406 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 874 



it not merely protects the government, but the 

 individual whose service is governed by it, and 

 whose devotion to a special object might in 

 many oases without such wholesome restraint 

 lead him to forget that he must keep step with 

 his colleagues. Furthermore, " red tape " is 

 not merely a governmental device, but is uni- 

 versal in all large organizations, private or 

 public, and so far as the writer's observations 

 extend, is, if anything, more rigid in private 

 practise. No college, corporation or organ- 

 ized service is without it, and the occasional 

 abuse of its restrictions is as common in these 

 bodies as in the government service. 



The features of " red tape " which are oc- 

 casionally injuriously restrictive in govern- 

 ment work are almost invariably due to the 

 well meant but hasty desire of some " re- 

 former " in congress who has discovered some 

 supposed laxity in the public service and, de- 

 siring to make it impossible for the laxity to 

 continue, procures the enactment (always 

 easy) of some iron-clad restriction upon the 

 action of public servants. After congress has 

 adjourned the executive legal officers find that 

 the language of the act is so broad that it cov- 

 ers proceedings never intended to be affected 

 and entirely foreign to the supposed abuse it 

 was intended to correct. Fortunately such 

 blunders are less common than of old. " Pure 

 ignorance, ma'am," as Dr. Johnson said, and 

 certainly not to be charged to the account of 

 science, Washington or other. 



There is a very large class of employees in 

 government service, in the wide sense, who are 

 merely clerks and who are very much like 

 clerks outside of the service, except that they 

 have to live in a city where their easy hours 

 and generous vacation hardly make up for its 

 humid heat and excessive cost of living. 



The great majority of these clerks do a fair 

 day's work, but there were in past years 

 enough of the element owing their position to 

 " influence," and therefore more or less inde- 

 pendent of their superiors in ofBce, to give the 

 service a bad name, which will probably en- 

 dure a long time after such conditions have 

 become merely a memory. 



In the scientific corps if I may term it so, 

 we have a body of men who for the most part 

 seek and keep their positions for the wide op- 

 portunity for research the government work 

 offers. 



Few of them would be able to remain if 

 they had not some private income additional 

 to their inadequate salaries. The pay aver- 

 ages about that of the second-rate colleges,, 

 without the opportunity for economy and 

 plain living without loss of social standing, 

 which most colleges afford. 



The cost of living in Washington has con- 

 siderably more than doubled since the writer's 

 residence began. When to decent clothing, 

 food and shelter required by one's surround- 

 ings are added the care and education of a 

 family, the subscriptions to a few periodicals- 

 and societies absolutely necessary to a scien- 

 tific man, it is certainly not without personal 

 sacrifice that the majority of the corps stand 

 their ground. 



Nor among the leaders is there cause for 

 criticism in the matter of their devotion to 

 science. Time and again have men fallen by 

 the wayside, victims of voluntary overwork 

 and nervous strain, which took no note of 

 official hours or vacations. Every Washing- 

 tonian man of science knows of such men and 

 honors their memory. 



As to the quality of work turned out, it 

 speaks for itself and is in no need of eulogy. 



It is true that certain bureaus have fallen 

 into evil times, for which we have to thank 

 chiefly the late Mr. Cleveland's scorn of scien- 

 tific men. One of them has become little more 

 than a pasture for politicians, but nearly all 

 its scientific workers have deserted it and its 

 publications of a scientific character in the 

 main are the work of men outside the service. 



In this, as in less notorious cases, the just 

 criticism that may be made should have for 

 its basis not Washington science or Washing- 

 ton scientific men, but the ignorance of legis- 

 lators and the indifference of politicians and 

 the public. 



The men of science, not of Washington, 



