SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XI. No. 279. 



$15,000 a year, the meteorological work of the Signal Office now 

 costs $900,000, and has cost as much as $1,000,000. 



In eighteen years, and with such liberal expenditures of money, 

 this service ought to have increased, not only in the extent of its 

 operations, as it has done enormously, but in the character of its 

 work. With so much broader field of operations, the advance- 

 ment that has been made in meteorological science, and the ex- 

 perience gained in eighteen years, the weather-predictions now 

 ought to be made with much more confidence than formerly, and a 

 larger percentage of them ought to be verified. But such improve- 

 ment has not been made ; at least, not to the extent that it ought 

 to have been. The public have found this out, and, being more 

 critical than formerly, as they have a right to be, complain when 

 they suffer in health, comfort, or pocket through a failure of the 

 predictions to be verified. Why is it, that, while the percentage 

 of successful indications in 18S3 was 89.1, it was in 1887 only 73.9, 

 or, allowing for the fact that predictions are now made thirty-two 

 hours in advance, instead of twenty-four as formerly, only 80.9 ? 



Some, but not all, of the reasons are given in the last annual re- 

 port of the chief signal officer. The indications are not now made 

 by gentlemen who have had sufficient experience. General Greely 

 says, " Within the past three or four years the relief of the old 

 officers detailed from the line of the army has been forced upon the 

 chief signal officer by legislative action. Inconsequence, it followed 

 that the young officers of the signal corps, who have only within 

 the past year or two received any extended instruction in meteor- 

 ology, have been assigned to this important duty [of preparing the 

 indications]. Within the past year three officers have necessarily 

 been assigned to indications work who never before have per- 

 formed duty of this character. It consequently follows, that, 

 through restrictive legislation, the chief signal officer finds himself 

 compelled to permit the new officers to serve their apprenticeship 

 in predicting, at the expense of the whole country. It has occurred, 

 as might be expected, that the novices in the work at times made 

 errors that subjected the service to criticism, which, well merited 

 in such cases, cannot be considered valid criticism of the methods 

 followed by the service. It follows, too, that not every officer who 

 satisfactorily performs practice indications work is well qualified 

 for actual work. Not only is the predicting-officer weighed down 

 with a strong sense of responsibility in the performance of this dif- 

 ficult and vastly important work, but he is also required to decide 

 with as great degree of accuracy instantly, as though he had ample 

 time at his disposal. The officer, as a rule, predicts for forty dif- 

 ferent districts, for which three elements — temperature, weather, 

 and wind — must be determined. As the time for these predic- 

 tions is strictly limited, it necessarily follows that each State or 

 district receives less than sixty seconds' consideration at the hands 

 of the indications officer, and each element is predicted with not 

 over twenty seconds' consideration. Officers who have done credit- 

 able practice-work have not infrequently failed when called upon 

 to decide instantly and officially future weather-conditions for the 

 whole country." 



And again : " The detailed records of this office show how 

 necessary is experience for success in predicting ; and it has al- 

 ways followed, that, alter a considerable lapse of time in which no 

 work has been done, an indications officer recommences work less 

 successfully and with a very reduced percentage. How essential 

 practice is to success is shown by the comparison of the work years 

 since, when officers continued steadily on this work, with the re- 

 sults of late years, when changes have been frequent and the course 

 of work necessarily broken." 



Lack of proper organization of the signal corps is another cause 

 of its failure to meet public expectation. As General Greely says, 

 " Officers and men of the high order of ability and intelligence re- 

 quired by this duty cannot be expected to devote the best years of 

 their life to a service which offers no reward in way of increased 

 rank or pay even for the most valuable work. Poor pay and no 

 possible advance in rank must produce unsatisfactory results. . . . 

 Only two of the original detail remain with the corps, many hav- 

 ing voluntarily quitted duty which promised no advancement, and 

 some have gained promotion and reputation in other corps. ... It 

 is only by long study and great experience that indications officers, 

 who perform the vital work of this service, can expect to be at all 



efficient in their important duties." Important as this branch of 

 the service is, touching as it does so many vital interests of the- 

 people, Congress has always neglected to give it proper attention. 

