REPORT DEPUTY STATE SEALER OF WEIGHTS & MEASURES. I49 



a general clearing house for the sealers, where the sealers can 

 get all the information they want; and to do -these things of 

 course they must have money, and they need all the influence 

 they can get to secure this money. When you think of the 

 appropriations made in Washington, you realize that $100,000 

 is a small amount there, and it seems to me that the very men 

 interested in weights and measures throughout the country 

 ought to work for that, because it means the betterment of each 

 sealer. If we can get those funds I think the situation will be 

 pretty clear, and all through the country we can get uniform 

 laws. 



At the beginning of this work in Massachusetts, fifteen or 

 sixteen years ago, there were three or four of us, and we did not 

 know where to go for information. There was no Bureau of 

 Standards and the State Department was just starting. We 

 would get together and ask each other what we should do in a 

 given case. By and by we established a little routine, and that is 

 how the work started. Massachusetts was the first state to start 

 and now the movement has spread all over the country. With 

 the exception of a few states in the South and New Hampshire, 

 every sitate has a department, and these departments are doing 

 good work. In the western part of the country they give the 

 sealers more power when they pass a law. What they cannot 

 write into the law they give the state sealer power to make 

 regulations to cover, so that when he finds he hasn't a law he 

 writes a regulation. They are not as conservative out there and 

 it gives them a great lead so they can get hold of all these 

 propositions that are troubling you today. In Minnesota the 

 law says that the State Board of Railroad Commissioners shall 

 issue rules and regulations from time to time that shall have 

 the force and efifect of law. If there is nothing on the statute 

 book when any proposition comes up, they simply write a regu- 

 lation. I do not know whether the State of Maine has given 

 any power to the Commissioner of Agriculture on that line or 

 not, but I think it is a good thing because it is impossible to 

 frame a law which will cover all the points that will come up. 



I want to say a few words on the sealers' work. My work on 

 weights and measures has taken me all through the country and 

 I have seen a good many sealers ; and one of the great things 

 that has always come to my mind is that the sealers do not 



