DEPARTMENT OF HISTORICAI, RESEARCH. I09 



most likely to be followed by a considerable number of the better sort of in- 

 vestigators within the next twenty-five years. Each generation views the past 

 in its own way, asks questions concerning it which preceding generations 

 have not asked, and requires that history be written anew in such a manner 

 as to answer them. Even if it were possible to divine with security what are 

 the most profitable lines of investigation to follow with a view to meeting 

 the needs of the next generation, it would still remain difficult to be sure 

 what collections of material, what reports or inventories, are most likely to 

 be extensively used by the class of investigators one would most wish to 

 serve, the maturest and most talented members of the historical profession. 



The answer, indeed, is clouded by doubts arising from the present status of 

 that class. One who has watched the progress of historical investigation in 

 the United States during the past ten years will doubt whether during that 

 period, in spite of the marked improvement in local work and the great in- 

 crease of respectable doctoral dissertations, the amount of work of the high- 

 est grade has increased at all. In a regime of rising prices and salaries 

 thereby diminishing, and in a land of such rapidly increasing wealth that the 

 general reader has become a bonanza and that any history of the United 

 States can find an enormous sale if it is only made sufficiently voluminous 

 and expensive, we are not to expect the best of the academics universally to 

 prefer the austere prosecution of the unprofitable to the golden rewards of 

 publishers' enterprises. 



The conditions are doubtless in large part temporary ; for instance, we can 

 rely upon increased appreciation of the teacher's function to shame or per- 

 suade American mankind into the increase of his pay, and as the culture of 

 the American rich becomes less superficial we can count upon a large recruit- 

 ment of the workers in history from that class, from which has come in every 

 age and country a large part of those devoted to that expensive pursuit. The 

 future of historical investigation in America is not dark; but its immediate 

 course is perplexing. We must do our best to estimate the direction and vol- 

 ume of its flow, but can not be surprised if our calculations are not always 

 verified by the result, our publications not always so immediately useful as 

 we had hoped. 



Those publications, as has been explained in previous reports, fall naturally 

 into two classes, the one that of reports, aids, and guides, the other that of 

 textual publications of documents. Under these two heads, and a third re- 

 lating to the miscellaneous activities of the Department, the work of the past 

 year and the plans for 1910 will be successively considered in this report. 



