386 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 114. 



at his post until lie had thwarted the most 

 serious attack made in years on the integ- 

 rity of the Survey, and then resigned an 

 oflBce his self respect could not allow him 

 to retain. 



In the successor to Dr. Mendenhall the 

 Treasury Department was fortunate enough 

 to find a professional gentleman who showed 

 the accommodating spirit with the clerical 

 idea of how a scientific bureau should be 

 conducted that the layman, Mr. Thorn, 

 failed in. The new appointee, General 

 Duffield, was a civil engineer in active prac- 

 tice, but so far as has been shown none of 

 his experience has been in connection with 

 the special lines of work for which the Coast 

 Survey has been noted. He had been em- 

 ployed in the construction of railroads, in 

 operations under the United States Engi- 

 neers and in contract land surveying ; but 

 seventy years had passed over his head at 

 the time of his appointment without mak- 

 ing his name a familiar one outside of his 

 own vicinity. The professional career of 

 the new Superintendent would indicate, if 

 not expert knowledge of, at least intelligent 

 sympathy with, the needs and requirements 

 of his new charge ; but his attitude from the 

 very first showed that this was not to be 

 the case. For inspiration as to what should 

 be his general policy in the Survey he took 

 the directions of the Chief Clerk of the 

 Treasury Department ; for special informa- 

 tion he drew, not on his assistants, but on 

 the recent appointees in the clerical posi- 

 tions, whose places in the Bureau were due 

 to the same generous hands which had bene- 

 fited himself. As the only places in the 

 office, unprotected by civil service laws, 

 which had not been filled by the new ad- 

 ministration were those of the scientific 

 force, upon them a raid was next to be 

 made. 



With only a little over nine weeks' ex- 

 perience in an office to whose duties he had 

 come an entire stranger, and without any 



consultation with his natural advisers, 

 the Superintendent wrote a letter to Con- 

 gress, strongly advising a reduction of 20 

 per cent, in the field force. This wild sug- 

 gestion was ignored by the Senate, where 

 long service had made the needs and re- 

 quirements of the Survey best appreciated, 

 but the insistence of the House of Repre- 

 sentatives on general economy at any cost 

 led to a compromise whereby a reduction 

 of force was secured. 



The assistant in charge of the office, who 

 had had that important position under Mr. 

 Thorn and Professor Mendenhall, had the 

 temerity to protest against the action of a 

 Superintendent who had never drawn up 

 an estimate for a year's work on the Survey 

 and had never been called upon to consider 

 the requirements, in men, for a season's 

 work of the field parties, and his reward 

 for his honesty and manliness in putting the 

 welfare of the Survey above consideration 

 for his own safety was a prompt request for 

 his resignation. A lucrative berth was 

 required for the Superintendent's son and 

 to provide it an assistant was dismissed, and 

 to secure for this j'oung man, with no train- 

 ing in the distinctive work of the Survey, 

 one of the highest salaries paid bj' the 

 Treasurer, a reduction of $500 per year was 

 made in the pay of the Geodesist who had 

 connected the Pacific and Atlantic slopes 

 by the grandest scheme of triangulation 

 ever executed. 



When the time for carrying into effect the 

 requirements of the new appropriation bill 

 arrived the full measure of the Superin- 

 tendent's qualification for his position be- 

 came apparent. The bill necessitated the 

 retirement of four assistants. The Superin- 

 tendent determined to remove eight ; but 

 two received by accident notice of the fate 

 intended for them and had time enough to 

 bring to the notice of the Secretary of the 

 Treasury such strong presentation of the 

 injustice intended them that he interfered 



