Mr. SALTZGABER. Oh, no.

Mr. BYRNS. That act was passed in September this year and you have already disposed of a great many?

Mr. BYINGTON. The commissioner spoke of the increased applications which do not require any special examination.

Mr. SALTZGABER. Where they file an original application we have to investigate the case just like any other case, and they have to furnish all the evidence necessary to show their right. When it is an increase there is already on file enough evidence to show that they are entitled to a pension, and the only question is whether they have arrived at the age or are otherwise in a condition that the statute prescribes to justify the increase. That information is generally furnished by the papers already on file. The original applications of the 30,000 widows, and there will be more, have to be dealt with just the same as any other application for pension. Mr. STAFFORD. What is the average time that these men are absent from the department in field work?

Mr. SALTZGABER. Twelve months.

Mr. STAFFORD. They are in the field continuously?

Mr. SALTZGABER. Yes, sir; constantly at work.

Mr. STAFFORD. Are they provided for in the bill under the classification of clerks?

Mr. SALTZGABER. Yes, sir. Formerly they were in a separate class. It was thought better by the committee and ourselves to put them into a general class with the clerks.

Mr. STAFFORD. Is there any limitation on the salaries they may receive?

Mr. SALTZGABER. No, sir. We may send out anybody from the Pension Bureau to make an investigation, but those whose business it is to continue to make investigations are out all the time and receive the salaries stated, a few $1,400, and all the others $1,200.

Mr. STAFFORD. Do you have occasion to send out some of the clerks who are performing work in the bureau?

Mr. SALTZGABER. Yes, sir; we have occasion once in a while to send out the chief of the Law Division. Take a criminal case, involving questions that require his presence, the law officers of the Government request that he come.

Mr. STAFFORD. Is there any other class of clerks sent out?

Mr. SALTZGABER. No, sir; not as a custom. It is a very rare occasion when any other clerk is sent out.

Mr. STAFFORD. How long are they usually attached to any one place for an investigation?

Mr. SALTZGABER. A very little while, except, for instance, one may have accumulated five or six cases the inquiry with reference to which would naturally all be in a certain locality, and they might be there for a week or ten days; but ordinarily they would go from place to place. They are required to do so by the nature of their occupation.

BOOKS.

Mr. BYRNS. On the next page, Mr. Commissioner, you are asking that the sum of $100, or so much thereof as may be necessary, of the amount appropriated for the investigation of pension cases, is made available for the purchase of railway guides, postal guides, maps,

atlases, directories, and other necessary books of reference for use at the seat of government in connection with such investigations.

Mr. SALTZGABER. The comptroller ruled that under the letter of the appropriation as made before we could not buy books of reference, a city directory, for instance. You can imagine, of course, in fact you know without the aid of imagination, that a man could not find a lot of witnesses in a city and know where they lived without the use of a directory, and he ought to have one available in his office. I urged that he could go out and get one somewhere else, but they said that would cost more time to the Government and be more inconvenient than it would be for him to have it in his office.

Mr. BYRNS. The department has an appropriation each year of $1,000 for purchases of this kind, have you ever made any effort to get the Secretary to apportion some of that to your bureau?

Mr. SALTZGABER. They give us $100 a year, which is very inadequate.

Mr. BYRNS. And you want this in addition to that allotment?
Mr. SALTZGABER. Yes, sir; we ought to have it.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 1916.

PATENT OFFICE.

STATEMENT OF MR. THOMAS EWING, COMMISSIONER.

INCREASE OF FORCE.

Mr. BYRNS. Mr. Ewing, on page 248 you are asking for quite an increase of force, and the committee, of course, will be very glad to hear you as to the reasons.

Mr. EWING. I have a few figures here I wish to present to the committee showing somewhat generally what has happened in the office, running over 25 years. In considering the work of the Patent Office there are two elements that are essential; one is the number of applications that we have to examine, and the other is the field of search, the average number of patents that have to be examined in making the search. You can not any more ignore one of those elements than you can the other. There is no definite way of estimating the field of search, but a fair representation of the comparative field of search at different periods is the number of United States patents existing. If we take the force from 1890 to the present time, this is what we find: There were 26,000 applications filed in 1890. Excluding all appropriations for mere printing of patents and the Gazette, which is the mechanical cost, the appropriations for salaries per application in 1890 were $17; in 1895, $18; in 1900, $19; in 1905 they fell to $16; in 1910 they were $19.50; and that is what they are now. My estimate would make them $23.50. If you take the number of United States patents which existed in those different times, they have increased from 419,000 in 1890 to 1,210,000 at the present time, and if you multiply the number of applications by the number of patents that exist, that is, for the field of search, you will find that the ratios to salaries run something like this: In 1900 it gave a figure of 4, to-day it gives a figure 1.7.

It was 4 in 1890, 3.4 in 1895, 3 in 1900, 2 in 1905, 2 in 1910, and 1.7

now.

I think you asked me the last time I was before you if there had not been a large increase in the appropriation for the Patent Office within the last 10 years, and I said yes. But you can see that for 10 years that ratio of the salaries divided by the number of applications, multiplied by the field of search, has been almost stationary and just about half what it was 25 years ago. It is now a little less than what it was 10 years ago and considerably less than half what it was 25 years ago.

It is the function of the office to grant patents where they should be granted, but it is also the function of the office to refuse patents where they should not be granted. About 40 per cent of all the applications filed are refused and, roughly, about 60 per cent are granted. But the granting of patents that ought not to be granted, because of the fact that there is an art that meets them, entails on the manufacturing public and on the investing public great trouble, expense, loss, and uncertainty. The patent system suffers and fails to do the good it ought to do because of this drawback, which everybody who is familiar with it at all constantly hears of. The reason is that the office is not adequately equipped to do its work; and I think these figures show that while the salaries per application have somewhat increased, the salaries per application taken with regard to the amount of work that is necessary in searching against each application have just about been cut in two.

I was in the office in 1890 as an assistant examiner, and I know that the conditions to-day are worse than they were then; that the work is not done as well as it was then; and the reason, I think, is apparent from these figures. I have been there now for three years and have made a very careful study of the uffice. I have not in the past asked very much by way of increase-nothing like as much as I am asking at this time-but the office as it is at present organized can be increased in the manner I have indicated by the addition of 50 men to the examining corps, and on the present plan of organization will take those 50 men with advantage. There are 86 men in each of the four grades of assistant examiners. There are 43 examining divisions. That would mean 8 assistant examiners to each examining division, 2 in each grade, and so many an examiner can handle and oversee; but the work of classification of the patents so that we may be able to find what there is there in a reasonable time is a distinct and enormous task of itself, and we are assigning men for that purpose and for other purposes. Now I want 50 men to be there for that purpose and the other assignments and leave 8 men in each examining division, and in my judgment that is a proper organization of the office on its present plan, and anything short of that is insufficient.

If the entire number of additional assistant examiners asked for50-is granted, one assistant will be assigned for purposes of classification to each of the 43 examining divisions, where he will work under the general direction of the examiner of classification and in close touch with the primary and assistant examiners, who must use the classification after it is completed. In this way we can employ 43 men at one time and greatly speed up the rate of classifying. The

entire office agrees with me that this is the proper way to handle the job. The seven other men are now in other assignments.

As to this matter of classification, I do not suppose any one of you has the slightest idea how many 1,210,000 patents are. If you would come down to the office and look around once you would see. We have been trying to reclassify that whole bunch of patents. It needs it badly. This work of reclassification was begun in 1897 and it is not half done yet, and under the present conditions, I state in my annual report, I do not believe it would be finished in 30 years. As long as it is not done things are more or less in confusion, even over what they would be under the old classification. Either classification would be better than a half-and-half classification. I want to get as many trained men as can be used to advantage on that work of classification and have such increases in the clerical force as will take care of the clerical work of classifying, which, of course, is very large, copying the numbers of the patents in the different classes and putting them where they belong, so we may finish the reclassification inside of five or six years. That would be the business way to handle it. I am also asking some increases of salaries for the assistant commissioner, the primary examiners and law examiners, and some of the clerical positions. The reasons for those I will give you in detail.

INCREASE OF SALARIES.

The total increase I am asking of places and of salaries and everything is $206,920.

I wish to say that on June 30, 1916, the surplus of the office for that fiscal year was $282.373.69 above all appropriations for the office. Therefore this would not exhaust the surplus. I would not for a moment present the surplus as a reason for the increase, because there is no reason why Congress should waste money, no matter where it comes from; but the office needs these men, the work the office is trying to do for the public demands these men, and the public is paying for it and more than paying for better work and ought to get it. Therefore I feel that the office is justified in making the request it has made. I have studied this problem most carefully for three years, and I feel perfectly confident I am right in the position I am taking.

RECEIPTS.

Mr. GOOD. Did you state the receipts of the office?

Mr. EWING. The total receipts of the office for 1916 to June 30 were $2,334,030.48; the expenses were $2,051,656.79.

Mr. GooD. Does that expense include salaries?

Mr. EWING. Everything that is appropriated for the office, and everything that is charged against the office. The appropriation of $2,051,000 includes also printing the patents and our Patent Gazette, but that was not included in my figures given above of the salary appropriation per application, because that is a mechanical cost. Now, I would like to take up these different increases in detail and, I suppose, the most convenient way is to take them up in their order, is it not?

Mr. BYRNS. Yes.

70971-16- -22

ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER.

Mr. EWING. I am asking that the assistant commissioner's salary be increased from $3,500 to $4,500, so that it shall be the same as the first assistant commissioner. The reason is that the two gentlemen perform the same work; they are both presidential appointments; each one acts for the commissioner and either one is acting commissioner when the commissioner is not there, and there seems to be no reason for discrimination.

LAW EXAMINERS.

I am asking for two additional law examiners. There are five at $2,700 a year, and I am asking that they be given $3,000 a year, and that the number be increased from five to seven. The reason I want more men is this: The commissioner is the executive and administrative head of the office, and also has to pass on all legal questions that arise by way of appeal. Now, to show the difficulty of acting on the legal questions alone, there are 4,500 petitions and appeals to the commissioner every year, three commissioners hearing 1,500 apiece, practically. That is an enormous work in itself, and the work of trying to supervise the office in its various activities is so much in addition. The commissioner can not do it; physically it is not possible, and he can not do it because he is comparatively a new man. The dean of the corps told me that I was his twenty-first commissioner. Now, the work of supervision can be done, and can be done under the general supervision of the commissioner, if there are high-grade men in the office who have no axes to grind, men who can be assigned to the duty of looking after special lines of work and seeing that they are properly conducted in the office.

I have five law examiners at the present time. One of them is assigned to the duty of supervising the inception of all interferences; another one is assigned to the duty of passing on all motions that are made to dissolve or modify interferences; another one is assigned to the duty of passing on all questions of the division of applications, where a party claims more things in his patent than he is entitled to, one invention being allowed under each patent. That man, for example, passes on about 2.000 such cases every year. Another man is assigned to the duty of passing on the completeness of all amendments to applications that have been in the office more than three years. I have found that some of the examiners were very lax and that cases were being kept in the office indefinitely. I have known all my life that it was a great scandal; but, by assigning to one man the duty of supervising in respect to that particular point and requiring that cases that have stayed there more than three years be reported to him, we are unifying the practice and getting the applications out, so that this year, for example, we are finally disposing of about 4.000 more applications than we are receiving. For the three years just before I came into office they finally disposed of about 8.000 applications less than the office was receiving. That difference is very important to the public interest. Here is a man whose business it is to see to just that thing, and he passes on thousands of applications, of course, only in a cursory