. I could not say positively but possibly about one-half. To return to this bill I do not think you can miss an institution that you have never known, and as the people of the United States have possessed only a rudimentary and unbalanced foreign service they can not very well anticipate the many advantages which, from my point of view, will ensue upon the passage of this bill. I can only assure you of my own knowledge that all over the world young men full of promise are at their tasks to-day buoyed up by the confident expectation that this bill so necessary for the protection of our trade and commerce, so indispensable for the furtherance of our political relations, will pass. I earnestly hope for the sake of our country's business interests that you will not allow the measure to fail.

That is really all that I have to say. I should like to answer any questions. Mr. CONNALLY. Your statement in conclusion was to the effect that the country did not know much about the foreign service; that it was unbalanced, etc. What is the matter with our foreign service? Is it serious?

Mr. COLE. What is the matter with it?

Mr. SKINNER. It lacks stability; it lacks unification; it lacks special training among the higher diplomatic officers where such training and experience are most necessary. It is not properly housed, and in the higher diplomatic offices the rate of pay is such that only rich men can accept the positions.

Mr. CONNALLY. As compared with other foreign services, is ours at the foot of the list?

Mr. SKINNER. The material in our service I believe to be as good as any, but the organization is defective, and unless we ameliorate conditions of employment I do not believe that we can hold together the best of our present personnel. Our men are waiting now for the enactment of the proposals you have before you. Let us look at the Consular Service: As I said a moment ago, be fore a number of members had come in, there are only two positions that pay $12,000. Since 1906 four men have occupied these two posts, and two of them, including myself, are still in office. So that worked out mathematically there is less than one chance in every four years for 400 men to get into one of these: offices. You can not expect competent and ambitious young men to be con tented indefinitely with conditions in which there are only two positions of outstanding attractiveness, from a financial point of view at all events; to which they can aspire. I do not hesitate to say that 40 per cent of the members of the Consular Service to-day could enter the business world and command salaries or compensation running into very large figures. Mr. Carr has told you that we are losing some of our best material-young men who do not feel that they can wait for remedial legislation. We lost one such man about two months ago. I understand that he is making $20,000 a year to-day and has brilliant financial prospects. We shall lose another young man in about two weeks, one who does not want to go but whose circumstances are such that he really has no choice in the matter.

Mr. CONNALLY. If we have that quality of young men, then they are not getting the salaries to which they are entitled.

Mr. SKINNER. Men are giving up their lives to this service because they are attracted to it for various reasons, and they do not expect the financial rewards offered in private business; but on the other hand, the most of them have families to consider and there comes a point where the bread and butter problem is the controlling factor.

Mr. CONNALLY. To be sure.

Mr. SKINNER. But if you can assure them a livelihood, the opportunity to carry on their duties in suitable comfort, if you can hold out advancement to them from time to time, while also granting them retirement allowances, so that they may be relieved of the anxieties which now beset so many of them, you will have provided such incentives to good work as to hold them in the service and to develop their most useful qualities.

Mr. CONNALLY. You speak of stability. Is the Consular Service not now under civil service rules? Are they not all permanent positions?

Mr. SKINNER. Yes.

Mr. CONNALLY. How are you going to make it more stable and permanent? Mr. SKINNER. We have stability in the Consular Service, as you suggest. We are now working for something more. We hope that by unifying the two services, by promoting interchangeability in the manner and for the purposes already explained to you we shall have, in the course of time, such a body of trained men that Presidents in future years, for their own convenience and in their own interest, will prefer, in making the appointments to the higher diplomatic offices, to turn to this experienced personnel for the simple reason that it will be to their advantage to do so.

Mr. CONNALLY. You say that we have the finest personnel in the world, and that they could earn more money in the business world. Is it the chief complaint that the salaries are inadequate? If it is, I am for big salaries. I want to know what this bill is about.

Mr. SKINNER. Our material is good. Of course, you might have the finest generals in the world, but if their machinery were organized improperly you could not get effective service from them. This bill provides a basic reorganization.

Mr. ROGERS. Might it not be said in comment on Mr. Connally's question, and having in mind the testimony of Mr. Hughes and Mr: Carr, as well as yourself,