TABLE D.-Distribution of positions and salaries in classified and unclassified service based on appropriations, fiscal year 1917–18.

TABLE E.—Table showing number of positions and total salaries of native and nonnative officers and employees.

APPENDIX II.

REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF PORTO RICO.

OFFICE OF THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY,

San Juan, P. R., September 7, 1917.

SIR: I have the honor to submit the following report of the business of this office covering the period from July 1, 1916, up to and including June 30, 1917. Although this office did not come into existence until after the enactment of the new organic act of Porto Rico, which was approved by the President on March 2, 1917, it is practically a continuation of the office of the secretary of Porto Rico, created in 1900 by the first organic act and abolished by the provisions of section 52 of the new one. It was determined by section 22 of the latter act that the executive secretary was to perform all the duties of secretary of Porto Rico, as were provided by law, until otherwise provided by the Legislature of Porto Rico, and, therefore, the new office is rendering exactly the same services as were being rendered by the abolished one. For such a reason it has been considered unnecessary to divide this report into two partsone relative to the business transacted by the office of the secretary of Porto Rico from July 1, 1916, to March 2, 1917, and the other to the business of the office of the executive secretary from March 3, 1917, up to the end of the fiscal year,

LEGISLATION.

The eighth legislative assembly, at its regular session which closed on April 12, 1917, enacted 77 acts and resolutions, which were filed in this office in compliance with the law. Of these acts, 74 received the approval of the governor and 3 were not signed by him and did not become laws, their return to the legislature having been prevented by adjournment of said body on the same day on which they were submitted to the consideration of the governor. Only 4 of said acts and resolutions relate to duties already imposed upon this office. They are: (1) An act to regulate the weight of the loaves of bread sold or offered for sale in Porto Rico, and for other purposes; (2) An act to amend sections 7 and 15 of Act No. 135, approved August 18, 1913, entitled "An act to establish standard systems of weights and measures, to regulate the purchase and sale of commodities, and the ascertainment of weights and measures in industrial and commercial transactions, and to prevent fraud therein, and for other purposes"; (3) An act authorizing the payment of additional compensation to certain employees of the bureau of supplies, printing, and transportation, for work done outside of regular office hours and during holidays; and (4) A joint resolution to provide for the holding of general elections in Porto Rico in the year 1917 and thereafter, to provide for the nomination of candidates, and for the qualification of voters for said election, and for other purposes.

The passage of the first measure was a real step forward toward a more ample protection accorded to the buying public. Until then the public had been kept in utter ignorance as to the price per pound at which they were paying for their bread. No law obliged the bakers to indicate this price, hence they followed their caprice and own convenience in the fixing of the price and weight of each kind of loaves of bread. In the same towns the sizes of the loaves and the prices charged therefor varied notably; still, owing to the difficulty to figure out the price per pound the public was paying for their bread, they could not always buy from the baker who sold his bread cheaper than others. The above-cited law filled this need. Now the public knows the weight of the loaf of bread it is buying and the price per pound it pays for it.

The purpose of the second law was to eliminate the use of the "cuartillo" or onefifth gallon as a legal measure. The use of this measure created such a confusion, both the American "quart" and the "cuartillo del pais" being called "cuartillo, and the "cuartillo" being one-fifth and the imperial quart one-fourth of a gallon, that it was considered necessary to protect the public against any fraud that might result from the use of two measures of different capacity and bearing the same name, and to that end the elimination of the use of the "cuartillo" was urged year after year.

62

REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARY.

The third act was passed to put the employees of the bureau of supplies, printing, and transportation, who are employed and paid by the hour, on the same basis as those of most of similar organizations and other private concerns elsewhere. Up to the date of approval of said act all work done by said employees was paid to them at the same invariable regular rate, whether performed during or out of office hours (work at night included). Such a situation had created a certain amount of dissatisfaction among the aforementioned employees, who claimed that they should be paid by the government, when working at night or out of the regular office hours, higher wages per hour. That claim was considered a just one, and the payment to them of a rate 50 per cent higher than the regular rate was authorized by said act.

