NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOL. VIII 



ADMINISTRATION. 



The various aspects of the Geological Survey here sum- 

 marized from successive volumes of Annual Reports reflect 

 clearly enough the character impressed on this great organiza- 

 tion by Powell as its Director; but they give a very imperfect 

 picture of the labor demanded of him in maintaining the Sur- 

 vey. A governmental bureau depends on one side upon the 

 annual appropriations of a changing Congress, and on the 

 other side upon the loyal and expert work of its many mem- 

 bers. The continuation of such a bureau and the fate of its 

 members might be left by a philosophical outsider entirely to 

 the wisdom of Congressmen, because in the abstract the 

 bureau exists only to carry out the will of the people as ex- 

 pressed by their Representatives ; but in the concrete case of 

 any single bureau, especially of a bureau originally established 

 for the performance of a great and long-enduring task, many 

 other considerations enter into the problem, as Powell well 

 knew, and weighty among these is a reasonable assurance of 

 steady employment for those who have in good faith cast their 

 lot in the work of the bureau, with a fair expectation of its 

 long existence, and also an honorable ambition of the Director 

 regarding the distant completion of the important task com- 

 mitted to his charge, already begun or planned for the imme- 

 diate future. Not only general continuity of work, but steadi- 

 ness in rate of work or at least the avoidance of a decreasing 

 rate is essential for an employee's peace of mind and a Di- 

 rector's satisfaction ; increase may be welcomed, but retrench- 

 ment is at once an embarrassment to the Director who is com- 

 pelled to execute it, and a hardship to those upon whom it is 

 executed. The approach of the critical season when Con- 

 gressional appropriations are usually voted is, therefore, un- 

 avoidably a time of anxiety for the members of a bureau in 

 which the work necessarily changes to some extent every year, 

 for some members must lose their positions if the work is re- 

 duced; and it is a particularly anxious time to the Director, 

 upon whom the responsibility for maintaining the bureau so 

 largely depends; all the more so to a Director who, like "the 



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