reside upon the island, with
power to judge and adjust disputes and to enforce a just and humane
treatment of the employees. It is inexcusable that American laborers
should be left within our own jurisdiction without access to any
Government officer or tribunal for their protection and the redress of
their wrongs.

International copyright has been secured, in accordance with the
conditions of the act of March 3, 1891, with Belgium, France, Great
Britain and the British possessions, and Switzerland, the laws of those
countries permitting to our citizens the benefit of copyright on
substantially the same basis as to their own citizens or subjects.

With Germany a special convention has been negotiated upon this subject
which will bring that country within the reciprocal benefits of our
legislation.

The general interest in the operations of the Treasury Department has
been much augmented during the last year by reason of the conflicting
predictions, which accompanied and followed the tariff and other
legislation of the last Congress affecting the revenues, as to the
results of this legislation upon the Treasury and upon the country. On
the one hand it was contended that imports would so fall off as to leave
the Treasury bankrupt and that the prices of articles entering into the
living of the people would be so enhanced as to disastrously affect
their comfort and happiness, while on the other it was argued that the
loss to the revenue, largely the result of placing sugar on the free
list, would be a direct gain to the people; that the prices of the
necessaries of life, including those most highly protected, would not be
enhanced; that labor would have a larger market and the products of the
farm advanced prices, while the Treasury surplus and receipts would be
adequate to meet the appropriations, including the large exceptional
expenditures for the refunding to the States of the direct tax and the
redemption of the 4-1/2 per cent bonds.

It is not my purpose to enter at any length into a discussion of
the effects of the legislation to which I have referred; but a brief
examination of the statistics of the Treasury and a general glance at
the state of business throughout the country will, I think, satisfy
any impartial inquirer that its results have disappointed the evil
prophecies of its opponents and in a large measure realized the hopeful
predictions of its friends. Rarely, if ever before, in the history of
the cou