Consolidation of bureaus.

I request Congressional authority to enable the Secretary of Commerce and Labor to unite the Bureaus of Manufactures and Statistics.  This was recommended by a competent committee appointed in the previous administration for the purpose of suggesting changes in the interest of economy and efficiency, and is requested by the Secretary.

The white slave trade.

I greatly regret to have to say that the investigations made in the Bureau of Immigration and other sources of information lead to the view that there is urgent necessity for additional legislation and greater executive activity to suppress the recruiting of the ranks of prostitutes from the streams of immigration into this country—­an evil which, for want of a better name, has been called “The White Slave Trade.”  I believe it to be constitutional to forbid, under penalty, the transportation of persons for purposes of prostitution across national and state lines; and by appropriating a fund of $50,000 to be used by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor for the employment of special inspectors it will be possible to bring those responsible for this trade to indictment and conviction under a federal law.

BUREAU OF HEALTH

For a very considerable period a movement has been gathering strength, especially among the members of the medical profession, in favor of a concentration of the instruments of the National Government which have to do with the promotion of public health.  In the nature of things, the Medical Department of the Army and the Medical Department of the Navy must be kept separate.  But there seems to be no reason why all the other bureaus and offices in the General Government which have to do with the public health or subjects akin thereto should not be united in a bureau to be called the “Bureau of Public Health.”  This would necessitate the transfer of the Marine-Hospital Service to such a bureau.  I am aware that there is wide field in respect to the public health committed to the States in which the Federal Government can not exercise jurisdiction, but we have seen in the Agricultural Department the expansion into widest usefulness of a department giving attention to agriculture when that subject is plainly one over which the States properly exercise direct jurisdiction.  The opportunities offered for useful research and the spread of useful information in regard to the cultivation of the soil and the breeding of stock and the solution of many of the intricate problems in progressive agriculture have demonstrated the wisdom of establishing that department.  Similar reasons, of equal force, can be given for the establishment of a bureau of health that shall not only exercise the police jurisdiction of the Federal Government respecting quarantine, but which shall also afford an opportunity for investigation and research by competent experts into questions of health affecting the whole country, or important sections thereof, questions which, in the absence of Federal governmental work, are not likely to be promptly solved.