No. 386.]} UNIVERSITY OF THE UNITED STATES. 99 
It must be said that the projectors of the enterprise have so 
far dealt chiefly in generalities, and have hardly touched upon 
the practical side of the question, which, nevertheless, is a 
factor upon which the success or failure of the scheme must 
very largely depend. In fact, most of the documents relating 
to the proposed university which I have been able to consult 
absolutely ignore this side of the matter, and even display an 
apparent ignorance of the conditions which have to be met. It 
is in the hope of throwing some light upon them, without par- 
tiality for or against the project, and in the hope of eliciting 
further information by discussion from those especially qualified 
to give it through their connection with the okie yan labora- 
tories, that this paper has been prepared. 
Some thirty-four years’ experience in the ditn work of | 
the government has given the writer a tolerably good insight 
into the methods now or formerly in use and the conditions of 
this side of the problem. During this time the expansion of 
the scope of this work has been very great, and with the ex- 
pansion has necessarily come more or less severity of restriction 
for the purpose of fixing responsibility, controlling expenditures, 
and defining the limits of work to be authorized. These restric- 
tions have much increased the labor and difficulty of carrying on 
the work, and to some extent the expense of it. Every worker 
has realized this, and most have felt disposed to criticise it. 
The restrictions are frequently double-edged; made by legisla- 
tors unfamiliar with the methods of science, and having one 
object in view, they sometimes, whether accomplishing that 
object or not, bear very severely on the worker in some other 
direction not at all originally in contemplation. Nevertheless 
the government has, on the whole, been generous, and the re- 
strictions for the most part beneficial in that, if rigidly lived up 
to, they protect the scientific bureaus from ignorant and unjust 
attacks from those with a morbid appetite for scandal. In the 
last instance, somebody always has to be trusted, and the nar- 
rower the field for the exercise of untrammeled judgment, the 
less subject to unreasonable criticism is the person upon whom 
the responsibility is laid. This responsibility is divided be- 
tween the executive head of a bureau and his subordinates 
