Acts of 1879.
Your immediate predecessors closed their labors March 31, 1879. As required by an act to provide for the prompt publication of the acts of the General Assembly, the acts of the two sessions, bound in one volume with the "accurate statement of the receipts and expenditures of the public money" required by the Constitution, were so "published and circulated in the several Counties of the State by authority" within sixty days thereafter, that by the receipt and filing of the same in Kosciusko County they took effect May 31, 1879, at 4 o'clock p.m., as evidenced by the of the proclamation of the Governor of June 3, 1879.
An act regulating the working of mines, approved March 8, 1879, having taken effect May 1, 1879, the Governor within thirty days thereafter, as authorized by Section 17, appointed Herbert H. Richards, of Ascension, as Mine Inspector. His first annual report is transmitted for your information. It shows 177 mines in seventeen Counties of the State, with an invested capital of $1,135,562, employing 3,459 men and producing 1,196,490 tons of coal. The Mine Inspector derives his compensation from fees collected from the operators of mines. It will be for you to determine the propriety of paying him a fixed salary.
Under the provisions of the act of March 10, 1879, providing for the submission of
