THE LATE ATTACKS 
Coast and Geodetic Survey. 
Reprinted froSt* the October and November Numbers of 
The United Service, 1884. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
L. R. HAMERSLY & CO., 
No. 1510 Chestnut Street. 
18 84. THE LATE ATTACKS 
UPON TIIE 
Coast and Geodetic Survey. 
Reprinted from the October and November Numbers of 
The United Service, 1884. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
L. E. HAMEESLY & CO., 
No. 1510 Chestnut Street. 
1884. THE LATE ATTACKS 
UPON THE 
COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
I. 
With full appreciation of the value of the opinion of the members of 
the two military Services, and of the weight of that opinion in influ- 
encing the administration of the Governmental bureaus, it is, never- 
theless, not to them chiefly as belonging to either Army or Navy, but 
as being citizens of the United States, and as such interested in good 
administration, whether civil or military, that a plea should be ad- 
dressed in favor of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, in view of the two 
attempts that within as many years have been directed against its life. 
They, from familiarity with the work, as officers of either Army or 
Navy, derived from their employment or that of brother-officers upon 
it, have naturally formed opinions with regard to it. If some have, 
from personal or more worthy motives, favored a change in its organi- 
zation, their duty now, as well as that of all, is to reconsider the ques- 
tion, in the interest of the country, from the point of view of citizens 
of the United States. This medium of publication—The United 
Service review—has, therefore, been chosen, not altogether because 
it is that through which officers of the Army and Navy can be reached, 
but because the plea, being addressed directly to the people, irrespective 
of pursuits, will be strengthened by the influence of many who are at 
the same time officers of the Army and Navy, and who, as well as 
others, are not at present in full possession of the facts with their 
legitimate conclusions. 
The majority of officers of both Services, at least officers of rank 
and experience, would, if the question were put to vote, be found 4 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
opposed to any change in the organization of the Survey, but yet influ- 
ences? emanating from the Navy, as well as from the Geological Survey, 
are those which are manifesting themselves in the adverse action lately 
taken with respect to its organization. This is the opinion entertained 
by all those best placed to be well informed, fully justified by direct 
and circumstantial evidence. 
It is not purposed here, however, to discuss the questions of the 
number and character of the forces arrayed against the Survey, least 
of all to attempt to investigate the motives which have chiefly, if not 
wholly, led to the attempt upon its organization. Assignment of 
motives may safely be left to every man’s judgment when he has 
become acquainted with the facts of the case. They cover too wide 
and various a field to render it a fruitful task to garner them, even if 
it were desirable to do so; but it is not: on the contrary, their entire 
exclusion is necessary to the proper presentment of the case. 
Let us accept, without a discussion of its merits here, which will 
find a more fitting place in a subsequent paper, the Coast and Geodetic 
Survey as a long-established, undeniable fact. 
The fact of existence is held among all men, prima facie, evidence 
of the right to exist. The very first raison d’etre of anything is that 
it does exist. That is not to say that it has a right to continue unques- 
tioned to exist, because it exists, otherwise there would be no improve- 
ment nor even rectification of abuse. But it does affirm that the 
sentence of deprivation of existence must not be pronounced against 
anything before the right to exist is, through impartial trial, decided 
against it. That it has, prima facie, the right to exist is all that is 
claimed. 
If possession is nine points of the law, how much more does life, 
of which possession is but one of the incidents, come under the protec- 
tion of the'law? Whether we think of life as the vital force that 
actuates human beings, or as the force that actuates an organization, 
the underlying principle of which we think is the same in both as to 
question of right to exist until proved unworthy of existence; that is, 
it is invaded if, without proper care and judgment, that which has 
come into being, has passed through the ordeal of struggle to recog- 
nition, and has attained the stature of an accomplished fact, is modified 
or destroyed. The principle is impliedly recognized in all law that 
protects men in their property and life. Why, then, should it stop 
short of protecting the governmental property of the people? It does 
not,—the principle is immutable, but the people are not always well 
represented. 
It must be acknowledged that the Coast and Geodetic Survey is an 
accomplished fact, a recognized existence of active organization, and 
that the burden of proof therefore lies with those who would deprive 
it of existence, to show that it is unworthy. No evidence has been COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
5 
forthcoming to prove that to the minds of any men. If that burden 
of proof is not accepted by those to whom it rightfully belongs, the 
negative must and shall be assumed by their opponents. But let us, 
temporarily at least, without argument now to prove the right of the 
Survey to exist, accept it simply upon the ground of an accomplished 
fact, deferring to the future paper to which reference has been made, 
the demonstration of its right to exist as worthy of existence, and pro- 
ceed to the consideration as to whether the course taken with regard to 
it can satisfy the reason of right-thinking men. 
It was in vain for the first opponents of the Survey who appeared 
upon the scene, to claim that their proposition to turn over its hydro- 
graphic work to the Navy Department is not destroying, but merely 
modifying it. That was begging the question : the majority hold that 
that would be destroying it. But, suppose that that action means 
merely modifying it, who should have the temerity to attempt such a 
modification without a full and fair examination of the subject, in 
which both advocates and opponents should be heard? No such plan, 
however, was adopted in either of the two late attacks upon the Survey. 
In that of 1882, upon the ex parte testimony of a few persons who 
favored the transfer of the Survey’s hydrographic work to the Navy 
Department,—of persons, too, whose testimony is by the principles of 
jurisprudence peculiarly subject to qualification from presumable bias, 
—the attempt was made at dismemberment of the Survey. No steps 
were taken by the Secretary of the Navy towards obtaining the opinion, 
on the other side, of the Superintendent or of other officers of the Survey 
itself, or that of scientific or mercantile bodies; which, at least infor- 
mally, he could have obtained even from officers of the Survey. Re- 
sistance had to be hastily extemporized by the Survey, until, in due 
time, the Secretary of the Treasury could come to the rescue, as he did, 
through the conclusive reports of the chiefs of his various bureaus 
claimed by the Navy Department. The Secretary of the Navy, reach- 
ing the conclusion that the hydrographic work of the Survey should 
belong to his Department, instead of to the Treasury Department, 
where it is, recommended to the President in his annual Report for 
1882, combined with the aforesaid ex parte testimony, that the hy- 
drographic work should be transferred to the Navy Department; a 
recommendation which he repeated in his annual Report for 1883. 
This recommendation, based wholly upon ex parte testimony, was 
unwise and unjust. There certainly can be no difference of opinion as 
to the unwisdom and injustice of condemnation without even the form 
or proposal of impartial trial. This proposition, therefore, affords no 
field for discussion. What, however, does, and is not generally known, 
is that the Secretary of the Navy, in making it, offended not only 
against correct rules of procedure, but violated official comity and far 
transcended the powers of his office. 6 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
• The Secretaries are the administrators of their own respective De- 
partments, and are the constitutional advisers of the President. The 
Constitution does not expressly say that they shall advise the President, 
but the terms used, coupled with long practice which has made prece- 
dent, are tantamount to constituting members of the Cabinet not only 
the President’s advisers, if called upon for advice, but his advisers, 
also, who may volunteer to him their advice. 
Section II., Art. 2, of the Constitution, says, “ The President 
. . . may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in 
each of the Executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the 
duties of their respective offices,” . . . etc. That the opinion of any 
principal officer may be thus formally required by the President implies 
that it may be informally required, and, as has been said, precedent 
has established even beyond, that it may be volunteered by these prin- 
cipal officers. In point of fact, we know that, from the time of Wash- 
ington down to the present day, governmental questions have been 
discussed in the Cabinet, and that its officers are truly what they have 
been popularly designated,—the constitutional advisers of the Presi- 
dent. It does not follow that any one of the officers forming the 
Cabinet may advise with reference to any other Department than his 
own. On the contrary, his functions are fixed with reference to ad- 
visory capacity as to the organization of his own Department, or as to 
such general topics as may come under discussion in a meeting of the 
Cabinet. If change of organization in his own Department be in his 
opinion desirable, it is for him to convince the President of its desira- 
bility. It is not for him to proceed further than to advise the Presi- 
dent as to his own Department, except in the case of conceivable 
urgent necessity. It is the President who is responsible to Congress for 
the administration of what by law exists, and for the recommendation 
of changes of organization that may to him seem necessary in the Secre- 
tary’s or in any other Department. 
It is evident that the President, in sending in to Congress the Report 
of the Secretary of the Navy, thereby assumed towards Congress, not- 
withstanding that he did not explicitly approve of special measures 
therein proposed, the full responsibility of all the Secretary’s recom- 
mendations. For the Secretary’s included recommendation of the trans- 
fer of bureaus of the Treasury Department to his own, the President 
therefore became, as a matter of course, implicitly responsible. And 
it is equally evident, too, from consideration of what has been said, 
that the action of the Secretary was entirely beyond the purview of the 
Constitution in the clause quoted, granting by implication to Secre- 
taries the privilege of advising the President regarding their own De- 
partments. The power granted was, indeed, to the President, to require 
in writing, on occasions, from the principal officer in any Executive 
Department his opinion upon any subject relating to his own Depart- COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
7 
ment; whence it is dedueible, as has been said, that lie may require 
it verbally ; and through precedent, the officer may volunteer it verbally. 
That is a very different matter from the Secretary’s volunteering a 
written Report to the President regarding a question connected with 
the very organization of the Department of a fellow-Secretary in per- 
fect possession of his faculties. The constitutional clause which has 
been quoted relates solely to opinion from an officer regarding the 
administration of his own Department, and that solely regarding an 
opinion which he is to furnish the President, in order to enable the 
President himself to reach conclusions with reference to the subject- 
matter of the opinion. 
It has been admitted that the act of the President in transmitting 
to Congress the Report of the Secretary was, ipso facto, by the theory 
of our Government, equivalent to approval of the matter therein con- 
tained. The Message of the President and accompanying Documents 
theoretically emanate from the same source. But it so happens that 
the Reports of the Secretaries are really, and by common consent have 
come to be regarded as, made directly to Congress, and upon that basis 
they are accepted by Congress and the country. In consequence, a 
recommendation conveyed in one of them to Congress is not necessarily 
regarded as the President’s recommendation, and if standing unsup- 
ported by the Message, may readily be ignored by Congress. But, as 
by a sudden claim to revival in practice of the theory of our Govern- 
ment relating to this point, any annual Report or portion of an annual 
Report of a Secretary may be construed by Congress as representing 
the opinion of the President, it is most desirable that this anomalous 
condition of affairs should cease,—where theory is at variance with 
present practice, and where another practice may be made at any time 
to conform to theory, thus capable of effecting on a given occasion such 
a change as might well, if’ effected, seriously militate against the interests 
of the country. 
To show how completely the recommendation of the Secretary of 
the Navy, through his Report, was, according to practice, regarded as 
a direct recommendation of the Secretary’s to Congress, not really, but 
only theoretically approved by the President, it is merely necessary to 
mention that Memorials remonstrating against the recommendation 
were at once addressed to Congress, evidencing the prepossession, 
amounting to conviction, in the minds of the remonstrants, that the 
question might either be acted upon or ignored by Congress. If the 
conviction had existed that the President had, according to theory, by 
not expressing approval or disapproval, indorsed the Secretary’s recom- 
mendation, it would have been known that his action ought not to be, 
and would not be, ignored by Congress, and the Memorials would not 
have been sent to Congress. 
Again, the Secretary’s action was in contravention of all those 8 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
amenities of official intercourse that should make a Government’s Min- 
istry or Cabinet, call it what one will, present to the world unbroken 
solidarity. From what Department should advice to the President 
emanate, specifically to change the status of bureaus placed by law 
under the Treasury Department? Undoubtedly, from the Treasury 
Department itself. It must be borne in mind' that there are two dis- 
tinct kinds of organizing,—one of which is creation, and the other 
administrative formation. It is the latter, with reference to the Secre- 
tary’s action, that is to be regarded as legitimate,—the former as ille- 
gitimate. The Departments are not organizations for successive Secre- 
taries to shape and modify at pleasure, nor, indeed, at all, except under 
the limitations prescribed by the Revised Statutes of the United States, 
or through better or worse administration.1 The Departments being 
legally constituted existences, placed by law under successive Secre- 
taries, the heads of Departments have nothing to do with radical change 
in them, amounting to creation, such as would be involved in the 
absorption of bureaus of co-ordinate Departments. Otherwise, a Sec- 
retary of the Navy might, with a long term of office, gradually become 
also a nondescript Secretary of War, while Secretaries of War were be- 
coming more or less Secretaries of the Navy; or perhaps, in addition 
to being Secretary of the Navy, might, in the course of time, come to 
combine in himself, as the Russians used to, the ranks of general and 
admiral, and, under the President, command everything in the Army 
and Navy, under the honorary title of high-cockolorum. Secretaries 
are not legally or morally responsible for the general characteristics 
of the organizations which they control, either as compared, or not 
compared, with those under the control of other Secretaries. It 
behooves each within his own sphere—no more—if he deem it neces- 
sary or advisable, to convince the President that his own special organi- 
zation is susceptible of improvement through radical change. If Sec- 
retaries mistake their powers by acting in contravention of the rights 
of other Secretaries, they should be made by the President to under- 
stand that they have not only infringed the rights of other Secretaries, 
but those of the President in his recommendatory capacity to Congress. 
Whether either the President or Congress ever paid enough atten- 
tion to the recommendation of the Secretary of the Navy to perceive 
the illegality and general impropriety of the act is, and probably always 
will remain, unknown. Certain it is that neither took any action upon 
it; which Congress could have taken through the constitutional tech- 
nicality which has been mentioned, on account of his recommendation 
1 “ The head of each Department is authorized to prescribe regulations not incon- 
sistent with law for the government of his Department, the conduct of its officers 
and clerks, the distribution and performance of its business, and the custody, use, 
and preservation of the records, papers, and property belonging to it.”—Title I., 
Revised Statutes of the United States, Sec. 161 (Edn. of 1878). COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
9 
having passed through the hands of the President to Congress, and 
having become thereby theoretically the recommendation of the Presi- 
dent. In his Message of 1882, the President simply recited the fact 
that the Secretary of the Navy had recommended in his Report the 
transfer of the Light-House Service, and of the Coast Survey, to the 
Navy Department; and he recognized the fact of the interdependence 
of naval and commercial-marine interests, stated by the Secretary, 
without saying that he coincided with the Secretary in ascribing the 
decadence of the shipping interests of the country in any degree to the 
circumstance that there is not a bureau of mercantile-marine presided 
over by the Navy Department. To recite the opinions of another 
person is not recommending them. To mention them is not necessarily 
to perceive an ulterior significance in them. 
