made available throughout the Government. At the same time appraisal served to prevent the needless destruction of some records valuable enough to warrant further preservation, and the fact that the records listed for disposal were to be appraised made agencies more conscious of the necessity for careful evaluation of records before so listing them.

As in previous years, efforts were made to expedite the appraisal process. The National Archives, in consultation with the agencies concerned, sought to reduce the length and complexity of disposal reports by consolidating identical items that appeared on lists from the same agency, to have reports submitted periodically instead of spasmodically, and to compile schedules listing records to be reported for disposal after fixed periods of time. Several agencies now submit but a single list each year, and, in the case of one such agency, the number of lists submitted annually has dropped in a 4-year period from 15 to 1. Despite these improvements, The National Archives at the end of the year was engaged in considering new procedures and possibly new legislation that would enable it to handle. the increasing number of items that are being reported to it each year, items that may increase at a still more rapid rate as agencies set about with greater vigor to eliminate old records in order to make space for defense activities. To relieve agencies of preparing reports to the Archivist on records disposed of by them in accordance with authorization granted by Congress or by the Archivist, except in cases when the records were transferred to non-Federal institutions such as State libraries or historical societies, a bill to amend existing legislation by waiving the requirements for such reports was introduced in the House of Representatives in April by Representative James A. O'Leary, of New York.1

The law of September 24, 1940, permitting the disposal under certain conditions of photographed records, seems to offer great potentialities for the reduction of the bulk of Government records, and already over 20 departments and agencies are using microphotography in various phases of their records administration. The appraisal by the Archivist of photographed records that are reported for disposal involves a determination as to whether the films have been made in accordance with certain minimum standards of the National Bureau of Standards, whether they have been placed in conveniently accessible files, and whether provision has been made for preserving, examining, and using them. Even when these requirements have been met, the Archivist may find, in some cases, that the originals have sufficient inherent value to warrant their preservation

'This bill was passed by the House on July 21, 1941.

regardless of the fact that photographic copies of them exist. Although only 62 of the 41,466 items approved for disposal during the year referred to records that had been microfilmed, these items represented large quantities of material, and it seems certain that the number of such items reported in the future will increase.

ACCESSIONS

The total quantity of records received during the fiscal year 1941, about 82,000 cubic feet, exceeded by 35 percent the quantity of records received in any previous fiscal year. The quantity received in accordance with the regular accessioning procedure, 53,631 cubic feet, was about the same as the total quantity received in each of the 3 preceding years, but in addition over 28,000 cubic feet of records were received on an emergency basis without immediately being formally accessioned. More than half of the records were transferred, as mentioned earlier in this report, as a result of the national defense program, but in a gratifying number of cases the accessions were regular and systematic transfers of inactive files. In one case, which it is hoped will be followed as a precedent when present emergency agencies are liquidated, an agency that was winding up its affairs arranged for the transfer of its records as part of the activities incident to its termination. In two other cases the records transferred bad originally been reported for disposal as useless papers but were offered for permanent preservation after The National Archives had pointed out their value.

Records were received from the United States Senate, the 10 executive departments, 2 Federal courts, and 18 other Federal agencies, and private gifts of motion pictures or sound recordings were accepted from 11 sources. Among the agencies transferring records for the first time to The National Archives were the Office of the Chief of Ordnance (War Department), the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts (Navy Department), the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the Committee on Economic Security, and the Selective Service System; and initial transfers were also received of records of certain discontinued agencies, including the International Railway Commission, 1890-99, the Lincoln Memorial Commission, 1911-22, the Civil Works Administration, 1933-34, the Northwest Territory Celebration Commission, 1935-39, the Prison Industries Reorganization Administration, 1935-40, and the Temporary National Economic Committee, 1938-41.

Chronologically, the records transferred cover a long period of time. Some of them date back to the early years of the Federal period in the Nation's history, and others fall within the last decade.

Especially noteworthy is the entire body of records relating to claims for pensions and bounty lands based on service in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, transferred by the Veterans' Administration. These records consist chiefly of individual files on claims arising out of military and naval service in those wars, together with a variety of exhibits that were submitted in support of the claims, such as family Bibles, marriage certificates, commissions, discharges, and diaries. Other early records include a file of passenger lists of vessels entering the port of New York, beginning in 1820; the records of American consular posts at Bordeaux, Bremen, Antwerp, and Palermo, dating from 1790, 1797, 1803, and 1806, respectively; and letters received by the General Land Office from surveyors general and from registers and receivers of land offices, beginning in 1803. By way of contrast, some of the records recall headlines of yesterday, among them the Justice Department's files on Teapot Dome, 192439, and the Interior Department's correspondence on the Matanuska Valley project in Alaska, 1934-38.

In some cases the records transferred constitute all or major portions of the noncurrent general files of the agencies from which they were received. In this category are records of the Office of the Quartermaster General (War Department) to the beginning of the first World War and the central records of the National Recovery Administration, which, together with the field records previously received, comprise most of the known records of that agency. The chronological scope of the general files of several other agencies already in The National Archives was considerably extended during the year, that of the Justice Department's general departmental papers from 1903 to 1919, that of the general correspondence files of the Navigation Bureau (Navy Department), from 1884 to 1924, that of the main files of the public buildings and grounds authorities in the District of Columbia from 1918 to 1925, and that of the central files of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics from 1922 to 1935. The modern statistical technique of sampling was applied to the file of income-tax returns for 1930 on incomes under $5,000, with the result that an objectively selected sample of the returns has been preserved instead of the entire file, the bulk of which was so great in proportion to its probable usefulness that preservation in full was not warranted.

The volume of all records received in accordance with the regular accessioning procedure during the fiscal year covered by this report and the total volume of such material in the custody of the Archivist on June 30, 1941, are shown in the following table:

'The agencies of the Federal Government listed are agencies as organized on June 30, 1941, and discontinued agencies the functions of which were not transferred to other agencies. The sources of private gifts of motion pictures and sound recordings during the year are given in appendix II.

'All types of material are covered, including 1,264 cubic feet of maps and atlases, 300 cubic feet of motion pictures and sound recordings, and 1,448 cubic feet of still pictures; each of these special types of material is further analyzed in the other tables below. Deductions totaling 673 cubic feet have been made in this column for diminutions of records during the year. See the section on diminutions below.

3

The accession from the Civil Service Commission is a motion picture amounting to less than half of a cubic foot. See the table on motion-picture film below.