In pursuance of the authority thus conferred, on the 17th of August, 1889, I appointed Rudolph Hering, of New York, Samuel M. Gray, of Rhode Island, and Frederick P. Stearns, of Massachusetts, to make this examination and report.

The gentlemen named were believed to have such ability and experience as sanitary engineers as to guarantee an intelligent and exhaustive study of the problem submitted to them.

I transmit herewith their report, which has just been submitted to me, for the consideration of Congress.

BENJ.  HARRISON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, July 23, 1890.

To the House of Representatives: 

In response to the resolution of the House of Representatives requesting me, if in my judgment not incompatible with the public interest, to furnish to the House the correspondence since March 4, 1889, between the Government of the United States and the Government of Great Britain touching the subjects in dispute in the Bering Sea, I transmit a letter from the Secretary of State, which is accompanied by the correspondence referred to in the resolution.

BENJ.  HARRISON.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, July 29, 1890.

To the Senate and House of Representatives: 

The recent attempt to secure a charter from the State of North Dakota for a lottery company, the pending effort to obtain from the State of Louisiana a renewal of the charter of the Louisiana State Lottery, and the establishment of one or more lottery companies at Mexican towns near our border have served the good purpose of calling public attention to an evil of vast proportions.  If the baneful effects of the lotteries were confined to the States that give the companies corporate powers and a license to conduct the business, the citizens of other States, being powerless to apply legal remedies, might clear themselves of responsibility by the use of such moral agencies as were within their reach.  But the case is not so.  The people of all the States are debauched and defrauded.  The vast sums of money offered to the States for charters are drawn from the people of the United States, and the General Government through its mail system is made the effective and profitable medium of intercourse between the lottery company and its victims.  The use of the mails is quite as essential to the companies as the State license.  It would be practically impossible for these companies to exist if the public mails were once effectively closed against their advertisements and remittances.  The use of the mails by these companies is a prostitution of an agency only intended to serve the purposes of a legitimate trade and a decent social intercourse.

It is not necessary, I am sure, for me to attempt to portray the robbery of the poor and the widespread corruption of public and private morals which are the necessary incidents of these lottery schemes.

The national capital has become a subheadquarters of the Louisiana Lottery Company, and its numerous agents and attorneys are conducting here a business involving probably a larger use of the mails than that of any legitimate business enterprise in the District of Columbia.  There seems to be good reason to believe that the corrupting touch of these agents has been felt by the clerks in the postal service and by some of the police officers of the District.