Beyond the action of the Secretary of the Treasury, in which, with 
reference to the Secretary of the Navy’s first recommendation, in 1882, 
for the transfer, he called upon the chiefs of the several bureaus in his 
Department to reply to the allegations and arguments of the Secretary 
of the Navy (which replies being duly made, were generally considered 
adversely conclusive by all who read them), the matter went no further 
at that time. The scientific and mercantile interests of the country had 
incidentally made themselves heard adversely to the proposition of the 
Secretary of the Navy, and it was supposed that, without formally 
receding from his position, he would allow his recommendation to go 
by default by not renewing it. But, as already mentioned, he did 
renew it in his succeeding annual Report, in 1883, with like ill-success 
to that which attended his first attempt. 
That the Secretary of the Treasury should not have appealed to the 
President to shield his Department from the officious action of a fellow- 
member of the Cabinet, or that the President himself should not, of 
his own motion, have reprehended and forbidden the action taken, are 
questions which it would be presumptuous to discuss with any pretense 
of reaching a solution, in the absence of information which only a 
member of the Cabinet could impart. It has, however, been shown 
that, in the abstract, it was the duty of the President, of the Secretary 
of the Treasury, and of Congress to put a stop to the encroachment 
of the chief of one Department upon the Department of another. But 
duty seldom presents itself as sharply defined as in the abstract. Beyond 
rational speculation, therefore, as to the various causes that may have 
been at work to allow the Secretary of the Navy to go on unchecked 
in his course, it is not in the nature of the case possible to proceed. 
Obviously, among these, accounting for the non-action of Congress, 
may be placed the supposition that Congress did not deem the viola- 
tion of law or propriety so unequivocally serious as to warrant notice ; 
or that it felt itself constrained formally to accept what proceeded from 
a member of the Cabinet, as if coming from the President himself; or, 10 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
finally, that it was indifferent to the matter brought to its attention. 
With equal likelihood we may suppose that the non-action of Congress 
may have been associated with interest in the subject; but with inten- 
tion, through letting things take their own course, that they should 
reach the very conclusion at which they arrived. As for the non-resist- 
ance of the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, it must be re- 
membered that there are complications in the administration of affairs, 
and that, first of all, there is the evident desirability of presenting in a 
Cabinet a certain appearance of homogeneity to the public eye; which 
circumstance alone would readily account for the omission of the Presi- 
dent and the Secretary of the Treasury to take formal, or indeed any, 
notice of the aggression of the Secretary of the Navy. 
With the failure of the Secretary of the Navy’s second recommenda- 
tion, to effect anything with Congress, the Coast and Geodetic Survey 
deemed itself safe from attack, at least for a time, when the contest 
was renewed by an advance from a wholly unexpected and most ex- 
traordinary quarter,—the Sub-Committee on the Sundry Civil Ex- 
penses Bill, of the House of Representatives,—Messrs. Randall, Forney, 
and Ryan. This advance was to the Survey unexpected and extraor- 
dinary, because Mr. Randall, the Chairman of the Sub-Committee, 
who was also the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, hav- 
ing been in Congress for many years, had never expressed disapproval 
of the organization of the Survey, and had been, during the late super- 
intendency of Mr. Carlile P. Patterson, lasting nearly eight years, inti- 
mate with that gentleman, and regarded as one of his firmest supporters. 
There was every reason, from the Survey’s point of view, to believe 
that the organization which had apparently met the approval of the 
Chairman during the superintendency of Mr. Patterson, and which 
had not changed under the new incumbent, Mr. Hilgard, and that the 
administration of the work, which also had apparently met his approval 
under Mr. Patterson, and which also had not changed, would continue 
to commend themselves to his favorable opinion. But it seems that, 
with regard to the organization, the opinion of the Chairman had under- 
gone either a revulsion, or else had been long withheld from expression 
until a time deemed by him favorable for making a change should have 
arrived. At any rate, the point which it was sought to elucidate is now 
clear, that the Coast and Geodetic Survey had reason to believe that 
the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations was the firm friend 
of the organization and administration of the Survey. In fact, so 
great was the faith of the personnel of the Survey in his friendliness 
to the work, that they were wrapped in complacent confidence that, 
now that Mr. Randall was the Chairman of the Committee on Appro- 
priations, and, as well, the Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Sundry 
Civil Expenses, the Survey was in appreciative and safe hands. There- COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
11 
fore it was that the Survey awakened in May with a certain sense of 
shock to the knowledge that the Sub-Committee on Sundry Civil Ex- 
penses had decided to dismember the Survey by transferring its hydro- 
graphic work to the Navy Department and its geodetic work to the 
Geological Survey. 
The reader may be tempted to think, as many persons thought at 
the time, that this new onslaught upon the Survey was concerted be- 
tween the Chairman of the Committee and the Secretary of the Navy, 
acting as dem ex machind, but the supposition is not compatible with 
the Chairman’s well-known hostility to the administrator of the Navy 
Department. It is more rational to suppose that the same, or some of 
the same, influences that induced the Secretary to come to his adverse 
conclusions regarding the Survey, were those that brought the Chair- 
man of the Committee to the same identical conclusions, as far as the 
hydrographic work of the Survey is concerned, and that thus these two 
antagonistic extremes met in accord. 
As has already been said, as a preliminary to this whole discussion, 
that the question of motives was discarded, so also, it must now be 
added, that modes of action, whether doubtful, improbable, or impossi- 
ble, of all that does not lie upon the surface, find no place here. That 
a great work has been endangered by a covert, instead of an open 
advance upon it, is the important, almost the sole purpose of the demon- 
stration here. The actors, their motives, and their modes of action 
concern and interest us very little. “ The evil that men do lives after 
them, the good is oft interred with their bones.” 
To be explicit as to the charge here made,—Is it contended here 
that the Survey is above trial? that, like the king of old, it can do no 
wrong? Not at all. The charge is the same as that before stated when 
discussing the action of the Secretary of the Navy with regard to the 
Survey. The charge is that the Survey was subjected to a mockery of 
trial, of less moral validity than that of the Star-Chamber,—if, in any 
case, that can be called trial in which the first that is known of being 
accused is being condemned.1 There is no evasion of this conclusion, 
unless the gentlemen of the Sub-Committee will concede that the Sur- 
vey was condemned and sentenced without trial. 
It is no disrespect to the gentlemen composing the Sub-Committee 
to say that they, like other men, are not competent in all things. What 
took in 1843 a mixed commission of army, navy, and civil experts to 
settle, it is folly to suppose that they, who are not experts, and who, at 
the same time, did not formally receive testimony on both sides of the 
question, could settle with anything like approximate accuracy. The 
gentlemen would, if such a thing were possible, have taken it in high 
dudgeon if, they having organized an enterprise and conducted it with 
recognized success for forty years, three men should walk into their 
establishment, and with a little hasty ciphering with the stub of a lead- 12 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
pencil, and the hearing of a few hap-hazard witnesses, decide that their 
organization must be improved, that they must conduct business other- 
wise, as prescribed, and have so much, and that much less money for 
conducting business than they had had for many years, although the 
means of their employers are abundant. The case is not a whit exag- 
gerated by the illustration. It is possible to think well of the transac- 
tion only by the consideratiou that the gentlemen really thought that 
they were doing their duty, and did not realize what they had under- 
taken. In the “ Republic” of Plato, Socrates is made to speak thus: 
“ But we charged the shoemaker not to attempt to be at the same time 
a husbandman, or a weaver, or a builder, in order that the work of 
shoemaking might be well done; and in like manner we allotted to 
each of the others a single calling, to which each was adapted by nature, 
and at which each, by abstaining from the rest, and applying to it the 
whole of his life, and not neglecting the proper opportunities, would 
be likely to work well.” “ Ne sutor ultra crepidam” 
Taking no higher than the modest ground assumed with reference 
to the Secretary of the Navy’s action, will not all men agree that an 
existence like the Survey’s, an accomplished, and as generally recog- 
nized, a creditable fact, should not be legislated out of existence upon 
a rider to an appropriation bill ? It is only stating in so many words 
what the inference in every man’s mind is, when it is added that, if it 
be sobght to legislate any accomplished fact out of existence, the only 
fair way is to put it on trial, to summon witnesses, to hear arguments on 
both sides. The assertion that the modification proposed is not dismem- 
berment of the Survey has already been answered. It would, if car- 
ried out, have meant death to the Survey. It was as much a proposi- 
tion to take life as was the demand in the “ Merchant of Venice” for the 
pound of flesh, and is as cogently answered by the paraphrase, “ but 
not one drop of water.” Will the gentlemen say that the Survey was 
not to be destroyed, but only reorganized ? Again we say, that is beg- 
ging the question. The contemplated action of the Sub-Committee 
involved more than condemnation without trial, it meant death from 
vivisection. 
That the same view of the justice of its cause was at once taken by 
many outside of, as well as by all inside of the Survey, was soon evi- 
denced by the action of many prominent men of all parties in different 
parts of the country; in Washington and out of Washington, among 
members of Congress, and among men who occupy no position but 
that of recognized public-spirited citizens. Members of Congress 
were ready to contest the measure on the floors of the Senate and the 
House of Representatives. Memorials began to pour into Congress. 
The Board of Trade, The Engineers’ Club, of Philadelphia (of whose 
First District Mr. Randall is the Representative), and the St. Louis 
Academy of Science promptly sent in Memorials. The Presidents of COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
13 
the principal Insurance Companies of Philadelphia, and other business 
men of prominence, sent in an independent Memorial. The American 
Philosophical Society and the Franklin Institute prepared to act. The 
Hon. G. S. Nesmith and thirty other citizens of New Hampshire sent 
in a Memorial. President Barnard, of Columbia College, and Professor 
Cook, Director of the Geological Survey of New Jersey, protested 
against the change. A Memorial from Yale, signed by President 
Porter, ex-President Woolsey, ex-Governor English, ex-Lieutenant- 
Governor Wayland, Professors Lyman, Whitney, Thacher, Verrill, 
Professor Trowbridge, of Columbia College, Mayor Lewis, of New 
Haven, Hon. N. D. Sperry, Hon. George II. Townsend, Messrs. 
Charles Hervey Townshend, E. S. Wheeler, Collector Beers, Health- 
Officer Lindsley, and other leading men of that city, was dispatched 
to Washington. The Hon. John Welsh, Messrs. Frederick Fraley, 
Henry Winsor, William Sellers, Fairman Rogers, Wm. P. Tatham, of 
Philadelphia, wrote personally to the Chairman of the Committee on 
Appropriations. The Hon. Robert M. McLane, Governor of Mary- 
land, pledged his support to the Survey. 
In answer to one of the letters from Philadelphia, written to Mr. 
Randall, as the Chairman of the Sub-Committee, he stated, iu justifica- 
tion of the Sub-Committee’s action, the following, among other points. 
To notice all would require more space than would be properly dispos- 
able here. Some not being relevant to the issue which has been dis- 
tinctly set forth as the purpose of this particular paper, only those 
intended for notice here are mentioned. In the next paper, occasion 
will arise to notice others, and perhaps thus, in sum, all of them. 
1. The natural place of the Geodetic Survey is with the Geological Survey. 
2. The Secretary of the Treasury is not averse to the transfer of the Coast 
Survey to the Navy Department. 
3. The proposed change is in the interest of economy. 
These points are answered below, seriatim: 
1. It is not thought by those conversant with the subject, that there is in the 
natural order of things any intimate connection between geodesy and geology. 
Large areas of geological exploration may be based upon geographical reconnois- 
sance, just as well as upon geodetic work, and much more economically. The Na- 
tional Academy of Sciences, and Major Powell, Chief of the Geological Survey, 
have recognized the fact, in reports to the Secretary of the Interior, that With occa- 
sional transient association of the geodetic with the geological survey, merely for 
the location of the areas over which the geological work is to proceed, there is no 
necessity for continuous further association, geodesy being the science of precise 
mensuration of the earth, while geology is the science of the structure of its crust. 
2. On June 20, the day following the appearance by invitation of the Super- 
intendent and other officers of the Survey before the Sub-Committee on the Sundry 
Civil Expenses Bill (an occurrence which in its main bearing will be described in 
due order), the Superintendent waited upon the Secretary of the Treasury, to confer 
with him regarding the state of affairs affecting the Survey. The Secretary, in the 
interview that then took place, expressed himself with much feeling, as decidedly 14 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
opposed to the contemplated transfer of the hydrographic work of the Survey to 
the Navy Department. He said that he had informed the Secretary of the Navy 
that he desired no disorganization in his Department, that, as he had found the 
Department, he wished to leave it, with its several bureaus intact. 
3. The statement referring to its being more economical to put the hydrography 
of the coast under the Navy Department, than to prosecute it, as at present, under 
the Coast and Geodetic Survey, has been so often refuted, that it seems almost use- 
less to repeat the incontrovertible reasons against the project. They, however, are 
these. Naval men do the work now. They would do it then. The same number 
of officers who do it now ought to do it then, and would, unless the Navy Depart- 
ment made hydrography, just to employ officers, instead of detailing officers for the 
needs of hydrography. Plan for plan, then, so far, the expense of each method 
would be the same. But, as geodetic work is the basis of hydrographic work, and 
the Navy Department does not conduct geodetic operations, and would have to em- 
ploy experts to conduct them, the plan of having the Navy Department to do the 
hydrographic work is much less economical than the present one. 
Under the pressure described, from prominent individual citizens, 
and from scientific and commercial bodies, the Sub-Committee, on 
June 19, at the very last moment, just before their final action, for 
the first time summoned officers of the Survey before them for exami- 
nation upon the subject upon which they should long before have been 
consulted.2 These officers were Superintendent J. E. Hilgard; Assist- 
ant-in-charge-of-the-Office, C. O. Boutelle; Assistants Davidson and 
Schott, and Commander Colby M. Chester, of the Navy, Hydrographic 
Inspector of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. 
The statements that were made before the Sub-Committee were of 
the strength that might have been anticipated by any one acquainted 
with the excellence of the organization of the Survey and the ability 
of the men who made the statements. The fact that the most con- 
vincing of all to the Sub-Committee was tliat of Commander Chester 
did not lie in his possessing more knowledge and gift of exposition 
than his coadjutors, but in the fact that he, a naval man of rank and 
experience, upheld the superior merit of the present organization of 
the Survey as against any other that could be devised. It had been a 
foregone conclusion with the Sub-Committee, that the organization 
would not be recognized as of supreme efficiency by naval men. The 
Sub-Committee, from first to last, had not heeded the maxim, “ Quiscit 
ubi sit scientia hcibenti est pi'oximus.” The knowledge they needed 
might have been obtained long before, within a stone’s throw of the 
Capitol. 
