ARCHIVIST OF THE HALL OF RECORDS 47

made no other provisions, it would continue to substitute to the
best of its ability.

Some of the services which we give to other State agencies
are no more difficult than those which we daily offer to private
individuals. For example, did a certain person ever suffer an
injury while employed in Maryland industry? The answer is
found in the records of the Industrial Accident Commission by
consulting three separate indexes. Is a certain Act of Assembly
correct as it appears in the printed Session Laws? The answer
is found by comparing the printed Act with the engrossed Act.
Did a certain person serve a sentence in the Maryland Peniten-
tiary? The answer is to be found in the records of that insti-
tution, which are in our custody.

On the other hand, there are others—and they are the more
frequent—which are a good deal less elementary. The Attorney
General wishes to know the terms of an agreement reached, pre-
sumably between the Governor of Maryland and a Federal
agency when a certain military post was taken over. If such
an agreement exists, it would be found in the Executive files,
which might or might not be indexed by subject for any given
year. Or the agreement might have been reached at any time
after the actual taking, in consequence of subsequent Federal
statutes governing such matters. This kind of problem is far
from simple, and the answer must be exact. Fifty or sixty in-
quiries of this kind in the course of a year account for a great
deal of time.

In addition to services required by the various governmental
agencies for their own purposes, there are others which are
asked of these agencies and then passed on to the Hall of Rec-
ords. For example, the earliest charter of a society or business
now in operation may have been granted during the period
when such matters were in the hands of the General Assembly;
but the request for information would naturally be addressed
either to the State Tax Commission or to the Secretary of State,
and either one of these agencies would just as naturally refer it