112 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ALBANY MEETING 



If he felt any injustice had been done in that long service had not been 

 recognized, it was eifectually masked, even to his most intimate friends. 

 Certainly no one served the new Director more loyally than did Doctor 

 Hayes. 



Hayes had enormous capacity for work and was systematic and thor- 

 ough. His administrative success was largely due to this, to inherent 

 qualities of leadership, and to a genius for applying what is generally 

 called common sense to any problem that arose. His fairmindedness is 

 illustrated by an incident which happened while he was Chief Geologist. 

 A much younger man had in a public meeting attacked rather ^'iciously 

 some of Hayes's earlier geological work and later apologized by letter. 

 To this Hayes replied in part as follows : 



"I have no patience with the infallible geologist, who never makes a mis- 

 take, nor the one who is unwilling to admit a mistake when it is pointed out. 

 I can therefore harbor no hard feelings whatever for anything said at the 

 Geological Society meeting." 



Though in the Government service for over a quarter of a century, be 

 always chafed under the minor restrictions and regulations imposed by 

 law. A strict constructionist in all important matters, it Avas sometimes 

 hard for him to bring himself to acknowledge authority in minor matters. 

 It was long one of the jokes in the office that the Chief Geologist was the 

 only member of the Survey who refused to obey certain minor regulations. 

 This attitude of mind made him very lenient with the transgressions of 

 others who might overlook some regulations which the Government serv- 

 ice of necessity imposes. 



Hayes was essentially the child of his puritanical ancestors and had 

 what is sometimes called the ]!^ew England conscience. This manifesterl 

 itself chiefly in his universal fair dealing with men. He had, however, 

 no patience with cant and hypocrisy, and his puritanical ideals did not 

 pre\'ent the development of catholic tastes and tolerance of the opinions 

 of others. By descent of colonial ancestry, brought up in a typical Amer- 

 ican community, and educated in our own schools, Hayes was in every 

 respect American. The generations of geologists that preceded him w^re 

 by education or tradition strongly influenced by European thought. N'ot 

 so with Hayes. He did not cross the Atlantic until the later years of his 

 life, when sent for as an adviser in a great industrial problem. His 

 scientiflc work was founded on principles largely developed on this 

 continent. 



Few men contributed more to the bringing about of the conservation 

 of the mineral resources of the United States than did Haves. With liis 



