76 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 107. 



There are many other scientific agencies 

 similar to those in Washington scattered 

 throughout the country in mints, govern- 

 ment schools, hospitals, etc., which receive 

 appropriations for general work. 



The Secretary of the Interior and the 

 Secretarj' of Agriculture some time ago ap- 

 pointed a board to compile the laws on irri- 

 gation, and find out what each bureau of 

 each department should do. It took this 

 board a year to inform these two Secretaries 

 what the law required of each of them. Its 

 report shows that eight bureaus in the two 

 departments must cooperate in order tO' ac- 

 complish any thorough work on the great 

 problems of irrigation. Three distinct 

 branches of the Interior Department alone 

 are engaged in irrigation work, viz, the 

 General Land OflQce, the Office of Indian 

 Affairs and the Geological Survey. The 

 last Census also prepared a report on this 

 subject. The Weather Bureau and the 

 Divisions of Soils and Vegetable Physiology 

 of the Department of Agriculture should 

 assist in these irrigation investigations. 

 It is needless to say that, with so many 

 agencies to promote irrigation, very little 

 has been done by any of them. The Hydro- 

 graphic Division of the Geological Survey 

 deserves the credit of having done most 

 of what has been accomplished. 



Although the agricultural experiment 

 stations receive an annual appropriation of 

 $720,000 through the Department of Agri- 

 culture, which has an Office of Experiment 

 Stations for compiling the results of their 

 work, advising and assisting them, the 

 management of their affairs is vested en- 

 tirely in independent State Boards, and the 

 supervision of the Department of Agricul- 

 ture is limited at present to the reports of 

 expenditures submitted by the station offi- 

 cers. Their plans of work are usually for- 

 mulated by local boards or executive com- 

 mittees, and cover nearly all conceivable 

 subjects connected with agriculture, horti- 



culture and the animal industry. Only a 

 few feeble efforts have so far been made to 

 correlate and coordinate the investigations 

 of these stations for the pui'pose of prevent- 

 ing duplication. 



The statistics of the natural resources 

 and the products of the country, of exports 

 and imports, of population, schools, etc., 

 are, in like unfortunate manner, collected 

 and compiled by eight or ten different 

 agencies in five or six different Departments. 

 Besides the Census, which has collected and 

 discussed nearly all conceivable classes of 

 statistics, we have these agencies regularly 

 at work : Meteorological statistics are col- 

 lected by the Weather Bureau ; statistics of 

 ' mineral resources and natural products of 

 the national domain ' by the Geological 

 Survey; agricultural statistics are collected 

 by the Department of Agriculture ; sta- 

 tistics of exports, imports, etc., by the 

 Treasury Department ; statistics of wages, 

 cost of living, and industrial statistics of 

 all kinds, are collected by the Department 

 of Labor; statistics of transportation are 

 collected by the Interstate Commerce Com- 

 mission ; statistics of fisheries are collected 

 by the Fish Commission ; and statistics of 

 schools, colleges and universities are col- 

 lected by the Bureau of Education in the 

 Interior Department. 



The same confusion exists in the practice 

 pertaining to other lines of work. Illus- 

 trations might be almost indefinitely mul- 

 plied. But the reader must be referred to 

 the appended list and the reports. 



This duplication is the necessary result 

 of the lack of efficient organization. Bu- 

 reaus for doing the same or closely related 

 things have been attached to many of the 

 Departments and have remained there. 

 Congress has been liberal to them, and they 

 have extended their work until many of 

 them now overlap each other. This over- 

 lapping of work is not so bad, however, as 

 the almost total absence of cooperation. 



