588 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 



no more be independent of him than they can ]>e superior to him. This construc- 

 tion is so manifestly proi)er that it would seem to require no argument to justify it. 

 But if anything further were wanted it may be found in the fact that the Secretary 

 is to employ them in and about that very business with which he is charged and 

 for which he alone is responsible. The character of this part of the section is per- 

 missive. He is not required to employ anyone, but is permitted to employ persons 

 to assist him, jtrovided he satisfy the board that their services are necessary as aids 

 to him. 



In another part of the same section provision is made for the payment and, if need 

 be, the removal of the Secretary and his assistants, and in this connection they are 

 spoken of as officers, but by no ingenuity of construction can that word, in this con- 

 nection, be held to assign them special duties or confer any separate authority. 



Thus careful has Congress been to provide an efficient system of operations, which 

 can only come from harmony of purpose and unity of action. 



This view of the intention of Congress, so clearly expressed in the law, would be 

 directly contradicted by the plan which has been suggested of organizing the Insti- 

 tution definitely into several departments, placing at the head of these departments 

 different assistants, establishing their relative positions, prescribing distinct duties 

 for them, assigning certain shares of the income to be disbursed by them, and stat- 

 ing their authority, privileges, and remedies for infringement of their official rights, 

 or of the interests intrusted to their care. All this would tend, not to secure a loyal 

 and harmonious cooperation, to a common end, of the assistants with the Secretary, 

 but to encourage rivalry, to invite collision, to engender hostility, to destroy sub- 

 ordination, to distract the operations of the Institution, to impair its efficiency, and 

 to destroy its usefulness. 



This view of the question has been made very clear to the committee 

 in the course of the examination which they have made, and b}^ the 

 testimony taken for the purpose of supporting Mr. Meacham's charges. 

 All the difficulties in the Institution, which have resulted in the dis- 

 missal by the Secretar}" of one of his assistants and of a person tempo- 

 rarily employed upon the meteorological computations, seem to have 

 arisen from the desire of independent positions, engendering rivahy 

 and hostility, producing collisions and insubordination utterly incom- 

 patible with the proper authority of the Secretary and the harmonious 

 action so necessary to the welfare of the Institution. The facts devel- 

 oped in regard to those difficulties entirely satisfy your committee that 

 it is not desiraV)le to have such by-laws as Mr. Meacham thinks the 

 Regents should have made or procured. 



If any just cause of complaint by the assistants against the Secretary 

 should arise, they can at all times resort for redress to the Regents by 

 memorial or other proper form of application, and the patience with 

 which such an application, although entirely without cause, has been 

 heard by the executive committee, to which it was referred, and con- 

 sidered by the Regents is quite sufficient to show how needless for the 

 purpose any by-laws are. 



It may be proper to say that the only section of the law in which 

 by-laws are mentioned is the eighth, which seems to confer the power 

 of enacting them upon the members of the establishment, who are the 

 President and Vice-President of the United States, the members of 