The fourth measure was enacted to make provisions for the elections that were to be held on July 16, 1917, for the purpose of putting fully into operation the form of government established by the new organic act, and in that connection it was considered advisable to make some necessary amendments to the election and registration law. Said law provides that the names of all candidates nominated by any political party are to be filed with this office, which has had a considerable amount of difficulty and trouble in the performance of such a duty, due principally to three causes: (1) The lack of a legal provision establishing a procedure by which the executive secretary might reach a determination as to who was to be deemed the regular candidate of a party, when the names of more than one candidate for the same office were presented to him for filing as nominated by two or more conventions claiming to be of the same party; (2) the lack of a clear and absolute prohibition as to the designation by one party, to be used upon the ballots, of a device resembling wholly or in part any device already chosen by some other party. The law prohibited that a device so selected should resemble too closely another device already chosen, but every time that a new political organization was formed, on account of a local split in one of the two main parties of the island, the leaders of the bolting movement, for purposes clearly understood, tried to get around the prohibition of the law by selecting a device somewhat resembling the device of their former organization, but not too closely; and (3) the provisions of the election law relative to the filing of nominations by petition did not afford the necessary guarantee as to the authenticity of the signatures of the petitioners or of the acceptance or resignation of the candidates. This office had found that in several cases some persons signing a petition of that kind were unknown or were not registered electors as required by law, and in other cases acceptances and resignations of candidates had been filed which, upon investigation, were found to be false.

To remedy these deficiencies of the election law, the undersigned appeared before the committee on elections of the executive council, when C. J. R. No. 5 was under consideration, and urged some amendments thereto, which were adopted by the committee and became a law when said joint resolution was finally approved.

The law now provides that the decision as to which of two or more candidates is the regular candidate of a party lies in the central organization thereof, unless otherwise ordered by a court of justice, and that if the central organization of the party concerned gives no decision, the name of the candidate first filed with the executive secretary shall be deemed to be the regular candidate of said party. It also provides some rules as to the form in which nominations by petition are to be made, compliance with said rules giving a greater degree of authenticity to the signatures affixed to such petitions, and making the signers thereof declare, under oath, that they are qualified electors; and the appropriation of the names and devices, or any part thereof, of an organized party, by any other party, is now prohibited in a clear and absolute

manner.

PUBLICATIONS.

The acts and resolutions passed by the eighth legislative assembly, third session, and approved by the governor, were copied and printed, first in loose sheets, as usual, to advance them gratuitously to public officers and interested persons, and then in an indexed volume containing both the English and Spanish texts in front of each other.

By printing such laws in only one volume, two advantages have been secured. One, and the most important, is that the officers, lawyers, and others who use them may easily compare the two texts without the difficulty and delay of going to another volume for the purpose of making such a comparison. One of the principal troubles of legislation in two languages consists in the considerable number of discrepancies usually existing between the two texts of each law, which are due sometimes to carelessness in making both texts agree before the passage of the law, and in other cases to mistakes in the translation from one language into the other. This trouble is diminished if the laws are published in only one volume, one text in front of the other, so that the officer who is going to execute or apply them, or the person who is

making use of them, may have before nim the two texts to determine better the intention of the legislator. The other benefit is the saving of some money to the government, in the printing and pinding of each issue, and to the public, in the price to be paid for each volume, which price is to be based on the unit cost of publication. This benefit is clearly demonstrated by the following facts: The English and Spanish texts of the laws of 1916 were published in separate volumes, and it was necessary to have printed and bound about 1,300 copies at a total cost of $1,227. 09. Of the laws of 1917, in both languages, and containing more or less the same number of pages as the two volumes of 1916, only 1,000 copies were considered necessary for distribution and sale, the cost of which only amounted to $855.15, the saving to the government being therefore $371.94. The prices to the public were-1916, sheep, $2; paper, $1; 1917, sheep, $1.40; paper, $0.60.

Twenty-one administrative bulletins, containing governor's proclamations and sanitary rules and regulations, and a number of circular letters were also printed and distributed during the fiscal year.

As the last edition of the Register of Porto Rico, a publication issued from time to time by this office for the purpose of disseminating general information about this country, is now exhausted, the undersigned made a strong effort during the past legislature to secure an adequate appropriation for the printing and binding of 8,000 copies of a new Register, in which the valuable data contained in the one of 1911, which was the last published, might be brought up to date. An appropriation of $4,000 was included in the appropriation bill when it was introduced in the legislature, but it failed to pass.

