the
annual report should be promptly remedied. The public interest in the
report and its value to the farming community, I am sure, will not be
diminished under the new organization of the Department.

I recommend that the weather service be separated from the War
Department and established as a bureau in the Department of Agriculture.
This will involve an entire reorganization both of the Weather Bureau
and of the Signal Corps, making of the first a purely civil organization
and of the other a purely military staff corps. The report of the Chief
Signal Officer shows that the work of the corps on its military side has
been deteriorating.

The interests of the people of the District of Columbia should not be
lost sight of in the pressure for consideration of measures affecting
the whole country. Having no legislature of its own, either municipal
or general, its people must look to Congress for the regulation of all
those concerns that in the States are the subject of local control. Our
whole people have an interest that the national capital should be made
attractive and beautiful, and, above all, that its repute for social
order should be well maintained. The laws regulating the sale of
intoxicating drinks in the District should be revised with a view to
bringing the traffic under stringent limitations and control.

In execution of the power conferred upon me by the act making
appropriations for the expenses of the District of Columbia for the
year ending June 30, 1890, I did on the 17th day of August last appoint
Rudolph Hering, of New York, Samuel M. Gray, of Rhode Island, and
Frederick P. Stearns, of Massachusetts, three eminent sanitary
engineers, to examine and report upon the system of sewerage existing in
the District of Columbia. Their report, which is not yet completed, will
be in due course submitted to Congress.

The report of the Commissioners of the District is herewith transmitted,
and the attention of Congress is called to the suggestions contained
therein.

The proposition to observe the four hundredth anniversary of the
discovery of America by the opening of a world's fair or exposition in
some one of our great cities will be presented for the consideration of
Congress. The value and interest of such an exposition may well claim
the promotion of the General Government.

On the 4th of March last the Civil Service Commission had but a single
member. The vacancies were filled on the 9th day of May,