above stated, with the grand aggregate of all the expenditures incurred by the district provost-marshals of Illinois, $702,891,37 [see Schedule No. 21], it will be seen that the former amounts to more than 20 per cent. of the latter. In other words, the Government has paid for the single work of making and revising the enrollment lists in this State more than one-fifth of the entire sum required to keep in operation the whole machinery of the bureau from its organization until now. A further comparison of the schedules referred to shows that the enrollment expense averages more for each man obtained by the draft than the grand average per man of the whole 52,221 men sent to the field from this State during my administration.

Not only would the advantages already enumerated inevitably flow from the proposed amendment, but the cumbrous machinery of the district offices would be at once relieved and simplified by the discharge of a vast number of enrolling officers, amounting to over 1,000 in the State, with the laborious and perplexing duties connected with the proper selection, instruction, and supervision of so large a force of employes.

I have not considered it necessary or proper to indicate, in detail, the provisions of such an enrollment act as would secure the foregoing most beneficial results. Such details belong to the Provost-Marshal-General and to Congress, to whose wisdom it is my province to leave them, in full confidence that they would be judiciously and effectively adjusted; but I would earnestly recommend, by the high considerations of national sovereignty in time of war, by the completeness and reliability which should characterize the vital work of a military enrollment; by the pains and penalties which should be meted out to those who would ignominiously shrink from bearing a part in the public defense, and by the necessity of rigid economy of expenditures, that, should operations ever be resumed, the enrollment act should be amended in accordance with the suggestions which I have made.

Should the present mode of enrollment be continued, substantially, I should still have some suggestions to make by which its practical operation could be, I think, materially improved; but my sense of the necessity of a radical change is so strong and my conviction is so clear that the Provost-Marshal- General and Congress would never again rely upon a method of enrollment so unwieldy and inefficient as the present, that I have foreborne to advert to the means by which the working of the existing system might be rendered more satisfactory.

3. Place of credit.-I would recommend that existing orders and regulations be so modified as to make the place of actual residence, as shown and verified by the enrollment lists, the only and inflexible rule of credits. To this end let each district provost-marshal furnish the Board of Enrollment of every other district in the State with a duplicate of his enrollment lists, in addition to the copy forwarded to the acting assistant provost-marshal-general, as hereinbefore recommended; or, let acting assistant provost-marshals-general be required to consolidate and publish the enrollment lists of the whole State and furnish each district board of enrollment with a copy. With these records before it each board could at once determine the truth or falsity of every allegation of a recruit or substitute as to his particular place of residence. If the statement of the man should be verified by the enrollment list of the proper sub- district, he should be enlisted and credited accordingly; but if the enrollment list does not sustain said statement, then the desired credit should be refused.