OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS.  Bulletins and reports of government officials are a mine for both subjects and material.  For new developments in agriculture one may consult the bulletins of the United States Department of Agriculture and those of state agricultural experiment stations.  Reports on new and better methods of preparing food, and other phases of home economics, are also printed in these bulletins.  State industrial commissions publish reports that furnish valuable material on industrial accidents, working-men’s insurance, sanitary conditions in factories, and the health of workers.  Child welfare is treated in reports of federal, state, and city child-welfare boards.  The reports of the Interstate Commerce Commission, like those of state railroad commissions, contain interesting material on various phases of transportation.  State and federal census reports often furnish good subjects and material.  In short, nearly every official report of any kind may be a fruitful source of ideas for special articles.

The few examples given below suggest various possibilities for the use of these sources.

Investigations made by a commission of American medical experts constituting the Committee on Resuscitation from Mine Gases, under the direction of the U.S.  Bureau of Mines, supplied a writer in the Boston Transcript with material for a special feature story on the dangers involved in the use of the pulmotor.

A practical bulletin, prepared by the home economics department of a state university, on the best arrangement of a kitchen to save needless steps, was used for articles in a number of farm journals.

From a bulletin of the U.S.  Department of Agriculture a writer prepared an article on “the most successful farmer in the United States” and what he did with twenty acres, for the department of “Interesting People” in the American Magazine.

The results of a municipal survey of Springfield, Illinois, as set forth in official reports, were the basis of an article in the Outlook on “What is a Survey?” Reports of a similar survey at Lawrence, Kansas, were used for a special feature story in the Kansas City Star.

“Are You a Good or a Poor Penman?” was the title of an article in Popular Science Monthly based on a chart prepared by the Russell Sage Foundation in connection with some of its educational investigations.

The New York Evening Post published an interesting special article on the “life tables” that had been prepared by the division of vital statistics of the Bureau of the Census, to show the expectation of life at all ages in the six states from which vital statistics were obtained.

A special feature story on how Panama hats are woven, as printed in the Ohio State Journal, was based entirely on a report of the United States consul general at Guayaquil, Ecuador.