FOETY-SIXTH CONGRESS, 1879-1881. 853 



the irregular condition of our exchanges of governmental publications 

 with those of foreign countries, Mr. Spofford has had no intimation 

 whatever of the introduction of this joint resolution or of my inten- 

 tion to offer it. It has proceeded entirely on my own motion, after a 

 comparison of views with several other gentlemen. 



1 make these remarks trusting that the proposition ma}" commend 

 itself to the favorable consideration of the Committee on the Library 

 and of the Senate and to obtain their ready approval. 



Mr. G. F. Edmunds. I should like to say a word about the matter of 

 exchanges. I believe that the system of exchanges is now regulated 

 by law, and is consolidated in practice in the hands of the Secretary 

 of the Smithsonian Institution, where, if I am correctly advised (not 

 in reference to this question of course, but if my information and 

 knowledge about it in general is correct), the system is as perfect and 

 systematic as any such system can ever be. The United States 

 exchange, under authority of law and through the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, with every foreign government that is willing to reciprocate. 

 Every single public document that is printed under the authority of 

 Congress or at public expense, every valuable and important docu- 

 ment that is printed in the Departments out of the appropriations for 

 the expenditures of those Departments, and which are not printed by 

 order of Congress in the direct sense so as to be distributed by Sena- 

 tors and Representatives, or of which Senators and Representatives, 

 for public interests, can have even a single copy for their own inspec- 

 tion, is furnished to every foreign government regularly, systematic- 

 ally, at stated periods, as fast as they come forth, in just the degree 

 that the foreign government is willing to reciprocate by furnishing 

 the United States with its own documents and publications. That 

 operation of international exchange produces a stream, and the only 

 one that regularly and systematically could be produced to flow into 

 the Library of Congress. 



In addition to that, the Smithsonian Institution is authorized by its 

 foundation under the acts of Congress to exchange publications of any 

 kind that it makes itself or comes in possession of with foreign and 

 domestic literary societies, colleges, institutions, in the United States 

 and in foreign countries. That sends out from our workshop of intel- 

 lect and progress the whole product of the nation, so to speak, and it 

 brings back from ever}^ quarter of the globe the similar products of 

 the intellect and activity, and discovery and progress, and social 

 science of all civilized peoples. 



So I do not imagine that as far as the mere subject of inspecting 

 and arranging international exchanges of books is concerned an expe- 

 dition by anybody to a foreign country would be of any great service. 

 In respect of the other part of it, the subject of inspecting libraries, 

 classification, arrangement, and completing sets, and all that sort of 



