240 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 



On the day that I entered upon my new 

 duties, the thermometer in my office regis- 

 tered 95°. The rest of the summer was 

 steaming hot. It rained on St. Swithin's 

 day and — more or less — for forty days 

 thereafter, and the sticky heat was well- 

 nigh unbearable. But the warmth of wel- 

 come which I experienced at the hands of 

 members of the administration who were 

 still on duty at the Capital did much to 

 make that external heat and humidity en- 

 durable. 



I began, indeed, to wonder whether the 

 difficulties of which I had been warned were 

 not imaginary. Here was none of that im- 

 mobility of the great governmental machine 

 of which I had heard so much. It was not 

 until the eve of the assembling of Congress 

 that the other side of the picture was fairly 

 exposed. On Thanksgiving Day I was 

 summoned before the House Committee's 

 sub-committee on the "legislative" appro- 

 priation bill, for my first annual hearing 

 on the estimates for the bureau for the next 

 ensuing fiscal year. Then I knew. No 

 great advance could be made in the useful- 

 ness of the education office without increase 

 of appropriations ; and there was evidently 

 in Congress an intrenched tradition that 

 the federal government should not go 

 deeply into expenditures for public educa- 

 tion. 



In order to be quite fair, some qualifica- 

 tions must, of course, be made. The con- 

 trast in attitude between the executive and 

 the legislative branch of the government 

 was not that between white and black but 

 that between light gray and a misty dim- 

 ness. 



Not everything was easy on the admin- 

 istrative side. There were some difficulties 

 that were internal to the bureau. Such 

 were, of course, inevitable. They were, 

 however, made good in part by the loyal 

 support of competent men and women on 

 the staff of the office. 



I may go out of my way just here to pay 

 tribute to my venerated predecessor in the 

 commissionership. Dr. William T. Harris. 

 He had presided over the Bureau of Educa- 

 tion so long, and with so dominating a per- 

 sonality, that in a sense it had become his 

 own. He continued his residence in the 

 city of Washington. He was a veritable 

 mine of information and judgment regard- 

 ing the bureau in all of its relationships. 

 Yet from the moment that he laid down his 

 official responsibility, he did not seek in 

 any particular to direct or even to influ- 

 ence the administration of his successor, 

 while giving at all times a friendly sym- 

 pathy and support that was, to the younger 

 man, of immeasurable value. 



Secretary Ethan Allen Hitchcock was at 

 the head of the Department of the Interior. 

 I soon found some justification for the say- 

 ing that he counted every man guilty till 

 he should have proved himself innocent. 

 The delicate question here was the manage- 

 ment by the bureau of the reindeer annex 

 to its provision for the education of the 

 Alaskan natives. This branch of the ser- 

 vice was in a peculiarly perplexing situ- 

 ation just then. When President Roosevelt 

 had called me to Washington, to offer me 

 the post of commLssioner, his talk had 

 hardly touched upon any other side of the 

 bureau's activity. While the secretary's 

 attitude on this subject for a time increased 

 the difficulty of the situation, and a solu- 

 tion was not reached until he had been suc- 

 ceeded in the portfolio by Mr. Garfield, I 

 entertained, nevertheless, and still retain, 

 something like historic veneration for the 

 really Roman personality and service of 

 Secretary Hitchcock. 



One of my earliest attempts to widen the 

 service rendered by the education office 

 brought me into interesting relations with 

 an assistant secretary. He was the acting 

 head of the department during the tempor- 

 ary absence of his chief. What I sought 



