The Department of Commerce and Labor was established by an act of February 14, 1903, which transferred to it a number of previously existing offices. Separate Labor and Commerce Departments were established in 1913.

The functions of the Commerce Department are to promote foreign and domestic commerce, the manufacturing and shipping industries, and the transportation facilities of the United States. Most of these functions are performed by bureaus of the Department, whose records constitute separate record groups. This record group includes general records of the immediate Office of the Secretary of Commerce and of officials and offices performing staff and administrative functions for the Department as a whole. It also includes records of various related commissions, boards, and other special bodies.

There are 807 cubic feet of records dated between 1898 and 1954 in this record group.

Department, including the Bureaus of Corporations, Mines, Lighthouses, Alaskan Fur Seal Fisheries, and Marine Inspection and Navigation, ca. 1907-42; monthly bureau reports to the Secretary, 1913-50; records of the Appointment Division, 1903-41; records of the Division of Personnel Management and Supervision, 1907-42; reports and correspondence of Coordinator, International Cooperation Programs, J. Clayton Miller, 1945-48; records of the chief regional economist, 1944-47; records of Advisor on Negro Affairs Emmer Martin Lancaster, consisting of correspondence and reports concerning blacks' small businesses, 1940-53; legislative files of the Office of the General Counsel, 1932-40; general records of the Clearing Office for Foreign Transactions and Reports and its successor, the Balance of Payments Division, 1942-54; a map published by the Office of Area Development, showing urban target areas of the national industrial dispersion program; and photographs (125 items) of departmental exhibits, 1926-29, and buildings and office space occupied by the Depart

reports of the Waste-Reclamation Service and its successors, the Industrial Board and the Industrial Cooperation Service, ca. 1917-20; records of the President's Committee on Foreign Aid, consisting chiefly of correspondence and reports on specific foreign aid programs, 1949 (in HSTL); and records, 1948-49, of the Office of Industry Cooperation, created to promote voluntary price and wage control, consisting primarily of correspondence of the Director, voluntary plans to stabilize wages and prices, transcripts of hearings, and files of staff members and administrative units established to formulate plans for voluntary regulation of specific industries.

Microfilm Publication: Minutes of the Industrial Commission, 1898-1902, T10, 1 roll. SPECIFIC RESTRICTIONS

I. Records: Records of the Office of Industry Cooperation.

Restrictions: Records that contain information of a confidential nature about the operations of trade associations and private business firms will not be made available without the prior approval of the Office of the General Counsel of the Department of Commerce.

Specified by: Department of Com

merce.

II. Records: Legislative files of the Office of the General Counsel of the Department of Commerce. Restrictions: Only authorized employees of the Office of the General Counsel or others specifically approved by that Office may have access to these records. Specified by: Department of Com

merce.

The Census Office was established in 1902 as a permanent bureau in the Department of the Interior, but the terms "Census Bureau" and "Census Office" were used interchangeably until the term "Bureau of the Census" was formally fixed by legislation in 1954. Before 1902 a census office was established for each decennial census and disbanded when work on the census was completed. The first nine censuses were taken by U.S. district marshals. In 1790 census returns were submitted directly to the President, those from 1800 to 1840 to the Secretary of State, and those from 1850 to 1870 to the Secretary of the Interior. From 1880 to 1900 the censuses were taken by enumerators under supervisors responsible through the Superintendent of the Census to the

Secretary of the Interior. In 1903 the Census Bureau was transferred from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Commerce and Labor. Since 1913 it has been in the Department of Commerce. The compilation of the Statistical Abstract of the United States and responsibility for collecting and compiling foreign trade statistics were transferred from the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce to the Census Bureau in 1937 and 1941, respectively. In 1946 the functions and records of the Census Bureau relating to vital statistics were transferred to the U.S. Public Health Service of the Federal Security Agency.

The Census Bureau is responsible for providing basic statistics about the people and economy of the Nation to assist

farms enumerated, 1940-41, and a survey of the publication program for special studies and monographs relating to the 16th census, 1940-41; minutes, correspondence, reports, schedules, and published monographs relating to the 17th decennial census, 1946-56; correspondence, studies, and workpapers relating to apportionment computation and procedures, 1900-1941; and minutes, reports, correspondence, and instructions relating to the collection of vital statistics, 1936-46.

Records of the assistant director for demographic fields, who was in charge of the decennial census enumerations for agriculture, population, and housing, include scrapbooks of schedule forms, instructions, form letters, and other issuances relating to the census of agriculture, 1935-45; records of the Population Division, relating principally to the development of classification methods for occupations, 1870-1950; a general file of the population and housing program coordinator and expediter, 1947-56; scrapbooks of schedules, instructions, forms, plans, worksheets, and other materials prepared for the census of housing, 1940, the census of religious bodies, 1926, statistics of marriage and divorce, 1922-29, and population, 192040; hand and machine data tabulations relating to minority groups, prepared from 1930 census population schedules; and records of the Division of Territorial, Insular, and Foreign Statistics, consisting of a general subject file, 193542, and files of schedules, forms, instructions, memorandums, reports, publicity material, tabulations, and other records relating to planning, conducting, and publishing the results of territorial censuses, 1900-1948. Included are records relating to the 1937 census of unemployment, consisting of a general file; publicity material; files of the administrator, technical assistants, and consultants; and records relating to collecting and compiling data, 1937-39.

Records of the assistant director for economic fields include office files of Howard C. Grieves, documenting his Bureau service as the chief economist, 1945-47, and assistant director for economic fields, 1947-65; records of the Business Division, relating to the collection and compilation of data for business censuses, 1929-52; tabulations and compilations of the Division of Foreign Trade Statistics, 1914-16 and 1918-38 (in WNRC); records of the Governments Division and its predecessor units, consisting of files of the chief legal office of the Bureau, relating to census legislation, security classification of census data, and the interpretation of State laws concerning taxation, revenue, pension funds, voting, elections, and the nature of public records; questionnaires and other records relating to election surveys, 1939-47; records relating to general program planning and evaluation, 1945-65, and to finance and employment surveys, 1947-62; records of the Industry Division, consisting of schedules, forms and instructions for censuses of manufactures, 1890-1947; a historical file on the development of reporting forms for the 1947 census of manufactures, 1945-48; records relating to the collection and tabulation of data on special industries and industrial products, 1900-1946; and fragmentary records relating to the Bureau machine shop, 1917-22.