190 G. 0. Smith — Government Geological Surveys. 



ously impede rapid settlement of the unoccupied lands. 

 Nearly forty years later those who are intrusted with the 

 land-classification work of the Geological Survey recog- 

 nize this familiar argument, which undoubtedly had much 

 more force in that earlier stage of the utilization of the 

 Nation's resources of land. 11 The conception of land 

 classification as a business policy on the part of the Gov- 

 ernment as a landed proprietor belongs rather to this 

 day of more intensive development. At present current 

 public-land legislation calls for highest use, and hence 

 official investigation of natural values and possibilities 

 must precede disposition. This type of mineral and 

 hydrographic classification of public lands has been in 

 progress in increasing amount since 1906, so that now 

 the Geological Survey is the kind of scientific adviser to 

 the Secretary of the Interior and Commissioner of the 

 General Land Office that may have been contemplated by 

 the National Academy of Sciences in 1878. It is plain, 

 however, to everyone at all conversant with Western con- 

 ditions that the recent land-classification surveys in 

 Wyoming, for instance — detailed geologic surveys which 

 form the basis for the valuation of public coal lands in 

 40-acre units — would have possessed no utility in 1871, 

 when the coal-land law was passed but when the demand 

 for railroad fuel had just begun. 



The land-classification idea is of course the basis of 

 the National forest and irrigation movements. The laws 

 of 1888 and 1896, which mark the beginning of active 

 endorsement by Congress of these conservation move- 

 ments, placed upon the Survey the duties of examining 

 reservoir sites and forest reserves respectively. The 

 earlier of these laws began the investigation of the water 

 resources of the country, which is still an important phase 

 of the Survey's activity, and led to the creation of an inde- 

 pendent organization — the Reclamation Service. It is 

 easy to trace the beginnings of Federal reclamation of 

 arid lands in the pioneer work of Powell, whose report 

 in 1878 on the arid region of the United States was the 

 first adequate statement of the problem of largest use of 

 these lands in terms broader than those of individual- 

 istic endeavor. For years, however, Powell's appeal for 



11 This essential difference between present-day requirements and the 

 needs of earlier generations has been discussed by W. C. Mendenhall, the 

 geologist in charge of the Land Classification Board of the Geological 

 Survey: Proceedings 2d Pan-American Sci. Cong., 1915-16, 3, 761. 



