The new tall type metal cone buoy, designed to replace wooden buoys used in shoal-water channels, has proved efficient and 50 have been placed in service in the third lighthouse district. Three larger buoys of this type are now being built for test.

With the growth of commercial and other electric generating plants and the extension of reliable electric current to the neighborhood of light stations, there has been an increasing use of electricity during the year for lamps in lenses and for fog-signal purposes.

A design for a gong buoy, to give a sound distinctive from the bell buoy, is under way.

Experiments and tests were continued during the year with various devices and equipment used in lighthouse work, resulting in improvements and opening up new lines of investigation; a fogsignal testing station has been completed at Execution Rocks, N. Y., and improvements in the supply and storage of cheaper grades of kerosene at fog-signal stations are being made.

PERSONNEL.

On June 30, 1921, there were 5,922 persons employed in the Lighthouse Service, including 93 technical, 155 clerical, and 5,674 connected with light stations, vessels, and depots. This is a decrease of 80 from the last annual report. This Service is charged with the maintenance of aids to navigation along 49,012 statute miles of coast line and river channel.

SAVING OF LIFE AND PROPERTY.

During the fiscal year services in saving life and property were rendered and acts of heroism performed by employees of the Lighthouse Service on 125 occasions. Many of these acts were especially meritorious and the employees were individually commended by the Secretary of Commerce.

LIGHTHOUSE DEPOTS.

A lighthouse depot, very much needed for the Alaska district, has been partially built at Ketchikan, Alaska, under appropriations of $90,000 and $12,000. While the wharf and storehouse have been put in use during the fiscal year, the funds are not sufficient to complete the depot.

Work on the construction of a new lighthouse depot at Chelsea, Mass., for the second lighthouse district, under an appropriation of $85,000 made by act of July 1, 1918, was in progress at the end of the fiscal year, but the amount will be insufficient to complete the depot. Under the allotment of $175,000, in August, 1918, from funds for national security and defense, a new plate and boiler shop, a new shed

for the storage of iron bars and shapes, and a new coal pocket have been completed.

The act of June 20, 1918, authorized $275,000 for improvements at the lighthouse depot at Portsmouth, Va., or establishing a new depot, but no appropriation has been made for this work. This is the principal depot of one of the largest lighthouse districts and is the headquarters for five tenders and two light vessels during the greater part of the year. The facilities for berthing these vessels are entirely inadequate, and the efficient operation of the vessels is much hampered in consequence. The inadequacy of space for storing and handling buoys also causes much delay and loss. Increased facilities. for this depot are urgently necessary.

TENDERS AND LIGHT VESSELS.

The tenders of the Service have been in operation throughout the year, except one which was laid up a part of the year because of lack of funds. There are 55 tenders in commission, and they have steamed a total of about 465,000 nautical miles in their work of maintaining buoyage, carrying supplies and construction materials to stations, supplying light vessels with coal, water, etc., also transporting officers and employees to stations or on inspection duty; also duty in cooperating with other Government services and saving of life and property, when the occasion required.

Two tenders, the Oak and Hawthorn, are being constructed to replace the condemned tender Gardenia and the nearly worn-out tender Jessamine. The new tenders are nearly completed.

Plans and specifications are being prepared for the construction of a tender for the fourteenth district to replace the tender Goldenrod, which is practically worn out.

A small tender, the Aster, is being built for use along the intercoastal waterways of Texas and Louisiana.

Two new light vessels were completed during the fiscal year and assigned to the Great Lakes. Another new light vessel, authorized by act of November 4, 1919, is in course of construction and is nearly 50 per cent completed. This vessel is to be moored on Diamond Shoal, N. C., to replace the vessel sunk by a German submarine in August, 1918. Five new light vessels of the second class were contracted for shortly after the end of the fiscal year.

At the close of the fiscal year 62 light vessels were in commission.

Appendix G. ABSTRACT OF REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY.

(E. LESTER JONES, Director.)

NEEDS OF THE BUREAU.

A most important matter to be brought to your attention is the condition of the Bureau as a functioning organization. It is not up to the maximum of production, due primarily to inadequate salaries throughout the service. Congress did prevent complete disintegration of the Bureau when it gave recognition to the field officers, and their pay is now fairly commensurate with the duties performed, but there are other highly technical as well as nontechnical employees of the Bureau who have been retained only through the hope and continued promises of reclassification that have been held out to them; but now the technical employees and others that are highly qualified, though not members of the technical force, are openly signifying their intentions of leaving the Bureau to become identified with other branches of the Government service or to enter outside employment where the salaries are more commensurate with their ability and the character of work actually performed by them. This will be a loss to the country, to the Bureau, and to the individual, because the Bureau has a field of its own not paralleled anywhere else in this country, and consequently the employee leaving can not fully apply anywhere else the skill he has attained in the Bureau, nor can he be replaced by another employee of mature skill and judgment in carrying on the work of the Bureau. It was only the zeal, painstaking care, and extra efforts of these seasoned employees, imbued with the old-time tradition that the Bureau should set the standard of scientific exactness, that prevented the disintegration which would mean the loss of fidelity of our nautical charts, tide tables, current, magnetic, and triangulation data. It may be of interest to state that many of these underpaid technical employees, as well as those of the less technical workers, are compelled to resort to outside work under the most trying conditions in connection with their regular duties in order to make a livelihood. I can not emphasize too strongly that unless this fundamental trouble is soon corrected a disintegration of the service

