GOODE'S ACTIMTI1:S IN RELATION TO AMERICAN SCIliNC! 



By W11.LIAM Healey DaIvI., 

 PalfO}itologist, United States Geological Survey. 



Most persons unacquainted with the interior working of our executive 

 bureaus have an impression that they are the creation of law, in the sense 

 in which the term ' ' creation ' ' was formerly used to describe the coming 

 into being of some part of the material universe. Perhaps this impres- 

 sion is seldom definitely formulated, 1jut, nevertheless, it is common to 

 hear arguments from intelligent people, bent on ameliorating govern- 

 ment, which tacitly assume that an act of Congress by some inherent 

 magic will accomplish that which the}' desire. It is a truism that whole 

 schemes of social reorganization are built on no better foundation, and 

 thousands of earnest reformers work, suffer, and even die for theories 

 erected on this hypothesis. 



Whatever of truth there may be in the application of this idea to the 

 purely bu.siness offices of the Government, where finance, commerce, 

 invention, or transportation are provided for, nothing could be more mis- 

 taken than its application to the scientific bureaus. For each and every 

 one of them the world is indebted to some individual. In the majorit}^ 

 of cases the man came with his purpose before the law was thought of, 

 and his devotion to his self-imposed mission, his persistence, and his 

 energy were the inciting causes of some lines in an appropriation bill, 

 with all its potentialities, the seed of the present organization. Some- 

 times the sower, given the opportunity to dig and water, was spared to 

 reap the first fruits of the harvest. On other occasions worth}- suc- 

 cessors aro.se, bore the burden and heat of the day, and carried out the 

 plans to final triumph. Thus, to Ha.s.sler and Bache we owe the Coa.st 

 Survey, which has .spread the fame of American achievements in geodetic 

 science through every civilized conununity; to Hayden, King, and 

 Powell are due the organization and .success of the Geological Survey of 

 the United States ; to the initiative of Smithson and guiding hand of 

 Henry we owe the Smith.sonian Institution ; the Fish Conunission was 

 the embodied work of Baird ; and to Baird and Goode's untiring labors 

 we are indebted for the National Museum. There remain ver}^ few per- 

 sons with intimate personal knowledge of the lunvritten hi.story of the 



25 



