Clerk of printing records....... Clerk to Committee on Private Land HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 2220.00 Clerk of the House....... .$4500.00 ........ Clerk to Committee on Pensions Post-Roads.... Sergeant-at-Arms and Doorkeeper...... 4320.00 Clerk to the Sergeant-at-Arms.. Acting assistant doorkeeper.. 3 acting assistant doorkeepers, each Postmaster to the Senate.. ..... Journal clerk..... 2100.00 Assistant to chief clerk................... 2000.00 Assistant postmaster and mail-carrier. 2088.00 4 mail-carriers, each.. ........ 1200.00 Superintendent document-room......... 2160.00 2 assistants in 66 each 1440.00 66 66 66 ... Superintendent of folding-room. 1 assistant in 20 messengers (asst. doorkeepers), each 1440.00 1 messenger to Committee on Appro ...... 2000.00 2000.00 Superintendent of document-room..... 2000.00 2160.00 2 assistant librarians, each.......... 1 bookkeeper...... 2000.00 ............... 1800.00 Stationery clerk.......... 1800.00 1440.00 Upholsterer Locksmith 1440.00 1440.00 1440.00 60.00 1600.00 1440.00 4 clerks, each.......... 1600.00 720.00 720.00 3 clerks in folding-room, each....... 2 66 66 66 ..$1800.00 | the rejection of the bill. If not opposed 1200.00 or rejected it passes to a second reading, Superintendent of document-room..... 2000.00 and the question is then upon its commit Chief assistant in -66 Document file clerk....... ..... 2000.00 1200.00 1200.00 720.00 720.00 840.00 50.00 600.00 800.00 720.00 1 laborer....... 1 journal clerk for preparing digest of the rules...... 29 pages, when employed, per day, each... 2500.00 1000.00 .$1500.00 HOW LAWS ARE ENACTED. 720.00 ment or engrossment. If committed, it is either to a standing or select committee, consisting of a few, or to a general committee of the whole house. Bills of great importance are usually discussed in committee of the whole, because greater freedom of debate is there allowed than when the same persons are sitting as a house. are In the House of Representatives all 600.00 bills appropriating money, or that involve an expenditure from the treasury, must be considered in committee of the whole. After discussion in committee, the bill is 2500.00 reported back to the House, with or with2000.00 out amendment. If with amendments. 1200.00 they are acted upon in the House, and others may there be offered. When the bill has in this way become sufficiently matured, the question is upon its engrossment for a third reading, by which is meant the copying of it in a fair hand. After engrossment, amendments rarely offered. A clause is, however, sometimes offered by way of rider. After the third reading the question is upon its final passage. If it pass it is signed by the presiding officer and transmitted to the other house, where it goes through a 2.50 similar routine. If amendments are made, then it is sent back for concurrence; and in case of disagreement committees of conference are appointed, who meet together and aim to come to some 1200.00 agreement, one side yielding something 1200.00 to the other, and thereby arriving at a 500.00 sort of compromise. The conference com400.00 mittees then report their agreements to their respective houses. When it has thus passed both houses it is delivered to a joint committee for enrollment, who see that it is correctly copied. It is then signed by the presiding officers (the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House) of the two houses. Now it has another ordeal to pass before consummation, and that is the scrutiny of the President of the United States. The bill is sent to him for approval, and if he approves it he signs it. If not, he sends it back to the house where it originated, with his objections, in a communication commonly called a veto message, which objections are entered on its journal. The bill is then reconsidered, and the question then is, "Shall the bill pass notwithstanding the objections of the President?" If it pass by two-thirds of both houses it becomes a law over the veto of All bills may originate in either house except revenue bills. The Constitution requires that they must originate in the House of Representatives. Bills may be introduced by individual members, on leave, or by the report of a committee; and by the rules of the House of Representatives the States are called for the introduction of bills on Mondays, when | every member may present one or more bills. They are required to be read three times in each house, on three different days, unless two-thirds of the house agree to dispense with the rule. The first reading is for information only; and if there be any opposition, the question is upon the President. The President has ten days in which to consider a bill, and if he does not return it within that period, unless Congress prevent him by adjournment, it becomes a law without his signature. The veto power, thus qualified, extends to every order, resolution, or vote to which the concurrence of the two houses is necessary. THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. The following is condensed from a description by the Librarian of Congress, found in a report issued from the Bureau of Education: The Library of Congress had its origin in the wants of our National Legislature for books and information. Its establishment dates from the year 1800. The first appropriation made by Congress for the purchase of books was on the 24th of April, 1800, when $5000 were appropriated. The selection of books was devolved upon a joint committee of both houses of Congress, appointed for that purpose. the Senate and the House of Representatives, and the President and Vice-President of the United States. This regulation was subsequently extended to the heads of Departments, the Judges, Reporter, and Clerk of the Supreme Court and the Court of Claims; the Solicitor of the Treasury; the Secretary of the Senate, and Clerk of the House of Representatives; the disbursing agent of the library; the Solicitor-General, and Assistant Attorneys-General; the Chaplains of both houses of