Under the circumstances there was nothing for the Sub-Committee 
to do but to recede from their false position, and to beat a retreat, for 
which their opponents would cheerfully have built a bridge of silver 
for the retiring enemy. But there are two ways to retire from a moral 
2 About the middle of May, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Chief of the 
Hydrographic Office of the Navy, had appeared before the Sub-Committee; and, 
subsequently, in the same month, the Chief of the Geological Survey appeared 
before it, and the Chief of the Hydrographic Office reappeared before it. COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
15 
defeat,—the one, gracefully, with at least implied acknowledgment of 
error, the other, with the vantage that must soon be lost, in attempting 
to wrest from opponents fragments of the prize that victory has not 
won. 
The Sub-Committee’s action in receding from its position was ap- 
parently that of fair-minded men. The personnel of the Survey felt 
at once encouraged by the report that the final action of the Sub-Com- 
mittee would be to recommend to Congress a Commission, composed of 
three members of the Senate, to be appointed by the President of the 
Senate, and three members of the House of Representatives, to be ap- 
pointed by the Speaker of the House, to settle the question of the dis- 
posal of Survey. The personnel of the Survey felt now well assured 
that at last the Survey would be put fairly on trial, and could not but 
come forth triumphantly from the ordeal. Nor have they changed in 
that opinion. 
They little expected what was impending. Shelter from the storm 
seemed gained, but then were heard its after-claps. Will any man say 
that the Sub-Committee, having receded from its first position, having 
decided that the whole question should go into the hands of a joint 
Commission composed of members selected from the two Houses of 
Congress, were not bound, so far as they themselves were concerned, 
by that act, not only to allow, while awaiting the decision of the Com- 
mission, the status quo of the Survey, but to maintain it? This the 
Sub-Committee did not do. 
By receding from their first position the Sub-Committee apparently 
left the status of the Survey intact, but this they did not really do. 
First, they did not do so, because they crippled the Survey for the 
whole present fiscal year, by placing its appropriation at an amount 
lower than any that it has had for sixteen years. Second, they did not 
do so, by partially begging the question involved in their first intention, 
by turning over to the Geological Survey a work coming strictly within 
the province of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and not at all within 
that of the Geological Survey, and representing an appropriation which 
the Coast and Geodetic Survey had had for several years for that pur- 
pose,—the incidental provision of geographical points for enabling the 
States to carry on surveys within their own boundaries. 
In presenting his estimates for the coming fiscal year to the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, the Superintendent of the Survey had said,— 
“ The chief increase in the estimates is for the item of party [field] expenses. 
. . . The object of proposing this increase is to obtain a proper economic proportion 
between the expense of putting the surveying parties in the field and the length of 
time that they can be kept at work. This should be as long as permitted by the season 
favorable for field work in the several localities. In order to meet this condition, 
it is necessary that the amount available for party expenses should be at least half 
as large again as it has been of late years, and I am constrained by a consideration 
of reasonable economy to submit estimates for an increased amount.” 16 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
The amount asked for, to secure this reasonable economy, and 
approved of by the Secretary of the Treasury, was $670,500. Did the 
Superintendent get it? For answer, let us continue to follow the train 
of events. 
The very day after the Committee had receded from its first position, 
and only the day before the appropriation bills were to be presented to 
the House, and when Congress was becoming restive under the pro- 
longation of the session into the hot weather, the Superintendent of the 
Survey was again summoned before the Sub-Committee, and was in- 
structed to reduce his estimates. As well might one of the animals 
present when the king of beasts made a distribution of the spoils, 
allotting to himself the lion’s share, have hesitated to accept the award, 
as might the Superintendent or any other man, under the circumstances 
described, have demurred at the behest of the Sub-Committee, whose 
will was literally law. So he reduced his estimates. That he did not 
willingly do so is shown by his statement accompanying his estimates 
approved by the Secretary of the Treasury. 
After coming before a Committee of Conference between the two 
Houses, and having restored to it the item of $14,000,3 previously 
unjustly diverted from the Coast and Geodetic Survey to the Geological 
Survey, and having added to it some $2000, the sum-total of the appro- 
priation for the Survey for the present fiscal year is only $518,070. 
This gives for field work a sum of $44,300 less than the Survey had 
last year, when parties had to be called in from the field for lack of 
funds to prosecute work urgently needed. The entire appropriation is 
less, as has been said, than the average amount that the Survey has had 
for sixteen years. Thus has been answered the Superintendent’s plea 
for a reasonable economy. 
The lowest annual appropriation for the Survey, for sixteen years, 
except that of the present year, was in 1869-70. That was $487,000. 
The average appropriation since, from 1870 to 1884,—including four- 
teen fiscal years,—has been $622,200. In this year of grace of the 
Sub-Committee, however, it is only $518,070, relatively much less than 
in 1869-70, considering that the country is now more rich and popu- 
lous, and that there are now largely increased demands upon the Survey 
arising in part from the growth of commerce and consequent necessity 
of affording greater facilities to navigation. In 1869-70,11,420 copies 
of charts were issued from the Office of the Survey. In 1882-83, 
32,012 copies were issued. Of this last number, 12,500 were required 
by the several Departments of the Government, and by Senators or 
Representatives,—more than the whole number of copies issued in 
1869-70 for all purposes combined. 
3 The amount asked for was $16,000; the same amount as that appropriated for 
the two preceding fiscal years, hut in the Committee of Conference this was reduced 
to $14,000. COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
17 
Entirely ignoring the general principle, of growth demanding in- 
crease, involved in the preceding fact stated, and at a time when the 
Treasury was abundantly able to meet demands upon it for the needs 
of the Survey, the Sub-Committee set aside the estimates for the work, 
approved by the Secretary of the Treasury, and in violation of economy 
reduced the appropriation more than one hundred and fifty-two thou- 
sand dollars below the estimates, and upwards of one hundred and four 
thousand dollars below the average of the appropriations for the last 
fourteen fiscal years. 
If that portion of the Sub-Committee’s plan, consisting of turning 
over the hydrographic work of the Survey to the Navy Department 
had been retained, of course it would have involved a reduction of the 
Survey’s appropriation by the amount estimated as necessary for the 
Navy Department, instead of the Survey, to perform the work. The 
hydrographic work of the Survey not being, as the event proved, turned 
over to the Navy Department, the inference ought to have been that 
the appropriation for the Survey would be maintained at the usual rate. 
But the appropriation was reduced. 
There ought to be no question in any man’s mind, besides, that if 
the Sub-Committee gave, as it did give, to the Geological Survey, funds 
for a purpose which was not at all within the province of the Geological 
Survey to fulfill, but strictly within that of the Coast and Geodetic 
Survey, and gave them, too, for a purpose for which the Coast and 
Geodetic Survey had always received funds and executed the work for 
which they were appropriated, from which it was now excluded by the 
act of the Sub-Committee, that, ipso facto, the status of the Coast and 
Geodetic Survey was not maintained by the Sub-Committee; that what 
the Commission, yet to be appointed, was to determine, was by that act 
in part prophetically anticipated and predetermined for it by the Sub- 
Committee. The correctness of the following propositions is therefore 
unquestionable : 
1. The relinquishment of their first proposed intention by the Sub-Committee, 
being followed by their proposition for the appointment of a joint commission of both 
Houses of Congress, to investigate the status of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the 
Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department, the Geological Survey, and the Sig- 
nal Service, the implication was that the status quo would he maintained while the 
questions regarding them were pending. 
2. This implication was violated by the action of the Sub-Committee, in 
reducing the appropriation of the Survey to a point below the usual rate. 
3. The implication was again violated by assigning to the Geological Survey, 
with appropriation therefor, work which not only belongs by its character to the 
Coast and Geodetic Survey, but which was specially assigned to the Coast and 
Geodetic Survey by Congress, when it authorized the determination of points in 
aid of State surveys. 
4. Inasmuch as the Sub-Committee’s original intention contemplated, as part 
of the project, the turning over to the Navy Department, for hydrographic work, 
funds heretofore devoted by the Survey to the same kind of hydrographic work, 18 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
and as things eventuated, this hydrographic work was not turned over to the Navy 
Department, the reduction of the annual appropriation for the Survey below the 
only basis that could afford a datum for deciding upon the amount proper, was in a 
measure an assumption on the part of the Sub-Committee, of one of the very points, 
to settle which, among other things, the Commission was supposed to be appointed. 
5. In sum, the whole procedure was a manifest begging and acting upon the 
questions which the Commission only, as shown by what led to its creation, has 
the right to settle. 
6. In view of the excellent condition of the Treasury, the intention of the re- 
duction of the appropriation for the Survey is evident beyond the peradventure of 
a doubt. It was the maintenance of a position apparently abandoned, because no 
longer outwardly tenable, in violation of the principles of good faith and right 
reason. 
But while this parsimonious policy, on the ground of economy, in 
the face of the contrary view as to what would secure economy, held 
by the Secretary of the Treasury and the Superintendent of the Coast 
and Geodetic Survey, is being pursued with regard to the Survey, how 
fared things with the Geological Survey? Let no one suppose that 
appropriation to a handsome amount for that meritorious work would 
be begrudged by the Coast and Geodetic Survey. What is sought to 
be brought out is simply what is implied here,—that invidious distinc- 
tion was made between it and the Coast and Geodetic Survey. 
Last year the Geological Survey received, partly under the Sundry 
Civil Expenses Bill, partly under the Executive, Legislative, and 
Judicial Bill, $339,640. This year it gets from the same sources 
$489,040,—an increase of $149,400. Last year, the Coast and Geo- 
detic Survey had (including $100,000 for a new steamer) $655,290. 
This year it gets $518,070,—a reduction of $137,220. So, while the 
Geological Survey goes up, under the self-same economical impulse the 
Coast and Geodetic Survey goes down, like the see-saw of the world, 
not depending more upon merit than upon some chairman acting as 
candlestick in the middle. 
At last, after all this gratuitous friction, things had been forced 
nearly into the shape into which they should have been first moulded. 
The Committee of Conference restored to the Coast and Geodetic Sur- 
vey the item which had been assigned to the Geological Survey for the 
determination of points for State uses in making surveys,—a question 
which, it will be observed, could not have turned upon the amount con- 
tended for ($14,000), but upon the principle involved in its diversion 
from the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Finally, just before its adjourn- 
ment, the Commission mentioned was named by Congress, according to 
the mode prescribed. It consists of Senators Allison, Hale, and Pen- 
dleton ; and Representatives Herbert, Lowry, and Lyman,—all good 
men and true; who will assume nothing, and who although, with per- 
haps one exception, not experts, will hear testimony from all sides, 
judge dispassionately, and decide wisely. This is the result for which 
the Survey so bravely strove. Pity Tis that, at this late day, in this COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
19 
free and enlightened land, among men of our race, that struggle should 
be possible for simple justice! 
The Chairman of the Sub-Committee stated, it will be remembered, 
that the Geodetic Survey naturally belongs to the Geological Survey, 
—that is, at least, that they go together. Nothing so far has been 
given but a simple denial of the correctness of the assertion, coupled 
with citation of, without quotation from, the published opinion of the 
National Academy of Sciences, and that of Major Powell, the Chief 
of the Geological Survey. Let us now consider the statement in detail, 
in the light of the report of the National Academy of Sciences, in 
answer to the requisition of Congress upon the Academy, to take into 
consideration the best methods of apportioning to different agencies the 
various national surveys, and to report thereon to Congress; and of the 
report of Major Powell, written under instructions, in the same connec- 
tion, to the Secretary of the Interior, in order to furnish data to the 
Academy.4 
The report of the Academy, under date of November 6, 1878, 
says,— 
“ In view of the paramount importance of the public lands, the committee recom- 
mend that the Coast and Geodetic Survey he transferred from the Treasury Depart- 
ment to the Department of the Interior, retaining its original field of operations, 
and assuming also the entire mensuration of the public domain, and that, so modi- 
fied and extended, it hereafter be known as the United States Coast and Interior 
Survey.” 
Major Powell's report, under date of November 1, 1878, advised 
inferentially to the same general intent, as follows. It must be borne 
in mind that triangulation and hypsometry (the determination of 
heights) are peculiarly functions of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, 
and not specially of the Geological Survey, which has neither officers 
nor instruments to conduct those operations with refinement. 
“The geographical work [that is, for the geology of the interior] should be 
based on a transcontinental triangulation on a comprehensive plan, and carried on 
with proper refinement. With the work divided as it has been for the past ten 
years this is practically impossible. No one organization with its small appropria- 
tion can make the necessary outlay of money for this work without swallowing up 
the whole or greater part of its funds, and thus it would he prevented from doing 
other work. All of the scientific [interior] surveys which have been carried on 
for the past ten years are practically 1 in the air,’ because this fundamental condi- 
tion of accuracy has been neglected. 
“ For the hypsometric work transcontinental lines of level should be established 
to which all the base stations in the field should be related by connecting lines. 
With the multiplicity of surveys and the small appropriations for each, it is im- 
possible to have this work done, as it is impossible to have the transcontinental 
triangulation made. . . . 
“ Under the Coast Survey a transcontinental triangulation is now in progress 
and much has already been accomplished, as the Coast Survey has a very large 
number of persons trained as experts in geographical science. Two such systems 
4 45th Congress, 3d Session, House of Representatives. Mis. Doc. No. 5. 20 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
of triangulation are unnecessary; the one now in progress should be made the basis 
of all future geographical work in the United States.” 
So much may be said for the wisdom of the transference of the in- 
terior geodetic work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey to the Geological 
Survey, in the light of presumably the best knowledge, outside of the 
Coast and Geodetic Survey, extant upon the subject. What can be said 
for the wisdom of transferring the hydrographic work of the Survey 
to the Navy Department is summed up in the consideration that the 
hydrographic work is based upon geodetic work, and that the Navy 
Department is not versed in geodesy. That is a general and conclusive 
reason, which ought to be operative at all times against the project. 