will continue, with disastrous results of which the Government and the public will feel the effect for years to come.

Another phase of the salary question is important enough to bring to your attention, reiterating what has been said in former reports concerning this Bureau. It involves the entrance salaries, which are too low to attract those who have the basic education required for the specific work involved. Instead of being in a position to accept only those who meet the necessary requirements, the Bureau has to take men with inferior qualifications and hold them simply as "temporaries." If they show special aptitude for the work their sojourn in the Bureau is of short duration, for the present rate of pay is too small to hold them. They are benefited by the help and coaching of more experienced men, and then leave for more lucrative positions. The balance of these temporary employees who do not improve or measure up to a fair standard eventually must be dropped; and so it goes on, year after year, with an annual turnover of 50 to 100 per cent. This method of doing business is wasteful from every point of view. Until the long-recommended change for equitable salaries is made, just so long will this uneconomical condition exist.

NEW BUILDING REQUIRED.

Another serious condition that prevents this Bureau functioning to the fullest extent, and which I have dwelt on at length in previous reports, is the utterly inadequate space in which it is housed and a lack of proper and sanitary quarters.

The Bureau is operating in eight buildings, five larger and three smaller, all but two more or less detached and connected as far as it is feasible by communicating bridges. Two of the main buildings were designed and built for dwellings and one of them was used for that purpose. One of the smaller buildings was built for and used as a stable, and another two of the main buildings were designed and constructed for use as a hotel and were rented to the Government for the use of this Bureau from 1871 to 1891, when they were sold to the Government to house part of this Bureau.

As the work of the Bureau centers largely in the construction and production of nautical charts, and it is therefore a manufactory, the Bureau operates under a single handicap in buildings so little suited to its needs. It is a matter of economy to provide a respectable building for this service-it is a waste to continue under existing conditions.

ADDITIONAL SURVEY VESSELS NEEDED.

In the annual reports of this Department for recent years, and particularly in the annual report for 1920, the urgent need for

speeding up the survey of Alaska was discussed in considerable length. This condition of lack of adequate surveys to meet the requirements of commerce through Alaskan waters still exists, and since the development of that vast territory is steadily increasing, the lack of surveys must, of necessity, become more critical each succeeding year, unless funds for equipment, in excess of anything that has been provided heretofore, are made available for greater surveying activities.

The Coast and Geodetic Survey has been steadily engaged upon the survey of these waters, except during the two years that this country was at war. Careful consideration has been given to increasing the efficiency of these parties with the result that each party is now turning out the maximum possible amount of work consistent with its equipment. Consequently, we can not expect to reduce annually the unsurveyed areas in any greater proportion than we are now doing. The only solution of the problem, therefore, appears to be the assignment of more surveying parties to Alaska. This means more survey ships and launches.

Upon the termination of hostilities with the Central Powers the Department made a careful canvass of the Government's floating equipment to determine what vessels and launches could be transferred to the Coast and Geodetic Survey. As a result of this canvass, seven steam vessels and eight power launches were transferred from the Navy Department. These were all yachts or small pleasure craft that had been commandeered by the Navy for military purposes and were no longer required by that department.

These vessels were taken over by this Department reluctantly because they were far from ideal surveying vessels, but with the hope that they would, in a measure, temporarily meet the needs of the Coast and Geodetic Survey until they could be replaced by suitable vessels. Three of the larger vessels and two of the launches. were returned within a few months, when it was found that no use whatever could be made of them. The others are now operating with surveying parties. They are far from efficient, but still are better than none. These vessels just about replace the old floating equipment of the Bureau which had worn out in service and was ready for condemnation at the outbreak of the war.

If the Coast and Geodetic Survey is to speed up its surveying operations in Alaska to meet the increasing needs of commerce there, it is absolutely necessary that several new vessels designed and built for the purpose be provided, and until these are obtained the present deplorable lack of surveys will continue and will become even worse each succeeding year.

There are no vessels anywhere in the Government service which can be spared from their present use to supplement the Coast and Geo