NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOL. VIII 



and with 39 members on its pay-roll for the year ending June 

 30, 1880; for 1881-1882, the first full year of Powell's direc- 

 torate, the figures were $156,009 and 50; in 1890-1891, the 

 maximum appropriation of $719,000 was reached; the next 

 year there was a moderate decrease to $631,000. This un- 

 rivalled development was accompanied by a swelling volume 

 of publications of all kinds, lit is not too much to say that 

 the eyes of the geological world were turned in aston- 

 ished admiration at so unprecedented an expansion, which had 

 rapidly brought the United States Geological Survey under 

 Powell's leadership to be not only the largest organization of 

 its kind, but the largest scientific organization of any kind in 

 the world. Instead of Philadelphia, asr at first suggested, 

 Washington became ttue inevitable place of meeting for the 

 International Geological Congress of 1891 ; at the close of the 

 Western excursion that followed the Congress, Powell led a 

 party of visiting geologists across the Arizona plateau to the 

 Colorado canyon, and seemed to enjoy giving the European 

 members a sample of the rough Conditions under which travel 

 had then to be prosecuted in the Far West. The following 

 winter the Cuvier prize was fittingly awarded "to the collective 

 work of the Survey" by the Academy of Sciences of Paris. 



RESIGNATION FROM THE SURVEY. 



But even up to this time all had not been clear sailing in 

 Washington. Already, in 1884, opposition to the rapid growth 

 of the Survey, instigated, it is said, by some of those who were 

 left out of the Government service in the reorganization of 

 1879, na d arisen in Congress; the Joint Commission, above 

 referred to, was its outcome. Powell's testimony disclosed, 

 however, so perfect an Organization, he showed himself so 

 completely in control of it, and his "statement traversing cer- 

 tain averments" made by members of the opposing minority 

 in Congress was so satisfying to his friends in the majority, 

 that he came out victorious from the ordeal. The appropria- 

 tion of nearly half a million for the Survey for the year end- 

 ing June 30, 1885, was, in the face of the organized opposition, 

 raised to a little over half a million for 1885-1886, and so con- 



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