When we come to consider, in addition, the unfavorable opinion enter- 
tained by the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, as to the 
administration of the Navy Department, it is strange that he should 
have been found to advocate any change in the Survey that would 
place anything additionally to what it has already, under the charge 
of that Department. One should suppose that even if he considered 
it, from one point of view, desirable that the so-called geodetic portion 
of the work (for it is all geodetic) should go to the Geological Survey, 
the effect of thus necessarily relegating its hydrographic work to the 
Navy Department would have acted as a sure deterrent. 
Without reverting to remote utterances of Mr. Randall, that might, 
perhaps, be thought to represent opinions as to the Navy Department 
that he no longer holds, let us go back no further than to a few days 
before the end of the last session of Congress, and quote from the 
Congressional Record, as authority, his words representing his opinion 
at that time of the Department to which he would have allowed the 
hydrographic work of the Survey to go. Referring to the Navy 
Department, Mr. Randall said in debate, July 1, 1884,— 
“ But I am willing to go further and say if it were necessary that there are not 
thrown around these propositions those safeguards for the expenditure of the money 
which circumstances known to the country demand in reference to a Department 
which is now being investigated.” 
He also said in the same debate,— 
“ That has no relation, perhaps, to these cruisers or to the monitors. But it 
has relation to the action of every member of this House when we appropriate 
money to Departments wherein maladministration has been found, that we may 
see that proper restrictions are thrown around this expenditure.” 
Thus may one man’s word for economy outweigh that of millions. 
In a matter of the kind of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, a committee 
on appropriations is the sub-committee, and the sub-committee is the 
chairman, and the chairman may be—economical. And if the chair- 
man of the committee be the chairman of the sub-committee, the circle 
is completed which is as vicious in legislation as in reasoning. This COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
21 
chairman knows all tilings,—all things that are known, and all things 
that are unknown. Whatever men consider incredible from their ex- 
perience, are to him, like other things, among the known. Not even 
the Pope can speak more ex cathedra than he upon matters of faith and 
morals. With his vast range, seasons and planetary sway change before 
the all-powerful talismanic word—economy. Climate is obedient to 
its behests. The Survey with meagre means, and unprepared, seeks the 
field in the torrid, to push its toil into the frigid season, instead of 
going out in the vernal bloom and returning in the mellow autumn. 
Why not? all things are possible to such economy but—economy. 
O Uncle Sam, dear Uncle Sam, your coat may be short-waisted, 
your trousers skimpy, your face weazen, and your nose a trifle sharp, 
but not a mean bone have you in your body! A sensible, marvelously 
shrewd old fellow you are ! You would not have said, with the Chair- 
man of the Committee, in the debate just quoted from,— 
“ As an instance of the moral attitude of the American people, I want to say 
that it was an American minister who was selected by the two great powers, Ger- 
many and France, to regulate around Paris the matters of surrender and accommo- 
dation between those two countries. I wish to say further that my experience in 
traveling in foreign lands has shown me that where an American citizen behaves 
himself he receives unbounded respect; when he utters the words, ‘ I am an Amer- 
ican citizen,’ they are a passport to respect and honor everywhere.” 
It strikes you, dear Uncle Sam, that the grandeur recognized here 
is much more derived from the American citizen’s behaving himself, 
than from any love mingled with terror that his name inspires abroad. 
The picture is much better drawn for a cafe-concert scene in Paris, than 
for one where an American could speak with the proud port with which 
a man could once say, I am a Roman citizen. France went into the 
Franco-German war with a moral attitude, and found the invulnera- 
bility of her name a quite insufficient panoply. It is not by gasconad- 
ing about its moral force that a nation is safe from aggression, but by 
diffidence of its physical strength and preparation for the day when it 
will surely be tested. France found that the elements of power were 
hers, but rather in the thunder’s roar than in the lightning’s stroke. 
Frenchmen were given to such vaunting just before her fall, as many 
of her best men have since deplored. One of her greatest writers said, 
“Extinguish the torch of France, and the whole world would howl in 
the darkness.” Other writers preceded and followed him in this insen- 
sate strain, until much of the arrogance leading to her downfall grew 
out of the assumption, that to be a Frenchman was an all-sufficient 
mark of divine favor and protection. The writers merely voiced the 
sentiment of the people. 
Mr. Eaton, of Connecticut, struck the key-note of diplomatic re- 
lations when, in this same debate, he said with regard to a little diffi- 
culty with the Argentine Republic, “ A canoe is all you want to deter- 22 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
mine differences between this country and those little republics.” It is 
different when great republics or monarchies pay their respects with 
ironclads. James I., in his wadded armor, prating of “king-craft,” 
was not more ridiculous than this great nation dressed in its crazy-quilt 
of appropriations for national defense. 
Yes, dear old Uncle Sam, if you could only stalk into those legisla- 
tive halls—in order, or out of order, for you have been robbed of your 
credentials and have no seat at present, you would say, “ Better a 
few experimental ships than none. Better, a thousand times, depart- 
mental mismanagement than management that prevents mismanage- 
ment by leaving your naval officers, unpracticed, ashore, your guns 
unmanned,—or rather no guns to man,—your ports at the mercy of a 
first-class ship. Which is the more economical—to save a few millions, 
or to pay a milliard for New York under contribution? Go on, and 
Simon Stylites on his column will be your true symbol of national 
economy for defense!” 
One thing is certain. Let every despondent man hug it to his 
soul. It was never better phrased by any one than by St. Augustine, 
in these words: “It is well that a man should, willingly rather than 
unwillingly, surrender to the truth ; for that he shall, whether denying 
or confessing it, be vanquished by it, is inevitable.”5 
5“ Bonurn est homini ut eum veritns vincat volentem, quia malum est homini 
ut eum veritas vincat invitum. Nam ipsa vincat necesse est, sive negantem sive 
conjitentem.”—S. Aug. COAS1 AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
23 
II. 
The reasons for a great country’s survey of its coasts were in 1858 so 
admirably given in the report of a committee of twenty members of the 
“American Association for the Advancement of Science,” with reference 
to the history and progress of the American coast survey, that no more 
fitting introduction could be found for the presentation anew of the sub- 
ject, from whatever point of view it may be regarded, than the reproduc- 
tion of those reasons as set forth in the words of the Committee. When, 
additionally, we come to consider the eminence of all the gentlemen 
whose names appear on the list of that Committee, whatever they said 
in reference to the subject, whether general or special, possesses an 
authority for which it would be in vain to seek elsewhere as so com- 
pendiously offered to the purpose here in view. That purpose is to 
show why a geodetic survey should be, and what it should be, and that 
what it should be, the Coast and Geodetic Survey is. Even the general 
reader cannot fail to see, after the exposition to be here made, that con- 
ceived and organized as ours was by some of the most gifted men 
America has produced, and being what it is, effecting what it does, it 
is not to be trifled with by amateur statesmanship, and that its present 
representatives, who hold it in sacred trust, would be derelict to duty if 
they submitted tamely to its destruction through a vandalism as regard- 
less of its past and present services as of its world-wide renown. 
The Committee of Twenty1 said,— 
“ The leading object directly proposed in the conduct of the American survey, 
1 The gentlemen composing the Committee were Judge J. K. Kane, President 
Amer. Philos. Society; General Joseph G. Totten, Chief Engineer U.S.A. ; Pro- 
fessor Benjamin Peirce, Harvard College (afterwards Superintendent of the Sur- 
vey); Professor John Torrey, U. S. Assay Office, New York; Professor Joseph 
Henry, Secretary Smithsonian Institution; Professor John F. Frazer, University 
of Pennsylvania ; Professor William Chauvenet, U. S. Naval Academy ; President 
F. A. P. Barnard, University of Mississippi; Professor John Leconte, College of 
South Carolina; Professor William M. Gillespie, Union College; Professor F. H. 
Smith, University of Virginia; Professor W. H. C. Bartlett, U. S. Military 
Academy ; Professor Wolcott Gibbs, Free Academy, New York ; Professor Stephen 
Alexander, College of New Jersey ; Professor Lewis R. Gibbes, Charleston College; 24 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
as in that of every other, is to secure the safety of the wealth hazarded in commer- 
cial enterprises, by reducing to a minimum the dangers of navigation. But it may 
by no means hence be justly inferred that the benefits of such a survey are limited 
to particular localities, or confined to particular classes or portions of the people; 
that they accrue, for example, exclusively to the great marts of commerce, or to the 
individuals directly and personally concerned in foreign trade. To any one who 
attentively considers the causes which give to property its value, it will be manifest 
that these benefits extend to every citizen, no matter in what part of the country he 
may reside, provided that he has anything whatever at stake in the prosperity of the 
commonwealth, even though it be no more than the labor of his own hands. The 
cotton-grower of Tennessee, and the tobacco-planter of Kentucky, whose agricul- 
tural products seek a market in the old world, are no less positively interested in 
whatever may diminish the dangers of the seas than the merchant who, without 
producing himself, makes it his business to convert their productions for them into 
the equivalent values they require. This remark is one of great importance. 
Nothing in these days is more common than to hear the three great departments of 
human industry—agriculture, manufactures, and commerce—spoken of as if they 
were interests entirely independent of each other, or even absolutely antagonistic. 
Yet, without the productions of agricultural and manufacturing industry, com- 
merce would have no material; and without the constant, and convenient, and 
rapid exchanges which commerce effects, agriculture and manufactures could have 
no life. Whatever makes commerce easy, or diminishes the cost or the hazard of 
its operations, encourages productive industry in every form, and renders its re- 
wards more certain and more abundant. For the sake of illustration, let for one 
moment, the effect, so often illustrated under the eyes of the present generation, be 
considered, of opening up to public use a new line of communication, by means of 
a railroad or canal. There are thousands of farmers in this country who, immedi- 
ately on the occurrence of such an event, have seen the products of their labor 
practically doubled or tripled in value, through the consequent reduction in cost, 
trouble, and loss of time, experienced in communicating with markets. There are 
exhaustless deposits of mineral wealth in every quarter of the country, which from 
being absolutely valueless, because unavailable, have become sources of rich income 
to their owners, simply in consequence of the creation of such artificial channels of 
transportation. Now, as the aliment of commerce is the surplus production of the 
country, it is self-evident that, if the ocean were to become suddenly impassable, 
this surplus production would be to the nation precisely what the unsalable produce 
of the isolated inland farm, and the slumbering wealth of the inaccessible mineral 
deposits, are to their individual owners. Since it could find no efflux, it could bring 
back no return. And though were such a state of things suddenly to supervene 
upon the arrangements of business as they actually exist, the first ruin would fall, 
of course, upon the commercial holders of this surplus production ; yet it requires 
no argument to prove that the permanent suffering must fall ultimately upon those 
who created this surplus,—must fall, in short, upon the whole body of producers in 
the country; aud this, too, without any regard to the question whether or not each 
has contributed his distinct share to the visible surplus, or whether only his indus- 
try has been employed and rewarded by those who have actually done so. And any 
conclusion at which we may legitimately arrive, in regard to the effect upon the 
national welfare, of an entire extinction of foreign commerce, arbitrarily supposed 
to occur, is measurably true also on the supposition that the same commerce is ob- 
structed by impediments which embarrass its operations, but fall short of its total 
extinction. 
“ Such impediments do actually exist in the natural dangers of the ocean border. 
Professor Joseph Winlock, Superintendent Amer. Naut. Almanac ; Professor James 
Phillips, University of North Carolina; Professor William Ferrel, Nashville, 
Tenn. ; Professor Edward Hitchcock, Amherst College; Professor James D. Dana, 
Yale College. COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
25 
The sea-coast lies outstretched, a continuous, unbroken barrier, obstructing every 
avenue through which it is possible for the surplus production of the country to 
find its efflux or receive its returns; laying the whole industry of the nation, in 
every department, and throughout the entire extent of its territory,—in the pioneer 
settlements of the West, no less than in the busiest of the commercial entrepots of 
the Atlantic seaboard,—under a perpetual and inexorable tax. To effect a reduc- 
tion of this tax is the present business, as it was the original design, of the Coast 
Survey; and the interests of the States which lie most deeply situated in the heart 
of the continent are not less positively involved in the careful execution, and in the 
prosecution to completion of this great work, than those of any others.” 
In one sense, a survey of a coast, especially of one like that of the 
eastern shores of the United States, can never be finished. When the 
Committee spoke of the completion of the survey of the coast, it was 
only in the sense of the accomplishment of the work as a whole. The 
discovery of harbors of refuge, of new channels, the providing of in- 
formation for determining upon the sites for light-houses and for sea- 
coast fortifications, and many other elements of knowledge, are the 
first kinds of information which any coast survey is bound to provide. 
After that, the day will come when the survey of this, or of any other 
coast, being in one sense completed, it will be necessary then only to 
keep pace by means of a permanent corps, smaller than the one first 
employed, with the changes in the channels and harbors of the coast. 
The coast of the United States, especially on the Atlantic seaboard, 
must, owing to its conformation and the materials of which it is com- 
posed, be subjected by the action of the elements to unceasing, visible 
change, and must therefore always continue to require and receive con- 
stant supervision, and, wherever needed, topographic and hydrographic 
revision in the interest of the mariner. 
If, at the date at which they reported, the Committee of Twenty 
could speak so earnestly as they did throughout the whole of the 
voluminous pamphlet which the American Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science published regarding the history and progress 
of the Survey, how much might now be added to what they said, 
when it is considered that, since then, the Survey has, under its new 
name of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and authorized to that effect 
by Act of Congress, pushed its operations into the interior of the 
enormous domain of the United States ; that, in connecting the Atlantic 
and Pacific coasts by its lines of triangulation, it is incidentally fur- 
nishing to States means for making their own surveys of any degree 
of nicety; that, directly and indirectly, it is furnishing the Geological 
Survey with the data needed for extending the geographical reconnois- 
sances of that work in the interest of the development of the mineral 
wealth of the interior; and that, in proportion to its progress, it also 
directly and indirectly furnishes to the land-surveys the data long 
needed by them for land-surveying, which, heretofore disastrously 
imperfect, has nevertheless cost the Government for work, therefore 26 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
inadequately executed, a hundred million dollars, and entailed endless 
litigation upon the people, in consequence of the absence in it of 
proper scientific basis. 
All that is worthiest is born in travail, and has the most intense 
struggle for existence before it can reach its full development, and 
must continue to contend throughout its career: the Survey is no 
exception to the rule. It is the law of life, which, even in its physical 
aspect, physicians tell us, is from birth to death, only struggle against 
the grave. Before a worthy project has a chance of coming into 
being, minds must exist not only great enough to conceive and bring 
forth the idea, but endowed with a resolution and favored with an 
environment fitted to insure that the product shall not be abortive. 
