BARNES' CONTAINING ALL FEDERAL STATUTES OF NOW IN FORCE EDITED BY URIAH BARNES EDITOR WEST VIRGINIA CODE 1916 AND OTHER LEGAL WORKS, FORMERLY MANY YEARS ASSOCIATED IN SPECIAL WORK WITH ASSOCIATE EDITORS HENRY CRAIG JONES DEAN COLLEGE OF LAW, WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY IRA E. ROBINSON FORMERLY JUDGE WEST VIRGINIA SUPREME COURT of appeals VIRGINIAN LAW BOOK COMPANY THE BODES-MERRILL COMPANY INDIANAPOLIS, IND. 1919 626573 Copyright, 1919, BY VIRGINIAN LAW BOOK COMPANY MANUFACTURED BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDE, MASS. PREFACE. WITHIN recent years the marked expansion in the functions of the eral government and the corresponding and significant growth and ty of federal legislation have rendered clearly apparent the vital orance of a knowledge of these laws by all professional classes and vorher persons affected thereby. Yet until now no handy and coine edition, suitable for all practical purposes, has ever appeared.. present manual, it is believed, will be a welcome relief from the cess."y of resorting to the large, expensive and now incomplete editions to t. e various official printings of the Statutes. As matter of pertiet explanation, however, brief reference to these latter publications s deer ed proper. The Statutes of the United States immediately after enactment, during h session, are published separately in documentary form and numted serially according to the date of enactment. The Resolutions ed are published and numbered in like manner. These documents known as the Slip Laws. At the end of the session all Acts and isolations of a public and general nature are published in a temporary .e, called the Session Laws, in which the Statutes are assigned chapter numbers in their chronological order. At the expiration of te(org.ess, all such Session Laws, covering the two regular sessions, any special sessions held during the interval, are bound together Permanent form in one large volume. These volumes comprise the Statutes at Large. Of these volume 40, embracing all public and geral laws of the sixty-fifth Congress, is now in the making. Private Acts, such as private pension laws, are published separately. at an early day, as the laws of Congress thus embodied in the Statutes a Large grew to formidable proportions, it became increasingly apparettat too much difliculty was encountered, even by the most experi d investigator, in the effort to ascertain the status of the law, tease of the maze of obsolete, repealed, superseded and temporary vs sppearing in these volumes. Moreover, many statutes are found ne.e covering the subject matter of earlier laws, without mentioning or repealing the former Acts. Laws closely allied in subject matter ore widely scattered. Numerous "riders" or provisos of ge: eral eharacter appear in appropriation Acts, and measures of great length re often found covering a wide variety of subjects formulated with little parent regard for logical sequence or relation of subject matter. Atarments are often involved, obscure and crudely drawn. Statut.8 a reperted in subsequent Acts in almost identical language, without stantial variation, with no reference to the former Acts or apparent erion to amend the same. Indexing is impertect, and many other des and imperfections appear. a.emedy these defects, as far as possible, and to make the federal Inore readily and conveniently accessibie, Congres by formed Act provided for a thorough revision. Pursuant to this Act the first n of the Revised Statutes was pubushed in 1875 in one volura |