academy of sciences] CHIEF GEOLOGIST, NATIONAL SURVEY 175 



and difficult, he developed the plans and formulated the decisions justly and wisely in the 

 great majority of cases, for he was preeminently a reasonable and fair-minded man. But he 

 had also a vast number of triffling affairs to act upon, and it is grievous to think that any of 

 his time should have been wasted on such small matters. Examples taken at random from 

 his official correspondence include such details as the rearrangement of desks and chairs in 

 the survey offices; a definition of the duties of disbursing agents; the specification of the form 

 in which divisional geologists should write orders for the performance of field work by their 

 assistants so as to meet the meticulous requirements of Treasury officials ; a recommendation to 

 the chief clerk that "the privileges of purchasing eggs and chickens, extended under certain 

 conditions to the Appalachian division, be also extended to the Potomac division;" authoriza- 

 tion for the transfer of a small unexpended balance from one division to meet a deficiency in 

 another; an explanation to a field geologist that an "oath of office" must be taken by all his 

 temporary scientific assistants, but not by his day laborers ; advice whether a horse and buggy 

 should be hired or a bicycle purchased for an assistant's field transportation; information as 

 to how tents might be requisitioned from the Quartermaster General of the Army instead of 

 bought in the open market; and the preparation of a reticle by means of which the total length 

 of all the contour lines on a map should be estimated, as a guide in determining the cost of 

 engraving. All these and many other small matters had of course to be settled by some one 

 in authority, but that Gilbert should have been selected to make such settlements seems a 

 wasteful use of an eminent man. 



One reason that made some of the work that he had to do as chief geologist disagreeable 

 to him was that, while he intensely disliked to render a decision on a case in which he felt he 

 had not had time to gather and to examine all pertinent considerations, his administrative 

 duties frequently called for prompt action. He wished to make deliberate rather than hurried 

 judgments. Papers accumulated on his desk, because he would not or could not act upon them 

 without a certain measure of consideration; and this is the more singular because in scientific 

 matters his judgments were often formed quickly and with remarkable accuracy; observed 

 facts were almost unhesitatingly classified in the groups where they belonged. Nevertheless, 

 his decisions in administrative matters were often reached so slowly that the younger and more 

 impulsive members of the survey, who saw chiefly their own side of the questions involved, 

 were at times impatient under the many-sided deliberations of their chief. Indeed, it was not 

 alone the younger members who were sometimes dissatisfied with the delay in the chief geologist's 

 office in reaching decisions on their propositions; nevertheless, the chief geologist persisted in 

 taking his time. He would surely have agreed that the captain of a sinking ship must adopt 

 at once a fairly good plan for the rescue of his passengers, rather than wait a day or more for 

 a better plan that might be reached after mature reflection; but he could not regard the survey as 

 a sinking ship — although it unhappily came to be not altogether unlike one in 1892. 



THE DISASTER OF 1892 



Who can say how long Gilbert might have continued in administrative thraldom, had it 

 not been for the disaster which overtook the survey in 1892. The year before, Congress had 

 cut off irrigation at the behest of western landowners and cattle kings; that summer, Congress, 

 acting very tardily, reduced the survey appropriation for the year ending June 30, 1893, to but 

 little more than half of its previous amount. Many salaries were stopped entirely; others were 

 seriously reduced; the survey was crippled. 



Gilbert's relation to the disaster was peculiar. He had had nothing whatever to do with 

 presenting the survey's needs to Congress in order to secure adequate appropriations for its 

 work; his duty had been to see that a share of the money provided was wisely spent as far as 

 geology was concerned. His small liking for even that sort of responsibility has been told ; the 

 responsibility of lobbying for appropriations would have been utterly distasteful to him, and 

 he as well as others believed that he would have had little success in it. He had written to a 

 friend the previous December: 



I have just spent four days in New York, New Haven, and Newport, trying to beg some money to bore a 

 hole deeper [the deep boring at Wheeling?], and have only succeeded in confirming an impression I had before 

 that I am a poor beggar. But the trip gave me much time for reading and I got through a pile of tracts. 