Several years after the time when the idea of the survey of the coast 
of the United States was conceived and put into execution, the slight 
knowledge of cognate matters still existing among even educated men 
in authority rendered it possible for Mr. John C. Calhoun to elevate 
his eyebrows in surprise, when informed by an officer of the Army 
that it would be a real economy for the Government to pitch into 
the sea all the instruments then furnished to the Corps of Topographi- 
cal Engineers. To most, even educated, men of that period, mathe- 
matical instruments were as so many pickaxes, crowbars, and spades 
might have been reckoned by them,—more delicate, but essentially 
tools. Of the higher conception, that regards the operator as the 
most refined of all,—the product of original aptitude, of intelligence, 
and of rigorous mental and physical training, all combined,—they 
had not the faintest notion. 
The idea of the Coast Survey of the United States was conceived 
many years before the Survey was effectively ushered into the world. 
In fact, the Survey may truly be said to have once or twice entered 
the world still-born. The idea, by whomsoever first conceived, was 
first suggested by Robert Patterson, of Philadelphia, professor of 
mathematics in the University of Pennsylvania, and he is therefore 
entitled to the credit of its first conception.2 Being intimate with 
President Jefferson, he took advantage of the opportunity of impress- 
ing upon him and the members of his Cabinet, of whom one was 
the celebrated Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury, the desira- 
bility of the work. In consequence, through the recommendation 
of Mr. Jefferson, Congress passed an Act, in 1807, the first relating 
to a coast survey of the United States. This was followed by a 
circular from Mr. Gallatin, inviting attention to a general project 
relating to the survey, under the respective heads of astronomy, 
trigonometry, and hydrography. Among the applicants for the posi- 
2 He died in 1824, aged eighty-one. He was professor of mathematics in the 
University from 1779 to 1814. He was appointed Director of the U. S. Mint in 
1805. He was President of the Amer. Philos. Soc. from 1819 until his death. COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
27 
tion of chief of the survey was Mr. F. R. Hassler, whose detailed 
plan for the work was adopted, and who was appointed Superintend- 
ent. That Mr. Gallatin, who was a Swiss, influenced the appoint- 
ment of Mr. Hassler, because he also was a Swiss, is not likely. 
Mr. Gallatin’s distinction was acquired not more by his great ability, 
than by his purity and single-mindedness for the good of his adopted 
country. Mr. Hassler had acquired a European reputation through 
his geodetic survey of the canton of Berne, in Switzerland, and was 
pre-eminent in equipment among all competitors for the place. The 
excellence of his appointment was fully confirmed by his subsequent 
conduct, with most imperfect means, and under exasperating delays 
and want of appreciation, of the American survey in the troublous 
times of its inception. 
Mr. Hassler having been appointed, the path seemed smooth to 
success. Mark the event with reference to the anticipation. The Act 
of Congress creating the Survey was passed in 1807. Mr. Hassler was 
appointed in 1811. He proceeded to Europe to have constructed the 
necessary instruments for the work. Europe was profoundly disturbed 
and general war imminent; the United States and Great Britain were 
on the verge of rupture; everything was unsettled. In consequence, 
Mr. Hassler did not return to this country until 1815, and it was not 
until the year following that some slight beginning of the survey was 
made in the vicinity of New York bay and harbor. 
The work, thus scarcely begun, was soon suspended through Con- 
gress failing to make any appropriation for it; and, in 1818, that por- 
tion of the Act of 1807 under which Mr. Hassler had been appointed 
was expressly repealed. The bill making appropriations for surveys 
contained a proviso that the Survey should be conducted only by offi- 
cers of the Army and Navy. That, of itself, even without the express 
terms of repeal, that portion of the Act of 1807 which had 
had the effect of making the organization partially civilian ; Section 3 
of the Act having made it discretionary with the President to employ 
civilians. Thus the Survey, even in the small way in which it had 
been begun, was not suffered to last two years. 
So great were the evils resulting from this change, that they soon 
became apparent, and in 1832 Congress reorganized the Survey by re- 
verting to and reviving the Act of 1807. It was probably as much 
through the influence of the Hon. S. E. Southard, then Secretary of 
the Navy, as through all the other influences combined, that Congress 
was convinced that it had made a mistake in departing from the law 
of 1807. When a Secretary of the Navy could report, as the Hon. 
Mr. Southard did, that the administration of the Survey for the period 
from 1819 to 1828 had produced desultory work, charts expensive and 
unsafe, and that he advised recurrence to the law of 1807, his recom- 
mendation must have come with great force. 28 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
This original Act of Congress, of 1807, had made the administra- 
tion of the Survey civilian, and had placed the Survey under the charge 
of the Treasury Department. That administration was now, in conse- 
quence of the revival in 1832 of the Act of 1807, once more resumed 
in the conduct of the Survey. Mr. Hassler again took charge of the 
work, and directed it until the time of his death, in 1843, hampered by 
petty appropriations, and under the necessity of accepting a transition 
period, of which his successor, Professor Bache, was to reap the benefit 
in collected material, in perfected methods, and most of all, in trained 
men. Hampered as he thus was, and often disappointed and em- 
bittered, as he necessarily was, at the slight appreciation of what was 
effected, as shown by urgency for more results, in the face of the most 
meagre of appropriations for the Survey, it was not until 1843, just 
before his death, that he was triumphantly vindicated in regard to the 
excellence of all his means and measuresj as the result of an investiga- 
tion ordered by Congress, through a mixed board composed of distin- 
guished civilians and officers of the Army and Navy, which board 
concluded its sitting with the following recommendation:3 
“ That inasmuch as the object and purpose of the survey of the coast refer prin- 
cipally to the commercial interests of the country, and as all the laws of Congress 
in relation to the same contemplate the employment of civilians and officers of the 
Army and Navy upon said work, it is the opinion of this hoard, and they do hereby 
respectfully recommend, that it should be under the control, and considered a part 
of, the Treasury Department.” 
Even after the resumption, in 1832, under the Act of 1807, of the 
first, the tried, the approved excellent organization of 1807, there was 
a slight interregnum, so to speak, in the transference, in 1834, of the 
Survey from the Treasury Department to the Navy Department, with- 
out, however, interfering again with the organization. This plan en- 
dured for only a short time, owing to difficulties encountered in having 
placed under one military department a work employing officers from 
both branches of the military service; and at the end of two years the 
work was retransferred to the Treasury Department. There, in the 
Treasury Department, it has since remained, as has been said, and re- 
ceived in 1843, after the long probation there from 1834 to 1843, such 
indorsement, as to both its organization and administration, as should 
have put an end to any further interference with them. 
But the spirit of innovation, change, and unrest which will not let 
well alone, and the common failing of untutored ambition, in seeking 
the place instead of letting the place realize its ambition to secure the 
man,—the bane of our political condition,—have kept the Survey from 
1843, even to the present time, almost constantly on the alert, either to 
3 The gentlemen who composed this hoard were F. R. Hassler, James Fergu- 
son, Edmund Blunt (civilians) ; James Kearney, James D. Graham, William Turn- 
hull, William H. Swift, G. W. Hughes (Topographical Engineers, of the Army); 
Thomas R. Gedney, George S. Blake (Navy). COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
29 
repel assault upon its organization, or to escape insidious approach and 
appointment to its command. It is one of the follies that men commit, 
to aspire to place and power which they cannot fitly fill and exercise, 
and achieving their desires, to feel and look diminutive, shrunken, and 
collapsed in the robes in which they have had themselves arrayed. To 
be capable of being Superintendent of the Survey, and to be that, 
might well make any man proud ; but to be Superintendent without 
the capacity, would, one should suppose, make him feel mean indeed. 
If any question can be definitively settled, this might have been 
allowed to rest as such. But it was not so. In 1848, only five years 
after the decision of the mixed board, just mentioned, approved by the 
President of the United States, an attempt was made to transfer the 
Survey to the Navy Department. In 1849 another attempt was made. 
The urgency still continuing, in 1850 the Senate called upon the Secre- 
tary of the Navy, to state what advantages would accrue from a transfer 
of the Survey to the Navy Department, and upon the Secretary of the 
Treasury, to state why, if in his opinion it were not advisable, the 
transfer should not be made. The respective replies were such that 
Congress deemed it inadvisable to make the change. So conclusive was 
the result, that thenceforward, up to the present time, no further serious 
attempts upon the organization of the Survey have been made, until 
the late ones by the present Secretary of the Navy and by the states- 
men of the Sub-Committee on Sundry Civil Expenses, of the House of 
Representatives. 
In the year 1871 the functions of the Survey, then known as the 
Coast Survey, were enlarged, through the addition, by Act of Congress, 
of the duty of “extending the triangulation of the Coast Survey so as 
to form a geodetic connection between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts 
of the United States, . . . provided, that the triangulation shall deter- 
mine points in each State of the Union which shall make requisite 
provisions for its own topographical and geological surveys.’’4 Under 
this last clause, eleven States have already availed themselves of the 
privilege conferred by Congress, and have in active prosecution work 
of the kind described; for which the Survey, now acting under the 
name of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, furnishes the preliminary 
data, the general direction necessary, and all the special assistance al- 
lowed by law and available. Under the title now, as has been said (in 
consequence of this enlargement of its functions), of the Coast and Geo- 
detic Survey, the work, which is really geodetic in all its parts, has, on 
the one side, hydrography, with which it is intimately associated, based 
on geodesy; and on the other, interior work (State—Geological—and 
Land-Surveying), with which it is properly only co-ordinately asso- 
ciated, also based on geodesy. 
The National Academy of Sciences, acting by request of Congress, 
4 Act approved March 3, 1871. 30 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
recommended, in 1878, the combination of all the surveys of mensura- 
tion under the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the establishment of a 
geological work (the present Geological Survey), to be intrusted with the 
duty of making a geological survey of the country, with the view, 
primarily, to the discovery of its mineral and other natural resources, 
with the necessarily connected paleontology; and secondarily, to other 
matters specified ; to all those cognate matters, in fact, which naturally 
fall within the province of geological investigation. A sound basis 
seemed to have been reached, through the recommendation of the 
Academy, for the future interest of the country, in the related mainte- 
nance of these two works, and that of the Land Office, correspondingly 
related through the recommendation of the Academy in the form most 
likely to be productive of good. Effectively, these organizations were 
working more and more on this basis. The advice of the Academy to 
place the Coast and Geodetic Survey under the Interior Department 
was only an incident of the full recommendation. Essentially the 
basis was, as it had been before formally defined, that of the work in 
actual operation. 
This, the period of symmetrical development, was the time chosen 
by the Secretary of the Navy for his late attempt upon the Coast and 
Geodetic Survey, prompted by interested persons in his Department, 
and fully detailed in the preceding paper. The Survey was aroused to 
the knowledge that all that had passed in these years of contention; 
that the disinterested published testimony of scientific men, the numer- 
ous Memorials of merchants, had been of no avail; that it was only 
by renewed appeal to the scientific and mercantile community, and to 
the people at large, that escape for the Survey from defeat and capture 
could be secured, and a final sweep be made into the ocean of oblivion, 
of those antagonistic forces that have so often imperiled the existence 
of the work. The Survey is not captious and pugnacious. Its mis- 
sion is one of peace,—to bind even the nations of the earth together. 
But all things must either fight or yield and be trampled out of exist- 
ence, and he who prides himself upon non-resistance confesses that he 
is safe through a courage which is not his own. The Survey, there- 
fore, although averse to strife, reflecting on this, welcomed the first 
sound of attack with joy, that this question must now at last be settled, 
once for all, in the Survey’s assured peace through its adversaries’ 
crushing, final defeat. Why, it may be asked, is the contest to prove 
more conclusive now than ever before? The reason is evident: it is 
because the arena upon which it is now hiking place is before a public 
grown to knowledge of affairs, fearful of retrogression in civil service 
reform, and disposed to give the strongest moral support to all that 
savors of good administration. 
The issue had to be as soon and as resolutely accepted as it had been 
presented by the Secretary of the Navy. Eternal vigilance is the COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
31 
price of everything worth having, and although it is not strictly within 
the line of its profession to take the scalp of any honorable gentleman, 
least of all of one who has innocently placed himself in the forefront 
of danger, yet, as self-preservation is the first law of nature, the Survey 
must be forgiven if, although with certain regrets, it felt constrained 
to do so, and regarded the acquisition as one of the most notable, if not 
most beautiful trophies of its career. That it is still upon the war- 
path is not to be ascribed to its feeling that it has anything further to 
demand of the Secretary of the Navy, but that there are other trophies 
of the same sort which the cause of justice demands. If honorable 
gentlemen choose to come into one’s house to set things to rights with a 
hatchet, the only adequate response is the tomahawk. 
Into the question of the propriety of the Secretary of the Navy’s 
action, the preceding paper fully entered. It left untouched, however, 
in default of space, arguments with which he is no doubt familiar, for 
they have been in the air for years, both constant in sound and fitful 
in energy as the strain of an seolian harp. For them he is not, in one 
sense, responsible. But, while he is merely the mouthpiece of some, he 
is the representative of all. To one class of these arguments, therefore, 
which, if not he, many of those under his wing hold, it is necessary now 
to devote some notice. Because he, the Secretary, relies chiefly upon 
his opinion, that it is in the nature of things that the hydrographic 
work of the Survey, as well as many other things, should be under the 
Navy Department, and possibly the Department under him, it is not 
useless that he should also consider grounds upon which some of his 
clients pin their faith in advocacy of the same cause. Then, when he 
has well conned these, and the further discussion, in its proper order, 
of the pleas of economy, efficiency, etc., and has measured them with 
the opinions of scientific and commercial men, he will doubtless change 
his opinion, and perhaps, too, his course, which has hitherto been, alas, 
with perhaps good intention, quite misguided ! 
Coincidentally with the advance of the Secretary of the Navy, in 
1882 and 1883, as the champion of the measure for placing the hydro- 
graphic work of the Survey in the hands of the Navy Department, was 
heard a faint and familiar chirp of encouragement. It sounded not 
like the voice of the war-eagles of some twenty years ago, nor like that 
of those who have since moulted and soared to knowledge above the 
nest, but like the peek of the callow brood, with no whither obvious to 
try their daring flight over the cloud-empurpled seas. They are at the 
romantic age, when wishing for ti thing makes it ours. Here is a whole 
romantic race, born like St. Paul, out of due time, waiting perforce for 
the millennial era, when perfect ships and departments shall always be, 
and shall cause committees on appropriations to risk perfection,—a race 
waiting for something to turn up, meanwhile roosting almost anywhere, 
poor devils, until it please economical committees on appropriations 32 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
to build them something on which to float, and to let them fulfill the 
mission for which they were born and prepared. 
