AN ACT CREATING A COMMISSION TO SECURE, ORGANIZE, AND MAKE AN EXHIBIT OF PHILIPPINE PRODUCTS, MANUFACTURES, ART, ETHNOLOGY, AND EDUCATION AT THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE EXPOSITION TO BE HELD AT SAINT LOUIS, IN THE UNITED STATES, IN NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FOUR.

• Number: Act No. 514
• Sections: 16

Section 1

SECTION 1. For the purpose of securing, organizing, and making an exhibit of Philippine products, manufactures, art, ethnology, education, and the customs and habits of the people, there shall be appointed by the Civil Governor, by and with the advice and consent of the Philippine Commission, a board to consist of three members, one of whom shall be designated as chairman in his appointment, to be called the Exposition Board.

The chairman of the Board shall receive an annual salary of five thousand dollars. United States currency, and the other two members shall receive an annual salary of four thousand dollars, United States currency, each. The actual traveling expenses of each member, while absent from bis usual place of residence on business of the Board, shall he paid out of the Exposition fund hereinafter provided.

Any two members of the Board shall constitute a quorum.

Section 2

SEC. 2. The Civil Governor shall appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Philippine Commission, a secretary of the Board, who shall receive a salary of two thousand five hundred dollars, United States currency, per annum.

The Exposition Board shall have power to appoint stenographers, clerks, traveling agents, messengers, laborers, and such other employees as may be necessary at salaries or wages to be fixed by the Board upon the approval of the Civil Governor while the majority of the Board is in the Philippine Islands. When a quorum of the Board is in the United States no positions shall be created and no persons appointed to the same, except by the unanimous vote of the three members of the Board.

It shall be the duty of the Board either as a body, or by individual members, or through agents, to secure in the Philippine Islands as comprehensive an exhibit as possible of the products and resources, manufactures, art, ethnology, education, government of the Philippine Islands, and the habits and customs of the Filipino people; and for this purpose the Board is authorized to visit, either as a body or by individual members, or by agents, every part of the Philippine Islands.

Section 3

SEC. 3. The Board shall have an office in the city of Manila, to be assigned to it in some available public building by the Civil Governor, and shall adopt rules for its meetings and the discharge of its business.

Section 4

SEC. 4. The Board is authorized and directed to hold a preliminary exposition of certain of the exhibits at Manila in the autumn of nineteen hundred and three; and to secure buildings and space for this purpose in the city of Manila and to improve the same, and to establish a permanent museum of such exhibits in Manila. The Board is further authorized and directed to secure the needed land from the authorities of the Saint Louis Exposition; to expend the necessary sums in the drawing of plans for the necessary buildings, and for their construction; and for the laying out of the grounds included in the tract of land assigned to the Philippine Exhibit; to incur all necessary expenditures, in the securing of exhibits including the necessary advertising, in the transportation of exhibits from the points where secured in the Philippine Islands to Manila, and thence to Saint Louis in the United States.

It shall be the duty of the Board, or its agents, to secure from as many persons as possible, private exhibits or articles belonging to such persons, and to return the same to them at the close of the Exposition in Saint Louis.

The Board is further authorized to acquire by purchase such exhibits as it may not be able to obtain gratuitously, and to make such disposition of same after the Exposition is closed as may seem wise, tendering them first to the Smithsonian Institute, and second, to the Philadelphia Commercial Museum.

Section 5

SEC. 5. The Board herein appointed shall, subject to the approval of the Civil Governor, formulate rules which shall govern the receipt of exhibits, their preservation, transportation, classification, and final disposition.

The Board appointed herein shall have power to incur, in the work of the collection of the exhibit, its transportation to Saint Louis, and the holding of the preliminary exposition at Manila, the construction of buildings at Saint Louis and the laying out of grounds, and in other expenditures authorized by this Act, obligations not exceeding in the aggregate the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in money of the United States; and in addition to that sum, any sum which may be contributed for the purpose of aiding the Philippine Exhibit by the Directors of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the latter sum to be expended under such limitations and restrictions as may be imposed by the Directors of the Exposition.

Section 6

SEC. 6. All letters mailed by the Exposition Board, its members, or its secretary, on Exposition business, together with mail inclosed in return envelopes from persons communicating with the Board, its secretary, or its agents on Exposition business, shall be carried in the mails of the Philippine Islands free.

