Under said laws there were stated during the last fiscal year 762 accounts, allowing repayment of $80,896.70, and during said period there were denied 285 claims for repayment. This number of claims allowed and the amount repaid include 91 accounts allowing repayment of $17,601, received in connection with sale of various Indian reservation lands and repaid from Indian trust funds.

Repayment claims, allowed and denied by years.

For the reasons set forth herein, and in conformity with my recommendations in the annual report for 1918, I again suggest new legislation as follows:

1. Fixing a period beyond which selections under the swamp-land grant will not be received.

2. Authorizing issue of patent, with mineral reservations, to purchaser in good faith from the State of designated school sections subsequently found to have been excepted from the grant to the State on account of the mineral therein.

3. Forfeiting rights of way for failure to construct within the statutory period.

4. Repeal of the provisions of law, applicable to Alaska, creating reserved shore spaces between entries along navigable waters, and limiting the water frontage of such entries.

5. Authorizing State transferees, under swamp-land grant, to purchase, under certain conditions, the land from the United States where the State sold without title.

CONCLUSION.

Considering the volume and character of the work transacted in this office during the year that is now closed, with all of its peculiar handicaps to progress, I find much reason to look with pride upon what we have accomplished. To a great extent, the office is laboring under the same difficuties noted in my last annual report, due directly to the result of war conditions and our consequent inability to pro

cure or retain experienced employees in our service. The removal of restrictions on transfers since the armistice, on one hand, and the low entrance salaries for employees competent to do our work, on the other, worked a constant depletion of our forces. In the latter respect, however, some relief was provided in the last legislative, executive, and judicial appropriation bill, by which all of the $720 and a number of the $900 and $1,000 places were eliminated and a less number of $1,200 places substituted therefor, not, however, increasing the aggregate appropriation.

In the field-service work of investigation we are just a little better off than we were one year ago. We have made fair progress in closing up the oil-land cases in California, but we still have that great controversy with us, both in the courts and in land-office hearings, with the outlook as to legislation which may tend to adjust the matter yet uncertain. In the field-surveying work we are in fairly good shape, though over 40 per cent of our engineers, surveyors, and transitmen, and over 600 of our field assistants left the service during the period of the war. Likewise, the offices of surveyors general as a whole are probably better up with their work than ever before. The work in most of the local offices is generally in good condition. Too much praise can not be given to the membership of the land service for its loyal support during the trying year that is now past. With all of the calls for the countless sacrifices incident to the great war, our people have, without fail, made good in our time of need.

In the readjustment of salaries contemplated by the present classification movement, I trust it will be remembered that the provisions made for the operation and maintenance of the land department are entirely out of keeping with those made for the equipment of later activities in the Government service.

CLAY TALLMAN,

The SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

Commissioner.

DOMAIN.

Area of States and Territories.

[Based upon careful joint calculations made in the General Land Office, the Geological Survey, and the

Bureau of the Census.]

Owing to their location adjoining the Great Lakes, the States enumerated below contain approximately an additional number of square miles as follows: Illinois, 1,674 square miles of Lake Michigan; Indiana, 230 square miles of Lake Michigan; Michigan, 16,653 square miles of Lake Superior, 12,922 square miles of Lake Michigan, 9,925 square miles of Lake Huron, and 460 square miles of Lakes St. Clair and Frie; Minnesota, 2,514 square miles of Lake Superior; New York, 3,140 square miles of Lakes Ontario and Erie; Ohio, 3,443 square miles of Lake Erie; Pennsylvania, 891 square miles of Lake Erie; Wisconsin, 2,378 sq nare miles of Lake Superior and 7,500 square miles of Lake Michigan.

In addition to the water areas noted above, California claims jurisdiction over all Pacific waters lying within 3 English miles of her coast; Oregon claims jurisdiction over a similar strip of the Pacific Ocean 1 marine league in width between latitude 42° north and the mouth of the Columbia River, and Texas claims jurisdiction over a strip of Gulf water 3 leagues in width adjacent to her coast and between the Rio Grande and the Sabine Rivers.

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1 Office originally established Jan. 16, 1857, and transferred to Oakland, Calif., following the fire on Apr. 16, 1906.

Name changed Jan. 1, 1918.

NOTE. The land offices in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa are abolished, and the vacant tracts of public lands in those States are subject to entry and location at the General Land Office, Washington, D.C. List of offices of United States surveyors general.

Field division headquarters of special agents of General Land Office.

A. Administrative duties. Appointments; bonds of officials, except mineral surveyors; correspondence concerning local officers, surveyors general, etc.; establishment of new land districts, changes in location of district land offices, changes in district boundary lines, discontinuance of local land offices; publication of notices of intention to offer final proof; opening and sale of Indian reservations; printing and binding; bird reservations; leaves of absences; requisitions for supplies; record of attorneys and agents admitted before department and its bureaus, also before district land offices.

B. Record of patents; use of rectigraph and photostat machines in making photographic copies of papers. C. Homesteads, all original, except reclamation; final homesteads; commuted homesteads; homestead declaratory statements; timber and stone entries; public sales, isolated tracts; private sale, lands in Missouri.

D. Mails and files.

E. Surveys.

F. Reclamation work, excepting Minnesota drainage; rights of way; power sites; withdrawals and restorations under the act of June 25, 1910; desert land entries; easements and permits.

G. Land grants to States and corporations.

H. Contests.

K. Indian allotments and Indian homesteads; opening and sale of Indian reservations; preemptions; townsites; military bounty land warrants; abandoned military reservations; agricultural college and other similar scrip; lieu selections; Indian exchange selections; graduation and credit system entries; private land claims; Minnesota drainage entries; Chippewa logging, Minnesota.

L. Drafting; compilation, engraving, and supervision of publication of United States map for Congress, compilation and revision of State maps, diagrams and miscellaneous maps; custodian of original plats, field notes, and photolithographic copies of township plats.

M. Accounts; repayments; statistics.

N. Mineral entries; contests involving character of land; protests in mineral cases; coal, oil, phosphate, and potash withdrawals and restorations; Northern Pacific classification; mineral segregation plats; bonds of mineral surveyors.

O. Posting, tract books.

FS. Soldiers' additional homesteads; fraudulent entries; timber trespass; unlawful inclosure public domain; suits to set aside patents; disbarment of attorneys and agents; forest reserve eliminations, restorations, etc.

Average number of employees of the General Land Office, June 30, 1919.