Received by the Governor, examined and referred to the Secretary of State for publication, upon the order of the Board of Commissioners of Public Printing and Binding. WILLIAM B. ROBERTS, 1891. Filed in the office of the Secretary of State of the State of Indiana, October 3, CLAUDE MATTHEWS, WILLIAM A. PEELLE, Jr., Chief of Bureau. TO THE GOVERNOR AND FIFTY-SEVENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY. INDIANAPOLIS : WM. B. BURFord, contrACTOR FOR STATE PRINTING AND BINDING. 1891. BUREAU OF STATISTICS. WILLIAM A. PEELLE, JR., CHIEF OF BUREAU. ASSISTANTS. DAVID T. PRAIGG, JACOB B. MAYNARD, CHARLES FORSTER, INDIANAPOLIS, IND., Oct. 31, 1890. To the Governor and Members of the Fifty-Seventh General Assembly: Herewith I beg leave to submit the Biennial Report of the Indiana Bureau of Statistics for the years 1889-90, being the third biennial report and the ninth volume since the establishment of the Bureau. I regret the necessity of stating that our efforts for the past two years have been necessarily confined to the collection and compilation of the same class of statistics heretofore represented in these reports, and that nothing was done under the amendment of 1889 which extended the duties of the Bureau to general labor statistics. Soon after the adjournment of the session at which the amendment was enacted, the title of the Chief of the Bureau was questioned by the Executive, and a successor was appointed. Being in the office by Legislative authority, I refused to surrender to the appointee of the Executive, and litigation was inaugurated, which extended over the entire time between the adjournment of the Legislature of 1889 and the general election in November, 1890. During this time the appropriation designed for the collection of labor statistics was withheld, and likewise the appropriation for the collection of general statistics from November 1, 1889. The fact that the title to the office was in dispute gave a pretext to some officers, heretofore reporting, to refuse to make returns when blanks were sent to them, and the tables in this volume are, in many instances, not as perfect as they otherwise would have been. While the legal questions involved in the apappointment of another as Chief of the Bureau prevented the collection of labor statistics entirely by locking up the appropriation, it thus added to the disadvantages under which the Bureau labored in gathering the data from which the ordinary agricultural and other tables are compiled. The people having elected a Chief of the Bureau in November, 1890, there is no longer any question regarding his title, and this volume is issued with the promise that the next will conform to the legislative requirement regarding the investigation of labor questions. |