Congress; the members of the Diplomatic Corps, and the Secretary and Regents of the Smithsonian Institution resident in Washington. The disbursement of funds for the purchase of books is under the direction of a joint committee of both houses of Congress on the library, consisting of three Senators and three Representatives. In the early years the Clerk of the House of Representatives had charge of the library, which up to the year 1814 had accumulated only 3000 volumes, and he employed an assistant to take the immediate care of the books. The FOUNDATION AND HISTORY OF THE amount appropriated for the purchase of LIBRARY. Congress met in October, 1800, at the city of Washington, for the first time, and but little was done for the accommodation of the Library of Congress. At the next session, which convened in December, 1801, a statement was made, on the first day of the session, respecting the books and maps purchased by the joint committee of Congress. A special committee was appointed at this session, on the part of both houses, to take into consideration the care of the books, and to make a report respecting the future arrangement of the same. This report, made to the House by John Randolph, of Virginia, December 21, 1801, formed the basis of an act concerning the library, which was the first systematic statute organizing the Library of Congress, and which still continues substantially in force. This act of organization, approved January 26, 1802, located the Library of Congress in the room which had been occupied by the House of Representatives; empowered the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House to establish regulations for the library; created the office of Librarian, and vested his appointment in the President of the United States; restricted the taking of books from the library to the members of books during this period was only $1000. On the 25th of August, 1814, the Capitol was burned by the British army, which invaded and held possession of Washington for a single day, and the Library of Congress was entirely consumed. During the following month ex-President Jefferson tendered to Congress his private collection of books, as the basis for a new Congressional library. The offer was to furnish the books, numbering about 6700 volumes, at cost, and to receive in payment the bonds of the United States, or such payment as might be "made convenient to the public." This proposition was favorably reported from the Library Committee in both houses of Congress, but excited earnest debate and opposition. The final vote in the House upon the passage of the bill authorizing the purchase, at the price of $23,950, was 81 yeas and 71 nays. A On the 21st of March, 1815, Mr. George Watterson was appointed Librarian of Congress by President Madison. catalogue of the collection was printed the same year in a thin quarto of 210 pages. The annual appropriation for the purchase of books was raised to $2000 a year in 1818. This continued until 1824, when the sum of $5000 was appropriated; and the same continued the average an nual appropriation for twenty or thirty, years thereafter. The annual accessions of books were not great, but resulted in bringing together a library of the highest utility. In 1824 the library was finally removed to the central Capitol building, which had been completed, where an apartment 92 feet in length by 32 feet in width, still occupied as the central library-hall, was fitted up to receive the books. There the library continued to grow, until it had accumulated by the year 1851 55,000 volumes of books. On the 24th of December of that year the calamity of a second fire overtook the library. A defective flue, which had been neglected, and was surrounded with wooden material, communicated the flames to the adjoining shelving, and the entire library was soon wrapped in flames. The fire occurring in the night, its extinction was attended with great delay, so that only 20.000 volumes were saved. These, however, embraced the more valuable portion of the library. and was quite unique in the multitude of publications of learned societies in all parts of the world, and in nearly all of the modern languages. With this large addition (numbering nearly 40,000 volumes) the library became at once the most extensive and valuable repository of material for the wants of scholars which was to be found in the United States. THE FORCE LIBRARY. In the following year (1867) Congress became the purchaser of a very extensive historical library, formed by the late Peter Force, ex-mayor of Washington. This collection represented nearly fifty years of assiduous accumulation by a specialist devoted to the collection of books, pamphlets, periodicals, maps, manuscripts, etc., relating to the colonization and history of the United States. This purchase, which was effected at the price of $100,000, included, besides nearly 60,000 articles or titles in books, pamphlets, and manuscripts, the entire unpublished materials of the Documentary History of the United States, a work to which Mr. Force had dedicated his life, and nine folio volumes of which, embracing a portion only of the history of the Revolutionary period, had been pub THE LAW LIBRARY. Starting anew in 1852, the library has since continued to grow. The Congress of that day took a wise and liberal view of the situation, and appropriated at the same session the sum of $72,000 for the reconstruction of the library-rooms, and $75,000 additional for the immediate pur-lished. chase of books. The library-hall was rebuilt in fire-proof material, the walls, ceiling, and shelves being constructed of The law department of the library was solid iron, finished in a highly decorative constituted by act of July 14, 1832. Prior style. The library thus furnished the to that time the whole collection had been first example of an interior constructed kept together; but the wants and conwholly of iron in any public building venience of the Justices of the Supreme in America. The liberal appropriation Court of the United States would, it was made by Congress for books soon began found, be greatly promoted by removing to show its fruits in the acquisition of the department of jurisprudence into a multitudes of volumes of the best litera- separate room, more conveniently accesture in all departments, and many ex-sible to the court and conference-rooms pensive art publications, sets of periodicals, and valuable and costly works in natural history, architecture, and other sciences were added to its stores. By the year 1860 the library had grown to about 75,000 volumes. Soon after the outbreak of the civil war, in 1861, the regular appropriation for the purchase of books was increased from $7000 to $10,000 per annum. In the year 1866 the Library of Congress received a most important and valuable accession in the transfer of books gathered by the Smithsonian Institution, and representing twenty years' accumulation. The collection included many books in the natural and exact sciences, of that tribunal. The annual appropriation for the purchase of law-books was fixed at $1000, and a special sum of $5000 was twice appropriated to enrich the law department. At the time it was set apart this department consisted of only 2011 volumes. From 1850 to the present time the annual sum appropriated for law-books has been $2000. The Law Library is rich in the English and American reports, of which it possesses full sets, many of them being in duplicate. In civil law it contains all the leading works, and many of the more obscure collateral treatises in every department of the common law and miscella neous law literature, both in English and French; while its collection of sets of all important law periodicals, whether English, French, or American, surpasses that of any other library in the United States. It now numbers upwards of 35,000 volumes, exclusive of works on the law of nations and nature, and the journals and documents of legislative bodies, which form a part of the general Library of Congress. EXTENT AND CHARACTER OF THE VOLUMES. The accumulations of authorities in English and European history and biography are especially extensive. The collection of periodicals is very rich, and there are few English or American reviews or magazines of any note of which complete sets are not to be found upon its shelves. An admirable selection of the more important literary and scientific periodicals published in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and other countries of Europe is also to be found here. As the library of the American people, supported and constantly enlarged by taxation, it is eminently fitting that this library should not only be freely accessible to the whole people, but that it should furnish the fullest possible sources of information in every department of human knowledge. While, therefore, more particular attention has been devoted to rendering the library complete in jurisprudence, history, and productions of American authors, there is no department which has been neglected in its formation; and it is, accordingly, becoming measurably complete in many directions which, were it merely the Library of Congress, and for the sole use of a legislative body, would not receive special attention. As one example, it may be stated that this library contains much the largest collection of the county and town histories of Great Britain, and of genealogical works, to be found in America. rating daily the titles of works added to the collection. The printed catalogues, however, comprise two divisions,-an alphabetical catalogue, by authors' names, and a classed catalogue, by subjects. The next general catalogue, complete to the year 1876, will fill four or more royal octavo volumes. It will embrace the feature of recording full collations of every book and pamphlet, including publishers' names, first introduced in the catalogue of this library in 1867. A labor recently undertaken in connection with the catalogue system of the library, is the preparation of a complete index of topics to the documents and debates of Congress. This is a work of vast extent, embracing the contents of about 1600 volumes, including the annals of Congress, the register of debates, the Congressional Globe and Record, the journals of the Continental Congress, the complete set of Congressional documents (including the partial reprints in the American State Papers), the statutes at large, etc. Considering the great extent and rich the Republic, the most of which has been material of the documentary history of completely buried from view by the want of any index or other key to unlock its stores, this task, when completed, may be expected to yield valuable fruit in bringing to light the sources of our political history, as well as furnishing an important aid to the legislative, executive, and judicial officers of the United States. THE COPYRIGHT DEPARTMENT. It remains to consider, briefly, one distinctive field of the operations of the Library of Congress, namely, its copyright accessions. By an act of Congress, approved July 8, 1870, the entire registry of copyrights within the United States, which was previously scattered all over the country, in the offices of the clerks of the United States District Courts, has been transferred to the office of the Librarian of Congress. The reasons for this step were threefold: In January, 1880, the numerical extent of the Library of Congress was 365,000 1. To secure the advantage of one cenvolumes, besides about 120,000 pam-tral office at the seat of government for phlets. THE CATALOGUE. keeping all of the records relating to copyrights, so that any fact regarding literary property can be learned by a single inquiry at Washington. The catalogue system of the Library of Congress is substantially that adopted 2. This transfer of copyright business in most great and rapidly-growing public to the office of the Librarian of Congress libraries. The card catalogue is kept adds to the registration of all original constantly complete to date by incorpo- publications the requirement of a de |