976 
condition of this class. Men without lan- 
guage are imbecile, as men without institu- 
tions are anarchists ; but men with language 
are useful and happy members of the com- 
munity, as men with institutions are self- 
respecting citizens. 
Asa lawyer, business man and benefactor 
Mr. Hubbard had acquired national reputa- 
tion, when, in 1876, President Grant ap- 
pointed him chairman of a special commis- 
sion to investigate the question of railway 
mail transportation. The labors of this 
commission have greatly promoted the in- 
tercommunication of the people throughout 
the Union, for the plans of the commission 
were adopted by a succession of Postmas- 
ters-General and formulated into statutes 
by members of Congress. The results of 
his work did not end in national statutes 
and administrative devices, for he pursued 
it among telegraph companies. 
When Mr. Hubbard was engaged in pro- 
viding speech for his daughter and then ex- 
panding his energies into providing for all 
the deaf of the nation he naturally became 
interested in the science of acoustics, and 
this led him into association with a young 
student of the science who had already be- 
come an inventor. Alexander Graham 
Bell had so investigated the principles of 
acoustics that he could invent a telephone. 
In this instrument Mr. Hubbard evinced 
a deep interest. It was an instrument to 
make the inaudible audible, as the mi- 
croscope was designed to make the in- 
visible visible. At first it was supposed 
that it might be useful in communica- 
ting between different rooms in the same 
building or between adjoining buildings ; 
but Mr. Hubbard saw in it an instrument 
of communication for al! the governmental 
departments of a city, all of the business 
institutions of the city, and all the people of 
a city. More than this, he conceived that 
it might be the means of communication 
from town to town and city to city through- 
SCIENCE. 
LN. S. Von. VI. No. 157. 
out the country, finally to become a means 
of international communication. For this 
purpose Mr. Hubbard devised the busi- 
ness machinery for the introduction of the 
telephone to the world. He organized a 
company for this purpose and managed the 
company by business devices with a great 
central company and a multitude of local 
companies by which the telephone business 
was introduced into all portions of the civi- 
lized world. Now a man can be put in 
communication with his baker through the 
telephone ; in the next minute he may be 
put in connection with a railroad office or a 
steamship company; at the next minute with 
the Governor of his State; at the next minute 
with some other man elsewhere in the 
world. To accomplish all this has taken 
many years of intelligent active labor. Be- 
fore this we could communicate with the 
world by lightning light; now we can 
communicate with the world by lightning 
sonnd. The man who devised all this busi- 
ness machinery, set it into operation, and 
made itall a business success, was Mr. Hub- 
bard. 
Mr. Hubbard was not the discoverer of 
the laws of acoustics which are represented 
in the telephone ; he was not the inventor 
of the telephone, but he was the entrepre- 
neur who distributed the telephone among 
all men of the civilized world and made it 
a practical agency for social intercommuni- 
cation. Having accomplished all these 
things he retired from business and made 
his home at Twin Oaks, in Washington 
City. : 
At the seat of the federal government 
there are many bureaus that have to deal 
with the science of geography. First, there 
is the time-honored bureau known as the 
Coast Survey, which is charting the coasts 
of the sea as an aid to the mariner; then 
there is the Geological Survey, which is 
making maps of the United States in the 
interest of mining and manufacturing ; 
