10 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I07 



agreed to provide a sum of $6,000 for the initial operating costs, 

 and to take up the question of applying for Foundation support 

 after a short trial period. In brief, the following agreements were 

 reached : 



1. That the Board was a joint committee of the three Councils 

 and the Smithsonian Institution. 



2. That the name was to be the Ethnogeographic Board. 



3. That the National Research Council was to act as fiscal agent. 



4. That the old Ethnographic Board was to be discontinued, and the 

 jurisdiction of the Ethnogeographic Board shifted from the Division 

 of Anthropology and Psychology to the Executive Board of the Na- 

 tional Research Council. 



5. That the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies, the 

 committees on the anthropology of Oceania and Africa, the Inten- 

 sive Language Program, and the Smithsonian War Committee 

 should not be discontinued or reduced to subcommittees of the 

 Board, but should be considered as cooperating organizations and 

 so listed on the letterhead. 



6. That William Duncan Strong was to be Director of the 

 Ethnogeographic Board, with offices located in the Smithsonian 

 Institution. 



7. That the Board itself would be interdisciplinary in character 

 and would act as an advisory and policy-making body for the 

 Directorate. 



8. That the Directors of the four sponsoring institutions would 

 serve as ex officio members of the Board and that other Board 

 members would be chosen jointly by the four Sponsors as "repre- 

 sentatives of varied important human disciplines, on the basis of 

 their familiarity with one or more geographical regions and their 

 experience and associations." (From the brochure of the Ethnogeo- 

 graphic Board.) 



Thus on June 16, 1942, the Ethnogeographic Board was settled 

 in its Washington offices and ready to begin business. 



Ethnogeographic Board 



The true need for an organization of this type is implicit in the 

 historical summary of its development. That the Board performed 

 many useful services and more than justified its existence has been 

 stated previously and will be repeated frequently in this account. The 

 question raised here is merely whether the same results might have 

 been accomplished in a simpler way, and whether, in a future emer- 

 gency, a board with similar organizational structure would be needed. 