This plaintive cry said, “(1), the water belongs to the Navy; (2), 
the Government having educated us, ought to make use of our services 
in some way; the charge of the survey of the coast is one which we 
will suggest; (3), the Navy does the hydrographic work of the Coast 
and Geodetic Survey now, and ought to get the credit for it.” 
As for the water belonging to the Navy, even merchantmen go down 
to the sea in ships, and the Atlantic has been crossed in a dory. The 
Declaration of Independence proclaims for every man the right to life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in which, to most people, the item 
of comfort of bathing is included, for their own sake and that of the 
rest of mankind. 
That, because the Government has educated a man to do a thing, it 
should, if it no longer wishes the thing done, make employment for him 
in some other thing, lest the education go a-begging, is a surprising 
proposition. More surprising still is the proposition that this one or 
other thing which the Government is bound to furnish, because it has 
already furnished in the education a goodly thing, must be conferred at 
the expense of ousting from, or sensibly degrading in, their positions, 
men who have paid for and provided their own education, and sup- 
ported themselves while acquiring it, and have finally served a long 
apprenticeship to their profession. To cap the climax, if it be not 
capped already, most surprising of all is the proposition involved, that 
these men who are to be ousted, or sensibly degraded, are ones who, 
being fitted for and having paid in every humanly possible way in 
which a man may deserve, for the position which they hold, are to be 
supplanted by men who are not, but must begin to be, fitted, and must 
remain always, unless they desert their legitimate profession, measurably 
unfitted for the task assumed. Truly, this is scriptural with a ven- 
geance, “ for unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have 
abundance, but from him that hath not, shall be taken away even that 
which he hath.” 
The theory of old with reference to the Academies was that, even 
if the Government did not happen to need the services of certain 
graduates, it had conferred a goodly thing in the education given. 
Indeed, the justification by the people, of conferring education, pos- 
sibly without return, always was that, in case of war, what the Gov- 
ernment had sowed in the interest of the nation would be reaped 
an hundredfold in the knowledge and skill ready to spring to the 
assistance of the country. Conversely, the theory was equally ac- 
cepted by the practice of graduates not deeming it honorable after 
graduation to leave the Army or the Navy without service that should 
in some sort be deemed the equivalent of what they had received. 
What applies to West Point and to Annapolis is no special dis- COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
33 
covery of theirs, but within the knowledge and practice of all honorable 
men. 
The statement of any one that the Navy does the hydrographic work 
of the Survey, and ought to receive the credit, which implies that the 
Navy does not get it, would be silenced forever by the knowledge which 
even a cursory examination of the Survey’s annual Reports would im- 
part. The following information, compendiously stated, may reassure 
the minds of those who are indisposed to make a search, or to take any 
trouble in seeking information, that withholding credit from naval 
officers has not been one of the sins of omission of the Survey. 
From the Survey's Annual Reports from 1867 to 1883—both inclusive. Showing the 
number of pages devoted in the Annual Reports of the Survey, to naval officers, 
relatively to the whole number of pages in the Reports. 
Year of Report. 
Whole No. of 
pages.6 
Number of pages re- 
lating to Hyd. work 
by naval officers. 
Number of naval 
officers in charge 
of Hyd. parties. 
Number of naval 
officers on Coast 
Survey duty.6 
1867 
43 
1 
1 
15 
1868 
39 
1 
1 
19 
1869 
61 
2 
1 
6 
1870 
50 
2 
1 
6 
1871 
67 
1 
3 
12 
1872 
51 
3 
3 
17 
1873 
64 
2 
3 
17 
1874 
45 
1 
4 
26 
1875 
69 
7 
7 
46 
1876 
64 
13 
12 
47 
1877 
67 
11 
12 
59 
1878 
64 
12 
12 
53 
1879 
74 
10 
13 
56 
1880 
59 
4 
11 
60 
1881 
66 
6 
10 
57 
1882 
67 
6 
9 
73 
1883 
74 
10 
17 
67 
If the significance of the table is not apparent, the senior will 
doubtless take the pains to point out to the junior officers from whom 
the cry has come, that there is no evidence of neglect to give credit to 
be drawn from this source. If its authenticity be doubted, there are 
always the published Reports to be referred to for confirmation or 
disproof of this tabular review. 
Search has been made in vain to find anything in the Reports that 
would justify a feeling among the younger officers that they have been 
neglected, except in the discovery of invidious discrimination in favor 
of certain naval officers, as compared with others, through complimentary 
notice of their services. This neglect of the others was, however, 
purely unintentional, and entirely defensible on the ground that, at the 
time the compliments were paid, many of the complainants were either 
6 The numbers in this column do not include the pages of the Appendices to 
the Reports. 
6 These figures represent the totals of line and staff for each year. 34 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
not born, or were so young as not to be interested in naval affairs be- 
yond sailing a boat in a tub. Had it been otherwise, they would 
doubtless have received similar commendation to that found in the an- 
nual Reports, coupled with the names of Gedney, Blake, Porter, Pat- 
terson, Rodgers, Jenkins, Geo. M. Bache, Davis, Stellwagen, Alrny, 
Craven, Wainwright, Trenchard, Febiger, Sigsbee, Bartlett, and those 
of many others. 
A mile-stone has now been reached from which it will be well to 
consider the road passed over, and the way still beyond. In the first 
paper, only the illegality and impropriety of the Secretary of the Navy’s 
course was discussed, and three only of the points attempted to be made 
by the Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Sundry Civil Expenses, in 
a letter to a gentleman of Philadelphia, were discussed and refuted. 
Space did not permit of more within the limits of that paper. This 
has already supplied and will continue to supply the intentional omis- 
sions and need, in some places, of amplification of the first paper, by 
the fuller discussion of the views emanating from the Navy Depart- 
ment and from the Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Sundry Civil 
Expenses. By permission of the Engineers’ Club, of Philadelphia, is 
now given in full the correspondence between it and the Chairman ; in 
being able to publish which lies a great double advantage;—to the 
Survey, in avoiding any possible suspicion of misinterpreting; to the 
Chairman, of the production of his own version, in his own language, 
of his views with relation to the Survey. 
“ Engineers’ Club, of Philadelphia. 
“May 30th, 1884. 
“ Hon. Samuel J. Randall, M.C. 
“Washington, D. C. 
“ Dear Sir : 
“ I have just learned that a Bill to merge the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey 
with the War and Navy Depts. is about to be presented to Congress.7 
“ It is my opinion that its passage would seriously disturb one of the most effi- 
cient Departments and add greatly to the already unjust and unwise discrimination 
of the Government against the Civil Engineering profession. 
“ May I respectfully request your influence against this Bill, at least until this 
Society (which has 318 members) and the other Civil Engineering associations of 
the country have an opportunity to be heard from. 
“ Very respectfully yours, 
“ Howard Murphy, 
“ Sec’y and Treas.” 
7 The mistake of speaking of the War, instead of the Interior Department, 
grew out of the fact of the news having but just arrived. The charge of the note 
is substantially the same, irrespective of the mistake—that of intended dismember- 
ment of the Survey. That the Secretary thought so is clearly shown by the tenor 
of his second, even stronger, letter, written after he had received Mr. Randall’s 
correction of the mistake; where he continues to speak of the general tendency to 
subordinate civil to military rule. COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
35 
“ House of Representatives. 
“ Washington, D. C., June 2, 1884. 
“Howard Murphy, Esq. 
“ Dear Sir : 
“ Your letter received. There is no disposition on the part of the Committee on 
Appropriations to interfere with the officials and the personnel of the Coast Survey 
proper. It is now under the nominal control of the Sec’y of the Treasury, who, I 
am informed, is not adverse to being relieved of the same and having it transferred 
to the control of the Navy Dept., where in so far as coast survey is concerned it 
naturally belongs, that portion of the service now being done by naval officers and 
men. It is thought further to transfer the Geodetic portion of the Coast Survey to 
the Geological Survey as the natural place for it to be. The purpose of the Com- 
mittee having been misrepresented, I will say that the Committee think economy 
will be promoted by the proposed transfer, the efficiency of the service not impaired, 
and the personnel remain in the same hands. The transfer will also prevent dupli- 
cation of the work, and with the money thus saved, the service can be increased and 
portions of the country surveyed where mineral resources are not now scientifically 
known. 
“ When I am next in Phila. I shall be glad to see you and more fully explain 
the purpose of the Committee. 
“ Yours truly, 
Saml. J. Randall.” 
“Engineers’ Club, of Philadelphia. 
“ June 17th, 1884. 
“ Hon. Saml. J. Randall, M.C. 
“ Washington. 
“ Dear Sir : 
“ I acknowledge the receipt of your esteemed favor of 2d inst. and have pre- 
sented it to the Club, but, according to our rules, no business can he transacted at 
our scientific meetings. Our last was of this class, so the question could only be in- 
formally discussed, but the sentiment may be seen in the enclosed marked ‘Record 
of Meeting,’ which is sent for publication to the scientific press of the country. 
“On Saturday, 21st inst., we will have a business meeting, when a committee 
will report a resolution for formal action, which will he immediately forwarded to 
you. 
“ We do not presume to discuss a question of statesmanship with you, but we 
do claim to understand something with regard to the general and detail manage- 
ment of the special work for which we were educated and to which we have given 
our lives. Should not the civil engineers of the country, above all other persons, 
know how and by whom a survey should be conducted? 
“ But few of our members (on an active list of over 300) have any connection 
with Gov’t service or any intention or desire to he so connected, and the absence, 
on our part, of narrow-minded rivalry is, perhaps, best evinced by the fact that 
Colonel Wm. Ludlow is now our President; but will you think for a moment of 
what the Civil Engineers have done to promote the material progress of this coun- 
try, and then tell us why steps should be taken to further subordinate that profession 
(even if it is still employed), upon strictly civil work, to the military and naval 
authorities ? 
“ But, as civil engineers do not depend, thank Heaven, upon the Government for 
professional opportunities, attention may be confined to the point of main impor- 
tance to them and to the country, which is that they do depend upon the present 
and future work of U. S. C. & G. Survey for accurate bases for secondary 
WORK. 
“ As no one hut an engineer can fully and practically appreciate the growing 
importance of this, and how splendidly it has been and is being accomplished by 36 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
the present correct methods; and as every engineer with whom the writer has con- 
versed has considered the proposed change a mistake, a pity, a shame or an outrage, 
will not you and will not your Committee listen and give due weight to such expert 
testimony ? 
“You might as well destroy our standards as destroy our confidence in 
them ! 
“ I send you our list of members of Oct., 1883, with additions to date pasted 
in, and marked copies of 1 Bulletin,’ June 13th, and ‘ Kecord,’ June 16th. 
“ May I have something from you to lay before our meeting on 21st inst. ? 
“ Yours very respectfully, 
“ Howard Murphy, 
“ Sec. and Treas.” 
Omitting the preliminary, very complimentary proceedings of the 
Engineers’ Club with reference to the Survey, referred to by Mr. Mur- 
phy in his second letter, under the head of the “ Record of Meeting,” 
which he transmitted to the Chairman of the Sub-Committee, the final 
action of the Engineers’ Club took the form of the following Resolu- 
tions, engrossed, printed, and transmitted to the members of Congress 
representing the State of Pennsylvania. 
“ Engineers’ Club of Philadelphia. 
Rooms, No. 1523 Chestnut Street, 
Philadelphia, Pa. 
“ June 21st, 1884. 
“ Hon 
Washington, D. C. 
“ Dear Sir : 
“At a Business Meeting of the Engineers’ Club of Philadelphia, held June 
21st, 1884, the following were unanimously adopted : 
“ Whereas, We, the Engineers’ Club of Philadelphia, have learned that a hill 
has been drafted in the sub-committee on Sundry Civil Appropriations of the U. S. 
House of Representatives, the purport of which is to merge the U. S. Coast and 
Geodetic Survey into the Navy and Interior Departments. 
“And Whereas, Under existing laws and regulations, such a practical dis- 
solution of this distinguished and efficient organization must result in a lowering 
of the high standard attained, without producing any equivalent on the score of 
economy or expediency. 
“And Whereas, The changes now proposed were tested, both in 1834 and 
1851, and in each instance proved a failure, therefore it is 
“ Resolved, That in the opinion of the members of this organization the pro- 
posed change in the status of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey would be preju- 
dicial to the best interests of the Governipent Service. 
“ Resolved, That the Members of Congress representing the State of Pennsyl- 
vania be, and are hereby, respectfully and earnestly requested to oppose the passage 
of this bill. 
“William Ludlow, President. 
“ Howard Murphy, Secretary and Treasurer.’’ 
The Chairman of the Sub-Committee gave, in connection with the 
same subject, to other gentlemen, besides the Secretary of the Engineers’ 
Club, the intimation that he would be glad to see them, when next in 
Philadelphia, and more fully explain the purpose of the Committee. COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
37 
Inquiry at the time failed to elicit the fact that opportunity had ever 
been afforded for having his wish gratified. There is, however, in the 
Chairman’s letter, just given in full, more to be explained away than 
would render graceful further explanations to prove that the Sub-Com- 
mittee possessed the knowledge upon which should be based action. 
The Chairman of the Sub-Committee says that the Coast Survey 
“ is now under the nominal control.of the Secretary of the Treasury, 
who, I am informed, is not adverse to being relieved of the same and 
having it transferred to the control of the Navy Department.” 
Now, as was mentioned in the first paper, the Secretary of the 
Treasury says, not only that he is averse to being relieved of the 
hydrographic work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, but that he has 
expressed to the Secretary of the Navy his disapprobation of the pro- 
ceedings looking to that end.8 The attitude of the Secretary of the 
Treasury, of which, by attempting to define it, the importance is 
admitted, should not, certainly, have been allowed to rest upon the 
doubtfulness of hearsay in so important a transaction. 
Can it, as the Chairman states, be truly said of the Coast Survey 
proper, as he terms it, that it is, in contradistinction to any of the other 
bureaus, only under the nominal control of the Department under 
which it is placed by law? Any bureau, under any Department, has 
an independent dependent organization and movement, is a wheel within 
a wheel in the governmental machine. Because it is materially repre- 
sented in Washington by a building separate from that of the Treasury 
Department, it is none the less part of the Treasury Department. The 
Treasury in its primary aspect is an abstraction. In its secondary aspect, 
as the Treasury Department, it is a concretion. As a part of this latter 
the Coast and Geodetic Survey exists, without being represented in 
Washington by the same mass of brick or stone; and would be just as 
much as now a part of the Treasury Department, if its representative 
building were the same, or if it were another, a thousand, instead of 
being, as it is, two miles away. 