Section 7

SEC. 7. It shall be the duty of the heads of all the Bureaus of the Insular Government and the governors and members of the provincial boards of all the provinces, and of all the municipal presidents and other municipal officers in the Islands, together with Constabulary officers and the captains and officers of Coast Guard vessels, to furnish every assistance in their power not inconsistent with law to the Exposition Board and its agents appointed under this Act for the purpose of expediting the securing of exhibits, their transportation, and their classification. The free use of the telegraph lines of the Islands shall be allowed to the members of the Exposition Board and its employees and agents for the purpose of facilitating the business of the Board.

Section 8

SEC. 8. No taxes or duties shall be imposed by the Insular, provincial, or municipal governments of the Islands on exhibits collected by the Exposition Board for exhibit, either in Manila or Saint Louis.

Section 9

SEC. 9. The Board shall render a monthly report of the work done by it to the Civil Governor, and a quarterly account of its receipts and expenditures to the Civil Governor and the Auditor for the Archipelago.

Section 10

SEC. 10. The Civil Governor shall appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Philippine Commission, a disbursing officer for the Exposition Board, under this Act, who shall receive compensation at the rate of one thousand eight hundred dollars, United States currency, per annum. In addition to his acting as disbursing officer, he shall discharge such other duties as may be assigned to him by the Exposition Board. The Civil Governor shall fix his bond. The disbursing officer thus appointed shall be subject to all the requirements imposed by existing law upon the disbursing offers of other Bureaus and Departments in respect to rendering accounts to the Auditor and in his drawing of moneys from the Treasury and his custody and deposit of the same.

Section 11

SEC. 11. The Civil Governor is hereby authorized to appoint, by and with the advice and consent of the Commission, five honorary commissioners, who shall be representative Filipinos, to visit the Exposition in May, nineteen hundred and four, and to remain in the United States, chiefly in Saint Louis, for the purpose of acting upon the committees of award, of advising the Board appointed under this Act, and of representing the Filipino people upon all occasions, when such representation will be necessary or proper, in the public meetings and congresses at the Exposition. Such honorary commissioners shall receive their actual traveling expenses and subsistence in going from Manila, to Saint Louis, in their stay in Saint Louis, and in their return to Manila, and a per diem compensation of seven dollars per day each for a period beginning thirty-five days before the day of the opening of the Exposition until thirty-five days after its close, or so long as they may remain in the United States in attendance upon the Exposition for any less period. The honorary commissioners shall have the right to visit Washington to pay their respects to the President of the United States during the first two months of the Exposition, and their expenses of travel and subsistence during this trip from Saint Louis to Washington and return shall be included in the traveling expenses and subsistence allowed under this section.

Section 12

SEC. 12. The honorary commissioners appointed by virtue of the provisions of the next preceding section shall organize by selecting one of their number as chairman and one of their number as secretary. The commissioners thus organized shall have the power to employ a competent interpreter, who shall receive compensation, while employed, at the rate of five dollars per day, in United States currency, and the payment of his actual expenses from Manila to Saint Louis, of his stay in Saint Louis, and return to Manila. He shall be employed for a period not to exceed beginning thirty-five days before the opening of the Exposition in Saint Louis until not exceeding thirty-five days after its close. It shall be the duty of the commissioners as a body to prepare and make a comprehensive report upon the entire Louisiana Purchase Exposition, including the congresses attended by them, after the close of the Exposition, and to forward such report to the Philippine Commission on or before the first day of March, nineteen hundred and five. No further compensation for the rendering of this report shall be paid the honorary commissioners than that provided in the next preceding section.

Section 13

SEC. 13. There is hereby appropriated out of any funds in the Insular Treasury not otherwise appropriated, the sum of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, in money of the United States, to be expended by order of the Board in meeting obligations authorized to be incurred under section four of this Act.

Section 14

SEC. 14. The Civil Service Act and its amendments shall not apply to appointments under this Act.

Section 15

SEC. 15. The public good requiring the speedy enactment of this bill, the passage of the same is hereby expedited in accordance with section two of "An Act prescribing the order of procedure by the Commission in the enactment of laws," passed September twenty-sixth, nineteen hundred.

Section 16

SEC. 16. This Act shall take effect on its passage.

Enacted, November 11, 1902.