A new effort will be made at the present session of the legislative assembly to obtain the necessary money with which to undertake the preparation and publication of such a book, taking into consideration the fact that the important information given in those Registers as to the geography and topography of this island, and as to its history, climate, form of government, agriculture, commerce and industries, business facilities, population, federal government offices, and religious, social, professional, and political organizations, is very useful in general, and specially to people who may desire to engage in manufacturing and other industries in this country, and is also of great value to give to the pupils of the schools of Porto Rico a better and more accurate knowledge of all the official and private activities in this island.

The tendency of every country and Government to spread reliable and trustworthy information about its activities and the facilities offered therein to travelers and business men is growing more and more every day, and Porto Rico would make a great mistake by not affording the necessary means to advertise also its beautiful scenery and the opportunities that still exist here to develop and extend the agricultural, industrial, and commercial wealth of the island.

A publication of this character is absolutely needed to answer many requests received by the governor and this office for information both of a general and a special nature regarding Porto Rico, and, therefore, I earnestly recommend that the issuance of a new Register be properly authorized as soon as possible.

The sale by this office of volumes of the compilation and of the session laws amounted to $740.38 during the fiscal year.

GOVERNOR'S APPOINTMENTS.

From July 1, 1917, to June 30, 1917, the governor made 212 appointments, as follows: Judicial officers..

Municipal officers.

Insular executive officers.

Total.......

38

117

57

212

All the work in connection with the nomination and appointment of said officers, including commissions issued and forwarded, was handled by this office.

PASSPORTS.

Much more severe rules for the granting and issuing of passports are now in force, on account of the state of war existing between the United States and the Imperial German Government, and, consequently, the examination of the numerous applications for passports at present received requires a more considerable amount of care and work than before.

It is not only necessary to determine, by thorough investigation, if each applicant is or is not a citizen of the United States or of Porto Rico, and as such, entitled to a passport, but it is also indispensable to require in each case sufficient documentary evidence as to the object of the trip abroad, and as to the imperative necessity of that trip. Such evidence, of course, must be all the more clear and satisfactory when the

applicant is going to another belligerent country or to a neutral nation where his activities might be harmful if employed against the United States or its allies.

In case the applicant is not a resident of Porto Rico or is a person who has only declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States, no passport may be issued to him until authorization therefor is secured by cable from the Department of State.

The work in this connection has, therefore, remarkably increased, not only on account of the further requirements of the new rules, but also because the number of persons that are recognizing the advisability of going abroad provided with an identification document is becoming larger from day to day. The following comparative statement clearly shows how the number of passports has increased since the year 1902-3 (when the Governor was first authorized to issue them):

Of the 381 passports issued in 1916-17, about 200 were given to persons who left for the Republic of Santo Domingo. This number as well as the larger one of those who are still going there without passports, establishes as a positive fact that the emigration of Porto Ricans to said country is rapidly growing. The fertility of the soil of that island, which is almost wholly uncultivated, and the possibilities of developing there, with success, every kind of enterprise and business, added to the facts that its climate is like ours and the language and habits of their people are the same as those of our people, will result in creating a constant flow of emigration from here to the neighboring country and of helping to solve in that manner the problem of finding a means of support for a part of our excessive population.

MUNICIPAL ORDINANCES.

Fifty-four municipal ordinances, almost all of them relative to the disposition of municipal real property, were submitted during the year to the governor's approval, and after careful examination thereof in this office 41 were duly approved, 3 were disapproved, and no action was necessary on the other 10.

Twenty-eight ordinances of municipalities and school boards to borrow money from the insular government were also submitted to the approval of the governor. Twentysix were approved and no action taken on the remaining two.

FRANCHISES.

Twenty-nine franchises granted by the executive council during the fiscal year were duly examined and filed in this office, and certified copies thereof issued for the executive departments of the government, after their approval by the governor.

PARDONS.

During the fiscal year 1916-17 the governor received 322 petitions for clemency. All the correspondence connected therewith, including the preparation for the governor's signature of all the orders for the granting of pardons, paroles, etc., was handled by this office.

Of those 322 petitions 14 were still pending at the close of the fiscal year, and the remaining 308 had been disposed of in the following manner: