

ADDRESS. 



Gentlemen of the Senate and Assembly : 



For the fourth time I am summoned to appear before the honora 

 ble Legislature of the State of California to give an account of my 

 stewardship ; and, embarrassed as I am between the desire of say 

 ing something which shall both interest and amuse, and that of 

 crowding as much of instructive matter as possible into the allotted 

 hour, I feel the necessity of asking your attention to what I have to 

 say as a matter of business, even if I should not succeed in invest 

 ing a somewhat dry subject with the graces of elocutionary display. 

 There are 125,600 good reasons (almighty good ones to those who 

 worship the almighty dollar) why I should be heard, since those fig 

 ures represent the amount which the State has already expended on 

 the Geological Survey, and if the money has been misspent, it is your 

 duty to see that no more goes the same way. In inviting the 

 State Geologist, therefore, to speak for himself, you have taken the 

 shortest and most direct method of getting at the exact truth in this 

 matter ; and that the truth should be got at, before decisive action is 

 had, seems to me no more than is reasonable to ask. I believe 

 that, without exception, whenever there has been any opposition to 

 our work, it has come from those who have taken no pains to inform 

 themselves as to its real nature, from those who have never set foot 

 in our office to examine what was going on there, and who have thus 

 been actuated by blind prejudice rather than by any real desire to 

 economize ; for, not to put too fine a point upon it, the whole ques 

 tion of the continuance of the survey is simply a question of econo 

 my ; it is just this does it pay, or does it not pay ? There is, I 

 imagine, hardly a man in the State who would venture to oppose the 

 continuance of the survey on any other ground than that of economy. 



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