THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



I may as well go further, although it takes the story out of its 

 chronological order. 



Shortly after I became Chief of the Service, Congressman 

 Wadsworth of New York (father of the later Senator Wads- 

 worth of New York) was Chairman of the Agricultural Com- 

 mittee of the House. He conceived the idea that it was his duty 

 to know more about the workings of the Department than had 

 been the custom with chairmen of that special committee. One 

 day, therefore, he appeared at the Department with four or five 

 other members of the committee (one of whom was John Sharp 

 Williams, later U. S. Senator from Mississippi, a great speaker 

 and one of the personahties of the Senate), and went through 

 all the bureaus, going into the insectary, looking at the insect 

 breeding in the cages and examining all the details of the work. 

 The next year he had the chiefs of the different branches appear 

 one after anodier before the committee to explain fully what 

 they were trying to do and why they wanted the amounts o£ 

 money that were estimated. From that year, which must have 

 been about 1896, such hearings have been held at the beginning 

 of every session of Congress. 



These hearings were very trying to the bureau chiefs, partly 

 on account of the ignorance of many members of the committee 

 — an ignorance, in most cases, combined with egotism and pride 

 of place— and partly on account of the fact that they put the 

 Bureau Chief in the position of a defendant at the bar, apparently 

 taking the stand (and many of the committee men were country 

 lawyers) that there was some graft going on and that it was 

 their duty to expose it. Doubtless this attitude on the part of 

 members, which the Bureau Chiefs used to resent, was largely 

 a matter of imagination, and really as time went on it grew less 

 every year. It became obvious, in fact, that many of the members 

 of the committee were very earnest in their desire to do what 



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