 In more than eighteen years no separate and distinct law affecting 

 the Signal Service has been enacted. The only legislation regard- 

 ing the corps has been in the shape of 'riders' upon appropriation 

 bills, which, as a rule, have not had proper consideration. The 

 law of 1866, re-organizing the army, directed the detail of six officers- 

 and one hundred men from the engineer corps. No engineer 

 officer has ever been detailed to the signal corps. The same law 

 provided that no officer or man should be detailed without exami- 

 nation and approval by a military board. This mandate has also- 

 been ignored. Under a perversion of a law of 1S78, civilians have 

 been enlisted as privates, promoted the same day to be sergeants, 

 commissioned the next day to be second-lieutenants, and sent into- 

 the signal corps without examination of any kind, and without 

 having served a day in the corps, to take the places of experienced 

 men who have thus been crowded out and sent back to their regi- 

 ments. 



Although the Signal Service is one dealing entirely with physics,. 

 until General Greely, then a subaltern, urged the importance of it, 

 no question bearing on the natural sciences was ever put to any 

 sergeant examined for promotion. The result is that some of the 

 second-lieutenants of the signal corps are officers whose mental 

 qualifications and natural ambitions will insure their remaining in 

 the service even under a rigid exammation ; while there are two 

 other classes, one of which consists of young men, whose natural 

 aptitudes tend rather in the direction of the line of the army than 

 with a strictly scientific corps. The mental abilities, general edu- 

 cation, or moral standing of the third class is such that it cannot 

 be reasonably expected that they would ever serve with marked ' 

 credit either in the line of the army or in the signal corps. General 

 Greely has said officially that the records of the office show that 

 the senior officer in the signal corps, next to the chief signal officer, 

 has never been able to attain such a knowledge of the methods- 

 and work of the Signal Service as has always been exacted from 

 every sergeant in the corps ; this despite the fact that the officer in- 

 question received the most careful instruction, covering a period of 

 nearly two years, and was thrice examined on questions which were 

 substantially the same. 



Nor has the whole story yet been told. The present secretary 

 of war has never shown any interest in the Signal Office, and has- 

 seconded none of the efforts of the chief signal officer to improve 

 the service. A bill, prepared by General Greely, to re-organize the 

 corps and correct the abuses (for they are nothing less; described 

 above, was not approved by Secretary Endicott, who seems only 

 anxious to get rid of the bureau, and not to care how greatly de- 

 moralized it may be. The Senate in the last Congress passed a 

 bill to transfer the Signal Office to a civil department ; but it failed 

 in the House, which already this session has incorporated in the 

 bill creating a Department of Agriculture, which it has passed, a 

 provision transferring this bureau to that branch of the government. 

 In both cases it is provided that the officers now on duty in the 

 Signal Office, with all their good qualities and defects, shall go with 

 the service without prejudice to their commissions : in other words, 

 although it is proposed to make the bureau a civil one, yet the 

 officers are still given an immovable tenure of office, without dis- 

 crimination being made between the worthy and the incompetent, 

 — a perpetuation for an indefinite time of the present extravagant, 

 inefficient, and demoralized organization of the office. Against 

 this. General Greely protests, and asks Congress to re-organize the 

 service whether the transfer is made or not, cut down the expense 

 of it $100,000 or $125,000 a year, and give him a chance to make 

 it perform its work as it should do, and as Congress has a right to 

 expect it to. But his bill and communication receive no attention 

 from the committee of either House. Mr. Hatch, chairman of the 

 House committee that reported the bill which has passed that 

 body this session, has never been to the Signal Office to learn any 

 thing about the service, or communicated with the chief signal 

 officer as to the needs of the service. He simply attached the pro- 

 vision making the transfer to the Agricultural Department bill 

 without knowing what its effect would be. The first result of the 

 enactment of the bill into a law will be the necessity of appropriat- 