The coast survey part of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, says the 
Chairman, naturally belongs to the Navy Department, “ that portion of 
the service now being done by naval officers and men.” 
Does it? The coast survey part of the Coast and Geodetic Survey 
is geodetic, and the Navy Department does not do geodetic work. 
“ It is thought further to transfer the geodetic portion of the Coast 
Survey to the Geological Survey as the natural place for it to be,” think 
the Sub-Committee. 
There it is again. Why, does not every one know that it is all 
geodetic? The view of the Sub-Committee as to the expediency of 
* Secretary Folger died on September 4. The fact that this paper was written 
some days before his death, will account for the tenses of the verbs used in the 
passage here. 38 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
tin's connection differs entirely from that expressed in the passage 
quoted, in the first paper, from the report to Congress of the National 
Academy of Sciences. 
“The Committee think,” says the Chairman, “economy will be 
promoted by the proposed transfer, the efficiency of the service not 
impaired, and (sic) the personnel remain in the same hands.” 
If the Sub-Committee do not know more about the matter generally 
than has been shown by their Chairman, how can they know that 
economy will be promoted by the transfer? If the efficiency of the 
service would not be impaired, why should those who are in the service 
think that it would be? If the personnel is to remain in the same 
hands, what is the use of transferring it? 
“ The transfer,” continues the Chairman, “ will also prevent dupli- 
cation of the work, and with the money thus saved, the service can be 
increased and portions of the country surveyed where mineral resources 
are not now scientifically known.” 
The Survey has yet to learn that there has been any duplication 
of work. This statement was explicitly denied two years ago by the 
Survey, whose officers will not be doubted, they feel confident, now that 
they find themselves held in so high regard by the Sub-Committee’s 
assurance that “ there is no disposition on the part of the Committee on 
Appropriations to interfere with the officials and the personnel of the 
Coast Survey proper.” If there is no duplication of work, where is 
money to be saved? It cannot be saved by transferring the hydro- 
graphic work to the Navy Department; for that course, in default of 
geodesy there, would cost then more. It cannot be saved on duplica- 
tion that does not exist. Then, where is the saved money to come from, 
in the interest of the development of the mineral resources of the 
country? A few thousands of this prospective, not actual, this purely 
hypothetical saving, were lately turned over to the Geological Survey 
by the Sub-Committee, and recovered by the Coast and Geodetic Survey 
through the Committee of Conference. This is the only saving pos- 
sible ; so far as known, the only one made,—purely theoretical, quite in 
the air, as it were. 
In fine, it would take many visits to Philadelphia, a life-time 
longer than that of Methuselah, a listener endowed with equal lon- 
gevity, and a patience equal to it, to enable the Chairman to convince 
him that the Sub-Committee know anything about the matter, however 
great their erudition upon other points which his venerable auditor may 
be ready to concede. 
All this construction is like a child’s making a planetary system 
of mud-pies. There is very little system, but a terrible mess of 
worlds and child. Heally, one is tempted to think the Chairman 
daft with his economy. If to be an economist is to possess a blue- 
pencil and score right and left, we can all be little financiers for a cent. COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
39 
Economy in a household may not be degenerate, even if it saves the 
cheese-parings and the candle-ends and counts the potatoes, for the 
household may be poor, and it is always individual: there can be no 
question in it of development. But political economy is the science 
of the correlation of functions in the body politic, and knowledge of 
the laws that govern the production and distribution of wealth. The 
executor of its laws (and all civilized men are either that or obstruc- 
tors of them) cannot save but by spending, if he would help adjust 
the balance of these natural functions, without whose nice adjustment 
there can be no healthful action and reaction among them conducing 
to the highest interest of a people. The wider the territory, the more 
diversified the industries and production of a people, the more are re- 
quired intelligence and skill in the legislator, to grasp the relations 
among the productive, the distributive, and the protective agencies in 
active operation, and to further their harmonious working and develop- 
ment. The law, being universal, embraces the Coast and Geodetic 
Survey as well as everything else. It is exemplified in all business, 
and permeates the whole life of every civilized people; indeed is 
omnipresent in beneficent action, except where it is obstructed or 
stifled in its action in the conduct of public affairs. 
In 1858, Professor William P. Trowbridge made an elaborate 
investigation of the relation between expenditure and work upon the 
Survey, and ascertained that, as compared with the interval between 
1832 and 1844, the equal interval between 1844 and 1856, with an 
increase of thirty-three per cent, in expenditure, gave an increase of 
results of sixty per cent., showing a gain in economy of twenty-seven 
per cent. He says in his report upon the subject, that the expenditures 
and results on the Western coast, being deducted from the whole 
(proper, for fairness of comparison, because the cost of labor and 
material was so abnormally high there at that period), the economy of 
increase of appropriation for the Survey is still more apparent. Then, 
instituting the comparison, with that deduction, in the same way as 
before, between the intervals of 1832 and 1844, and 1844 and 1856, 
respectively, as here paired, the increase of results as compared with 
expenditures is as fifty-four to twenty-two per cent., showing a gain of 
thirty-two per cent, in economy. 
The point attempted to be made bv the Chairman of the Sub- 
Committee, that the Coast and Geodetic Survey and the Navy dupli- 
cate each other’s work, is like an echo of the Secretary of the Navy’s 
charge of some two years ago. Yet it may not be an echo. As 
admitted in the previous paper, the same causes that influenced the one 
to come to certain conclusions may have influenced the other in reach- 
ing the same conclusions. Between these personages we should not 
expect other echo than that like the remarkable one originated by the 
mountain farmer, who, taking a party of visitors to the magic spot, 40 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
and shouting halloo, received for response, “ Now, you Bill Stokes, 
just give me back my knife.” 
The debate in the House of Representatives, from which quotation 
was made in the first paper, in which debate maladministration in the 
Navy Department was sharply charged by the Chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Appropriations, was no longer ago than July 1, 1884. Yet 
gentlemen must be, while official, polite, and while social, still polite, 
and even more polite. Those much maligned organs of truthful 
speech—the newspapers—represent that, on the occasion of the late 
reception to the returned Arctic voyagers, the two gentlemen in ques- 
tion met at a clam-bake under the auspices of General Butler, and not 
at daggers’ points, and were polite, as beseemed the occasion. The 
clam, as is well known, although uncompromising in the toughness of 
its own nature, hath yet a softening effect upon the heart of man. It 
is not to be expected that the augurs shall not meet in public and 
laugh in their sleeves. But, really, in this case, it seems like the rare 
union of Roman virtue with phrase Pickwickian! Who, however, 
can say—let no man be censorious—that it might not have been sin- 
cere if, at the close of the entertainment, the Secretary, referring to 
the remarks of July 1, should have addressed the Chairman in the 
words of Romeo, “the reason that I have to love thee doth much 
excuse the appertaining rage to such a greeting,” and then both should 
have smiled as they parted, the smile of the augurs, and wended their 
respective ways? 
Heretofore, as simplifying matters to the general reader, the pro- 
posed transfer of the hydrographic work of the Coast and Geodetic 
Survey has been either mentioned or alluded to as a proposed transfer 
to the Navy or to the Navy Department. It becomes necessary at this 
stage, for the understanding of what is to follow, to specify the par- 
ticular agency under the Navy Department which would, in the event 
of the transfer, have charge of the work. This is the Hydrographic 
Office, a Division under the Bureau of Navigation, which, in turn, is 
under the Navy Department. 
This agency—the Hydrographic Office—upon which the Secretary 
of the Navy and the Chairman of the Sub-Committee agreed,—if they 
ever agree upon anything,—as the most proper of all agencies to which 
to turn over the hydrographic work of the Survey, ought to be a some- 
thing at least equal in administrative ability to the Coast and Geodetic 
Survey. It ought to be at least this to reconcile any one to a change 
in the direction indicated. It ought to be at least this to men in power 
who have at heart the public weal, who instigate and further the 
change. It behooves us, therefore, in order to enable ourselves to 
judge of the expediency of the transfer for this one reason alone, to 
examine into the character of the Hydrographic Office as to its admin- 
istrative capacity. COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
41 
As the highest authority that can be cited on the subject, let us 
examine the report written by the present Chief of the Hydrographic 
Office, no longer ago than one year,—or very little more, say fourteen 
months from the present writing, or, as the report specifies on its title- 
page, “ for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 1883.” Commander John 
R. Bartlett, of the Navy, the writer of the report, addressed to the Chief 
of the Bureau of Navigation, is recognized on the Coast and Geodetic 
Survey as an able officer and excellent hydrographer, he having been 
attached to the Survey for four years previously to taking charge of 
the Hydrographic Office. lie must justly be considered high authority, 
—he is an experienced hydrographer, and he testifies in regard to the 
Office of which he is chief. And the following is his testimony as to 
some of the administration up to the time when he recently took charge 
of the Hydrographic Office. The reader will please remember that 
the testimony is from a report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 
1883, by an officer only recently in a position to correct mistakes in 
the Hydrographic Office. 
“ The original cost of engraving the 165 plates prepared by the office has been 
upwards of $150,000.9 
“ From an examination of the various Government offices, and of private 
copper-plate printing establishments in New York, it appears that it is the universal 
custom to make at least one electrotype or alto of all engraved plates. From this 
alto a second electrotype or basso is made from which impressions can be taken. 
The original plate is thus relieved of wear and its life is prolonged indefinitely, 
since new electrotypes can be made from it at any time. The practice of electro- 
typing plates has not hitherto prevailed at the Hydrographic Office, only 5 out of 
the 328 plates having been reproduced in alto, and only four of these in basso. As 
a measure of economy, all the plates in the office should be immediately electro- 
typed. Unless this is done it will be necessary to recut the plates as they wear out. 
Many of them already show signs of wear.” 
First Comment. So, although having had on hand for years great 
numbers of valuable plates, the imperfection of practice regarding them 
is not known to the public until 1883, when it is pointed out through 
the superior knowledge of an officer who had just had four years’ ex- 
perience upon the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Yet this imperfect 
practice had violated, according to his opinion (to which may be added 
every one else’s), “ universal custom.” And the ignorance or neglect 
had been so great, moreover, that many of the plates, Commander 
Bartlett says, “ already show signs of wear,”—are, in a word, damaged. 
Commander Bartlett says,10 also,— 
“ It has hitherto been the practice, upon the receipt of a new edition of an 
admiralty chart, to correct from it the old copies on hand in the office. These cor- 
rections, made upon each copy of the chart in pen and ink, not only involved great 
9 Pp. 4 and 5, annual Report of the Hydrographer to the Bureau of Naviga- 
tion, for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1883. 
10 Pp. 6 and 7, Ibid. 42 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
labor and expense, but were of necessity imperfectly made. "While slight correc- 
tions must continue, as before, to be entered by hand, it is now proposed, in the 
case of new editions, to adopt the simpler and far less expensive plan of replacing 
the old copies by the purchase of new ones.” . . . “ It has hitherto been the policy 
of the office to devote a large portion of its energies to this work of reproducing 
foreign charts. One-fifth of the whole number of publications of the British ad- 
miralty have been copied on stone or on copper, and the charts printed therefrom 
have been stored in the office. They are kept for the double purpose of issue to 
ships of war and of sale to private individuals. It is a question whether they are 
of any material benefit. The copper-plate reproductions are exceedingly costly. 
They have, however, an advantage over the photolithographic copies, in that cor- 
rections may be made on the copper and new copies may be printed from the plate 
as corrected. 
“ The photolithographic reproductions, while less expensive at the outset, can 
only be corrected by alterations on each copy of the chart in pen and ink. The 
waste of labor and the waste of money in this hand correction of 83,000 charts is 
simply inconceivable, and, moreover, it could not be adequately accomplished with 
even unlimited labor and money. The office has for some time made the attempt 
to perform this task, but after a protracted trial the conviction is formed that it is 
impossible, and that, if it were possible, it would not be worth the eflfort. The ob- 
solete charts, instead of being laboriously corrected, should be replaced by the pur- 
chase of new editions from the corrected plates of the British office. The conclusion 
is therefore irresistible that no more copies should be made of foreign charts by a 
process which does not admit of correction on the original plate or stone. It is a 
further question how far reproductions of any kind are desirable. Certainly, if the 
policy of reproduction is a sound one, it should be clearly apparent why these par- 
ticular 620 charts were chbsen for reproduction and the 2380 others on the admiralty 
catalogue were rejected. It is impossible, however, to ascertain any general prin- 
ciple which has hitherto governed the selection. The copies form a miscellaneous 
collection, comprising localities widely distributed and of varying degrees of im- 
portance, including the waters of every ocean and coasts and harbors on every con- 
tinent. That most of them serve no useful purpose is evidenced by the fact that of 
the 620 charts copied, copies of only 216 have been sold, leaving 404 for which there 
has been no demand whatever during the past year. Many of these last have been 
issued to ships of war, but an ample supply for this.purpose can be obtained by pur- 
chasing copies, without the expense of reproduction.” 
Second Comment. These passages fairly bristle with evidence of 
bad administration. No comment is needed but that of condensed 
recapitulation. Money has been wasted for years in photolithographic 
reproductions, copies of charts struck off from which have been labor- 
iously corrected by hand, to conform to new, original issues, when the 
new issues could have been bought, comparatively speaking, for a song. 
The 620 plates reproduced present no intrinsic evidence why they, 
rather than the 2380 rejected, should have been chosen; and anyhow, 
charts from them do not sell, and those issued to ships of war could be 
got better and cheaper elsewhere. And this system has been in opera- 
tion for years. 
This is the office to which the Secretary of the Navy and the 
Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Sundry Civil Expenses would 
commit the hydrographic work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey,— 
the one, in the interest of economy, the other, in the interest, perhaps COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
43 
of no economy, but on the plea that it naturally belongs to the Navy. 
This is only one side of the Hydrographic Office, it is admitted,—the 
bad side. The Hydrographic Office has done and is doing good work of 
the kind for which it was created.11 It must improve, too, evidently, 
under so energetic and outspoken a chief as Commander Bartlett has 
proved to be. But it must, at the same time, be evident to the reader, 
that it would be by no means proper to relieve the Coast and Geodetic 
Survey of its hydrographic work so as to commit it to this office, 
which, although under its present direction an office of promise, is 
clearly embryonic. 
