8 REPORT OF NATIOISTAL MUSEUM, 1905. 



Contracts were entered into during the winter and spring for the 

 heavy steel framework for the main story floor and for much of the 

 inside building materials which were soon to be required. 



URGENT NEEDS OF THE MUSEUM. 



The Museum's interests have been most retarded during the past 

 two decades by the excessive crowding of its buildings, but this con- 

 dition will soon be remedied in so liberal and effective a manner as 

 to excite the pride of the whole country. In another direction, how- 

 ever, there exists an almost equally important emergency, which 

 has so far failed to be appreciated. It relates to the activities of 

 the Museum, its maintenance, and its duties toward the Government 

 and the public. The Museum is undermanned and the members of 

 the staff are to such an extent underpaid that the force can not be 

 held intact. It makes no difference how large, how small, or how 

 crowded its buildings may be, the work must go on, and in such 

 degree as it is neglected is the Museum dead and useless. To the 

 ordinary mind a museum is a house filled with curiosities. A true 

 museum of modern times is never such, and the Museum of this 

 country has been honored by Congress with functions of a high and 

 important character. As the custodian of the national collections, 

 it is preserving material records secured through the expenditure of 

 many millions of dollars. So interested have the people become in 

 their own Museum that they have swelled these records to the extent 

 of a large proportion of its contents. The general public shares in 

 the benefits through the large and attractive, but at the same time 

 instructive, displays made in the several exhibition halls. Educa- 

 tional interests throughout the country are advanced through the 

 distribution to schools and colleges and the smaller museums of 

 the hundreds of thousands of duplicates released with the progress 

 of investigations. But it should not be forgotten that the collec- 

 tions here assembled and the researches here carried on form the 

 basis of some of the most important economic achievements of the 

 Government. 



The hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Museum obtain no 

 idea of the real activities going on. They see only the attendants. 

 They do not know that the three or four acres of floor and the 2,000 

 exhibition cases are cleaned every day. They have no opportunity 

 for learning that the display collections require unceasing care and 

 are always changing, for their special benefit, upon the receipt of 

 new material. They are not aware that behind the scenes, in labora- 

 tories and storage rooms, there is a multitude of work in progress — 

 work required by law, and work that advances both science and the 

 public good. If only these facts could be fully comprehended, the 



