October 16, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



557 



may be a falling off is a matter of conjecture. 

 It depends upon several factors. The growth 

 of the graduate school in the larger univer- 

 sities and in the state universities is an essen- 

 tial element, but not a disturbing one so long 

 as college and university are reared side by 

 side, and college spirit submerges and smothers 

 university soul. 



Thus is one fourth of all the master minds 

 in American science a direct product of Johns 

 Hopkins influence. So is 25 per cent, of all 

 American scientific thought impelled by the 

 mainspring of Baltimore. It is not quantity 

 of university influx but quality of university 

 output that is telling and vcorth while. 



Charles Keyes 



the fur seal inquiry, the congressional 

 committee and the scientist 



Some three years ago the " Committee on 

 Expenditures in the Department of Com- 

 merce " of the House of Representatives, 

 headed by Congressman Rothermel of Penn- 

 sylvania, undertook the investigation of the 

 work of the Bureau of Fisheries on the admin- 

 istration of the fur seal fisheries, apparently 

 with the definite purpose of discrediting, for 

 political reasons, this branch of the govern- 

 ment service. In February, 1909, there had 

 been appointed an advisory board of the fur 

 seal work, consisting of the following well- 

 known zoologists, David Starr Jordan, C. Hart 

 Merriam, Charles H. Townsend, Leonhard 

 Stejneger and Frederic A. Lucas, to serve 

 without pay in advising the government as to 

 the best means of regulating the killing and 

 the protection of the fur seals on the Pribilof 

 Islands. 



To discredit the work of the administration 

 of the seal fisheries it was necessary also to 

 discredit these men. The fact that they 

 served without pay was of course open to sus- 

 picion to the machine type of politician, who 

 naturally finds it difficult to conceive of any 

 one doing any work for the government with 

 no emolument attached thereto. Accordingly 

 the majority of the committee proceeded to 

 measure them according to their own stand- 

 ard and took up charges which had been filed 



against all and sundry by one Henry W. 

 Elliott. This man Elliott, it may be men- 

 tioned, is a disgruntled ex-employee of the 

 government who was dismissed in 1891 because 

 he had been "found guilty of grave impro- 

 prieties." For more than twenty years this 

 man had persistently brought charges, not 

 only against all the scientific men who opposed 

 his propositions, but against seven secretaries 

 of departments, besides senators and congress- 

 men. These charges had been repeatedly dis- 

 proved and their author discredited and offi- 

 cially branded as " a person imworthy of 

 belief." 



However, this repeated repudiation of the 

 Elliott charges did not prevent the committee 

 from taking them up again in the attempt to 

 make political capital of them. In the face 

 of all the testimony submitted at the hearings 

 and on the unsupported evidence of the man 

 who preferred the charges, the majority of the 

 committee found in favor of the charges. 



To their everlasting credit be it said that 

 a minority of the members of this committee 

 were so incensed at the findings of the major- 

 ity in direct face of the evidence, that they 

 insisted on presenting a minority report 

 (Eeport 500, Pt. 2, 63rd Congress, 2d Session, 

 Fur Seal Industry of Alaska, 22 pages, July 

 2Y, 1914, signed by Congressmen McGuire and 

 Patton). This report is a scathing arraign- 

 ment of the methods of procedure and the 

 findings of the majority and of Elliott who 

 brought the charges. A few excerpts may not 

 be amiss here. 



The charges preferred by Elliott are without 

 foundation in fact, — ^the same charges have been 

 preferred by him with regularity for over 20 years 

 to various committees of Congress and executive 

 departments, and in each case found to have been 

 groundless. 



Elliott, the author of these charges and the sole 

 witness in support of them, is a person unworthy 

 of belief and one who has been consistently re- 

 pudiated in the past. 



The committee had no justification for the re- 

 opening of these hearings on the same charges. 



There is a total absence of evidence of any ir- 

 regularities on their (the government's representa- 

 tives) part. 



