East xnigc ij^xiuikI f/nor, Aj/iil 19S4, shmving the steel 

 deckinir and wnulaws that open oiitu the corridor but are 

 plastered-over on the exterior. From the 1930s to the 

 1960s, vertebrate fossils were stored here. The cases, 

 covered to keep out dust, now contain invertebrate fossils; 

 the /luoresient ln^lits are moderately new. The Scanning 

 Electron Mi< k)s< ope Eahoratiny is directly below. 



Karl Kioiiibein recalls that the library for entomol- 

 ogy, which was along the west north range, also housed 

 the secretary for the Department of Agriculture en- 

 tomologists. The only USDA telephone in the building 

 was in that office, and whenever a telephone call came 

 in, the individual office would have to be buzzed through 

 an elaborate code of short and long noises. The person 

 buzzed would then run to the telephone, and as some 

 of the offices were 300 feet away, this did not make for 

 efficient communication. 



Musical Chairs 



Herbert Friedmann was listed as curator of birds in the 

 Annual Report for fiscal year 1930; in the following re- 

 port, G. Arthur Cooper was listed as assistant curator 

 in the Division of Stratigraphic Paleontology. But these 

 were not increases in the staff, for Friedmann replaced 



the deceased Robert Ridgeway, and R.S. Bassler had 

 moved up to head curator of geology after Merrill's 

 death, leaving a vacancy. Charles Resser handled the 

 Cambrian fossil collections and Cooper was to look after 

 everything else. In 1934, Edward A. Chapin trans- 

 ferred from the Biological Survey of the Department 

 of Agriculture to replace the deceased J. M. Aldrich in 

 the Division of Insects. In number, if not in position, 

 the staff was nearly static until the 1940s. 



T. Dale Stewart described the situation as a "game 

 of musical chairs that goes on all the time in the Smith- 

 sonian." He turned to an especially sticky chapter on 

 the history of this department: 



Dr. Walter Hough, a long-time head curator of 

 anthropo?jgy, had died ... in September, 1935. 

 Normally, he would have been succeeded by one 

 of the three curators under him. In order of 

 seniority, this would have been either Ales 

 Hrdlicka in physical anthropology, Neil Judd in 

 archeology, or Herbert Kreiger in ethnology. As it 

 happened, however, these three were not on 

 speaking terms with one another. Faced with this 

 situation, Alexander Wetmore . . . reached down to 

 the next level in the hierarchy and picked Frank 

 Setzler, Judd's assistant curator, to be acting head 

 curator. . . . 



It has long been my opinion that Setzler's 

 advancement to the head curator's office was due 

 largely to the fact that he made a special effort to 

 ingratiate himself with his elders. . . . No one else 

 had the temerity to call Wetmore "Alec", [or] 

 Hrdlicka "Ales"; yet Setzler did and apparently 

 they liked it. Indeed, the three anthropological 

 curators liked it so much that they acquiesced in 

 Setzler's advancement over them.'' 



There were personal problems in other departments, 

 too. In Geology, an emotionally unbalanced aide once 

 threw a rock and hit James Benn, a quiet man who 

 curated the minerals. Head curator Bassler almost al- 

 ways said no to any request, but if it were pursued to 

 the point of going to see Dr. Wetmore, Wetmore would 

 usually say that the request seemed reasonable and Bas- 

 sler would immediately agree. Biology, apart from 

 Bartsch, was calmer, though there is the true story of 

 Miss Rathbun's throwing a glass of water in the face of 

 a technician who became hysterical when finally dis- 

 missed for poor performance. In the latest oral version 

 of the scene, the diminutive Miss Rathbun dragged over 

 a chair to stand on while she poured a pitcher of water 

 on the hysteric. 



The Thirties 



In 1935 no one publicly expressed any interest in cel- 

 ebrating the first twenty-five years in the new building. 

 Even if it was not one big happy family, however, the 

 Museum of the 1930s was a scientifically rewarding 



74 



The Exhibits 



