Febbuabt 5, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



219 



lished preliminary report of a committee ap- 

 pointed by the President of the United States 

 March 13, 1903, to consider many of the same 

 questions here reported upon and others closely 

 allied thereto. The chairman of the latter 

 committee has also placed at our disposal a 

 large mass of data collected by that committee. 



In the third place, it should be stated that 

 the members of your committee have been 

 chosen in strict conformity with the require- 

 ments of the second paragraph of the legisla- 

 tive act quoted above. 



A comprehensive intei-pretation of the func- 

 tions of your committee shows that the field 

 work for consideration is very large, and that 

 it presents many difficulties requiring the most 

 careful study before any final recommenda- 

 tions for legislative or executive action may be 

 safely made. Nearly every department of the 

 government is involved to a greater or less 

 extent, while some departments, like the De- 

 partment of Agriculture and that of Com- 

 merce and Labor, are carrying on scientific 

 work in a great variety of ways. Thus, to 

 illustrate the extent and variety of this work, 

 it may be stated that surveys are now being 

 carried on by seven different organizations 

 under five different departments of the govern- 

 ment; similarly, tests of apparatus, materials, 

 foods, etc., are being made by the Bureau of 

 Standards, by the technologic branch of the 

 Geological Survey, by the Department of Agri- 

 culture, and to a minor degree by many other 

 ■departments and bureaus of the government. 

 Similarly, chemical work is carried on in many 

 branches of the Department of Agriculture, by 

 the Bureau of Standards, by the Geological 

 Survey, by the Public Health and Marine- 

 Hospital Service, and to a less extent by other 

 "branches of the public service. 



It should be borne in mind also, in consider- 

 ing the present status of these organizations 

 carrying on scientific work, that many of them 

 have been so long established as to become 

 integral parts of the departments to which 

 they are assigned. Hence, any considerations 

 looking to a consolidation or to a redistribu- 

 tion in the departments of these organizations 

 should take into account their origin and his- 

 ■torical development as well as their present 



status. The experience gained through a long 

 series of years by these organizations should 

 indicate what special merits they possess as 

 well as the defects of organization and effi- 

 ciency they may now present. 



In view, therefore, of the importance of the 

 scientific work now carried on by the govern- 

 ment, and in view of the certain prospect that 

 it will increase rather than decrease in the 

 future, your committee is disposed to look at 

 the problems presented by this work with a 

 desire rather to furnish constructive criticism 

 and advice than to recommend any immediate 

 and radical changes based on destructive criti- 

 cism, however well founded the latter may be 

 in some cases. In other words, it appears more 

 important to your committee to provide for 

 enlightened and efficient conduct of govern- 

 mental scientific work in the future than to be 

 infiuenced to any considerable degree by the 

 imperfections of organization and the ineffi- 

 ciencies in conduct of that work in the past. 



From a general survey of the field of work 

 under consideration three facts appear to be 

 clearly established, namely: 



Pirst. That the amount of actual duplica- 

 tion of work now carried on by the government 

 bureaus is relatively unimportant : but that the 

 duplication of organizations and of plants for 

 the conduct of such work is so considerable as 

 to need careful attention from Congress in the 

 future. 



Second. That while the consolidation of some 

 branches of work now carried on in several 

 organizations is probably advisable, specific 

 recommendations in reference to such con- 

 solidation can be made wisely only after a 

 careful consideration of all the facts by the 

 board hereinafter suggested or by some sim- 

 ilarly competent body. 



Third. That there has never been hitherto 

 and there is not at present anything like a 

 rational correlation of allied branches of scien- 

 tific work carried on by the government. 



This last fact appears to your committee by 

 far the most important one presented for con- 

 sideration. The lack of any well-defined plan 

 for the development of such work, its distribu- 

 tion in various departments, and the lack of 

 any systematic scheme of interrelations of the 