All persons will agree, after reading the testimony by Commander 
Bartlett, just quoted, that his recommendation to regulate the office in 
the interest of economy should be adopted. He says, “By limiting 
this branch of chart work as above described, the Hydrographic Office 
will be enabled to devote its energies to the work for which it is pecu- 
liarly fitted and intended,—the performance of its share of general 
hydrographic work by the publication of original surveys made by 
officers and vessels of the United States Navy.”12 
It is rumored that Commander Bartlett has since recanted that 
view. If so, it is to be hoped that he will reconsider his change. 
The hydrographic work of the coast is not general hydrographic work. 
Certainly, with his knowledge, he can hardly think that hydrography 
pure and simple can be taken away from the Coast and Geodetic Sur- 
vey and committed to the Navy or to any other similar agency. He 
knows, too, that there is no such thing on any coast as hydrography 
pure and simple; and that when it comes to such elaborate hydrography 
as that on the coast of this country, such as that executed by the Coast 
and Geodetic Survey, the work carries with it geodetic operations in 
their largest scope, and that they are in no wise proper to be under the 
direction and charge of the hydrographic office of any navy. 
So many side-lights have now been thrown upon this subject, in 
the course of the preceding discussion, that the reader ought to be able 
to perceive the truth of the simple statement of fundamental fact in 
all its nakedness. The last remark, if clearly comprehended, that the 
hydrographic office of no navy whatever is fit to have charge of the 
hydrographic work of its own coast, contains the whole kernel of the 
matter. The reason for this, suppressed lately in certain quarters, 
from interested motives, is that there is hydrographic work and hydro- 
11 “ There shall be a Hydrographic Office attached to the Bureau of Navigation 
in the Navy Department, for the improvement of the means of navigating safely 
the vessels of the Navy and of the mercantile marine, by providing, under the 
authority of the Secretary of the Navy, accurate and cheap nautical charts, sailing 
directions, navigators, and manuals of instructions for the use of all vessels of the 
United States, and for the benefit and use of navigators generally.” Revised 
Statutes ; par. 431. 
“ P. 7, Ibid. 44 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
graphic work. The hydrographic work executed by this country, by 
Great Britain, and by other countries, on foreign coasts, is undoubtedly 
good work of its kind. The day was when, and not very long ago, it 
was not good of its kind. That day, there is reason to believe, has 
finally passed away. The excellence—the perfection, one may say— 
which geodetic surveying has reached in civilized countries, has raised 
to a higher plane all work of lesser grade. 
But the surveys executed on foreign coasts are not, and never can 
be, of the refinement practiced in those at home. They are, and of 
necessity must continue to be, from causes too numerous to mention, 
but known to every geodesist, and from other causes that ought to be 
apparent to every one (those relating to time and expense), much less 
refined than the surveys, whether on land or coast, made by nations in 
their own countries; upon which depend internal development, com- 
merce, armament, minute knowledge of their very ocean gates. If an 
individual spot, not at the present time known even to most experts to 
exist, could possibly be pointed out on the surface of the globe, where 
some elaborate work, like that of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, has 
been done by a foreign nation, it would only prove, by its being an 
exception to the rule, the point here made. To affirm that such a 
place does exist, is to say that it includes, humanly speaking, perfect 
base-lines, astronomy, triangulation; determinations of azimuth, of 
local deflection of the plumb-line, determination of magnetic declina- 
tion, dip, and intensity; topography, spirit-levels, and other determi- 
nations of heights; observations on tides, winds, currents, and on 
temperatures of air and water. Are all these proper for foreign sur- 
veys; have they ever been introduced into foreign surveys; would 
they be justifiable? Yet, even all these do not represent the results 
of the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Will any one claim that surveys 
in foreign waters are made with results like, and even greater than 
these; that if they are, they ought to be; that if they are or are not, 
naval officers could execute them; that if they could not execute them 
abroad, they could at home; that if they could not at home, they 
should be allowed to have the direction of civilians who have made 
such surveying their profession, and thus to constitute the charge a 
sham ? 
No body of men, were they the brightest and best that ever lived, 
can be depended upon, if they belong to either branch of the military 
service, for perpetuating the best methods in geodesy, and for always 
being ready to labor within that field,—simply because, belonging to 
either Army or Navy, they can have only limited terms of duty on any 
geodetic work, and are withdrawn to the practice of their own profes- 
sion in time of war. Immediately on the breaking out of the Mexican 
War, all officers of the line of the Army, and some of the staff, were 
detached from the Survey. The same condition of affairs existed with COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
45 
reference to naval officers. It will be seen further on that the Navy 
Department could not then answer favorably application from the 
Superintendent for the most urgent needs of the Survey. In the war 
of the Rebellion, by the beginning of the year 1863 all the army 
officers on the work had been detached, and only one naval officer 
remained. On the other hand, of the nineteen civil assistants, fourteen 
sub-assistants, and twenty-two aids, on the Survey, twelve assistants, 
seven sub-assistants, and ten aids served in their professional capacity 
with the military and naval forces of the United States. 
Are the reasons against the project of transfer of the hydrographic 
work of the Coast and Geodetic Survey to the Navy still deemed in- 
sufficient? More could be given, but these surely should suffice. It 
should suffice merely to quote the report of the American Association 
for the Advancement of Science, which said, through its distinguished 
Committee of Twenty, that if the work “were carried on under dis- 
tinct organizations, then would result a want of cq-operation as to time, 
methods, and objects, by which the hydrographic survey would fail in 
a great measure to derive from the land-work those elements of accuracy 
which are essential to its perfection.” But a surplusage of reasons must 
always be given to counteract movements inspired by the hope of per- 
sonal aggrandizement; and so it has been given here. 
The Hydrographic Office, it will have been seen, is capable of con- 
ducting hydrographic work like that of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, 
only upon the terms that a civilian corps of experts shall be turned 
over from that Survey to the Hydrographic Office, to perform the 
functions upon which all hydrographic work of the first class depends. 
The move of the Secretary of the Navy and the Sub-Committee means 
to the country, whatever the intention may be, the transfer to the 
Hydrographic Office of the nominal, as well as real control of the 
hydrographic work of the Survey, but in so doing, assigning to it the 
real, without nominal, control of geodetic operations, for which it is 
not fit. In a word, the intention, accomplished, would constitute either 
a failure or a sham. 
There is a witness, evidently forgotten by or unknown to the powers 
that be, who has not yet been summoned, because it was desirable that 
the first witnesses cited to appear should have created a prepossession 
in his favor that he knew whereof he spake. This witness is Alex- 
ander Dallas Bache, a graduate of West Point, first in his class, where 
he never received a mark of demerit; president of Girard College, 
principal of the Philadelphia High School, professor in the University 
of Pennsylvania; the friend of Humboldt, Arago, Murchison, and other 
scientific men of Europe; facile princeps, as they themselves said, among 
all his brethren of America. This forgotten man, not respected more 
than he was admired, nor admired more than he was loved; this man, 
distinguished alike by his mind, his attainments, and his genial traits 46 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
of character; a loyal citizen, who died of over-work in the field of duty, 
knightly, in harness, as if he had been slain on the battle-field, may be 
allowed to say one word in behalf of the great work of which he was 
the most distinguished ornament, for the great work, which, from the 
time that he assumed charge of it, until overborne by it and other labor, 
he fell under the heat and burden of the day, relinquishing in it the 
pride, the glory, and the delight of his whole mature life, was never 
for a moment lost to his most earnest and best thought. 
“The reorganization of the Coast Survey, under legislative authority, in 1843, 
embodied all the experience obtained up to that date, both of trials which had suc- 
ceeded and of others which had failed; it confirmed and gave the force of law to 
the union in one corps, which had gradually grown up, of civilians, officers of the 
Army, and officers of the Navy, serving under a neutral department; under which 
alone they could he united,—namely, that having control of matters relating to com- 
merce and navigation.13 It is easy to see that without a permanent nucleus for such 
a work, the objects and aims must be wavering and unsteady, the methods wanting 
in uniformity from year to year and from party to party, and the results hetero- 
geneous in kind and in form. Confusion and waste would result from such an 
organization, and the Survey would in time be abandoned. The scientific parts of 
such a work require diligent study and devotion to mathematical and physical 
science, to grasp them in their various bearings; and it is not too much to say, 
that, unless such a work came up to the demands of science and scientific men of 
the country, it could not long stand. That the theoretical knowledge acquired at 
the Military Academy should be reduced to practice in the Survey, by those officers 
of the Army who have an inclination to similar pursuits, to its advantage as well 
as to their own, will readily be seen ; and up to the point where details would inter- 
fere with the duties of the arm to which the officer belongs, Congress has conferred 
upon the work a right to seek his services. The War Department judges whether 
they can be granted or not. 
“ The law of 1843 very properly limited the services of officers of the Navy to 
the hydrographic part of the work,—the portions which have a professional bearing, 
and towards which the inclination of a nautical man may turn with professional 
pride. Experience has fully shown the advantages of this organization in general. 
The tendency resulting from the variable elements (the Army and Navy), is never- 
theless at times to lessen the results produced, by the necessity for turning aside 
from actual work to give instruction, and from the loss of experience acquired at 
the expense of the Survey, by the removal of officers, caused, no doubt, by the 
exigencies of their proper service, and yet reacting severely upon the Survey. The 
experience and knowledge of Humphreys, Johnstone, and Prince, of the Army, and 
of Davis, Patterson, and Porter, of the Navy, cannot readily be replaced ; a detail 
may be filled, but the knowledge immediately available is not supplied. 
“ The injunction of the law to employ as many officers of the Army and Navy 
as practicable in the Coast Survey, I have never lost sight of. On the breaking out 
of the Mexican War, five staff and nine line officers were upon the work. The 
number of hydrographic parties has been increased from two in 1843 to eight in 
1850. 
“At the close of the war I again applied, through the Treasury Department, 
for the renewal of army details. . . . When my last application for line-officers 
was refused, the War Department stated that staff-officers would, if practicable, be 
13 Pp. 6 to 8 of Prof. Bache’s report to the Secretary of the Treasury, Hon. 
Thos. Corwin, showing the progress of the Survey for the year ending Nov. 1850. 
Ex. Doc. No. 12, House of Representatives, 2d Session 31st Congress, 1850. COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
47 
assigned to the Survey. Now that this was found impracticable I renewed the ap- 
plication for line-officers, which has been favorably considered by the War Depart- 
ment, and five officers have been detailed for the service. 
“ The increase in the number of officers of the Navy attached to the Coast Sur- 
vey has in like manner been carried as far as the Navy Department has found it 
possible to make the details. Such has been the demand for officers for the more 
immediate duties of the naval service, that those engaged in hydrographic reduc- 
tions in the office were generally detached from the Survey; the hydrographic par- 
ties were diminished to one-half, or less than one-half, their numbers on coming to 
the Office to reduce their work ; and finally, the additional officers required for the 
Texas section this winter could not be procured when applied for, the Navy Depart- 
ment stating that in the present condition of the service, two passed-midshipmen, 
junior to the master who had been ordered, and who stands near the head of the 
list of passed-midshipmen, cannot be detailed. Owing to the same exigencies, the 
vessel for that section still remains without her complement of officers. 
“ So great have been the exigencies of the naval service, that more than one- 
half of the officers attached to the Coast Survey a year since have been changed. 
The chiefs of parties feel sensibly the impediment to the progress of the work under 
their charge, which this rotation produces, and which no exertion of theirs can 
compensate. With officers and a crew more or less entirely new to the business of 
surveying, a portion of each season must be spent in teaching instead of working. 
The present organization affords a school of practice for the young officers of the 
Navy, and as such, is valuable to the country. It must be obvious, however, that 
in point of economy and expedition, the plan of employing persons regularly 
trained to the occupation, keeping them steadily at the work, and giving them a 
compensation proportioned to their knowledge, skill, and industry, would be pref- 
erable. The statistics of the relative economy of the different parts of the work as 
at present conducted, confirm this view of the subject ” 
In a still more elaborate statement, on the same topic, made near 
the beginning of the following year, in a report by the Hon. Thomas 
Corwin, Secretary of the Treasury, in response to the resolution of the 
Senate calling for his views regarding the proposed transfer of the 
Coast Survey to the Navy Department, a report which is generally re- 
garded as having been written by Professor Bache, and which, in fact, 
from intrinsic and circumstantial evidence, could have been written by 
no other person, the following passage occurs:14 
“ When the Mexican War broke out there were fourteen officers of the Army 
upon the work, all but three of whom were withdrawn. Notice was given that the 
Navy officers might necessarily be withdrawn. Had there been no civil corps in 
such an event, the work would have been stopped just when a knowledge of our 
harbors was most wanted.” 
Could anything be more conclusive than all this? It shows, from 
the experience of a man who at the time of writing had been Superin- 
tendent of the Survey for seven years, that the refined methods of the 
Survey could not be maintained and transmitted save by the civilian 
nucleus of the Survey. It shows that, with an organization including 
officers of the Army and Navy, the work is more expensive than if 
14 Pp- 23 and 24 of the report of the Hon. Thomas Corwin, Secretary of the 
Treasury. Ex. Doc. No. 36, Senate, 2nd Session, 31st Congress, 1851. 48 
THE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
performed by civilians only. It shows that such an organization is 
justifiable only (and it is confessedly to be justified) by the fact that 
officers of both branches of the military service, especially those of the 
Navy, obtain practice inuring to the possible benefit of the country. 
It shows that, in time of war, the portions of the organization belong- 
ing to the two branches of the military service must be paralyzed by 
the exigencies of their own special services. 
Yet people have been called upon lately by astute legislators to be- 
lieve that the Navy is the proper administrator and executor, combined, 
of the hydrographic work of the coast. Congress surely will repudiate 
proposed legislation based on such ignorance as has been shown of the 
history and experience of the Survey. 
In the homely wisdom of Fables, uttered over five hun- 
dred years before the Christian era, we are taught, in the story of the 
Belly and the Members, the lesson of co-ordinative functions and powers 
correlated in their exercise, implying also the existence of subordina- 
tion. We should certainly, in the nineteenth century of the Christian 
era, have advanced backward far enough to understand TEsop’s Fables. 
Let us consider this difference between co-ordination and subordina- 
tion, as applied to the question before us. The hydrographic work of 
the coast of the United States is, and should be, subordinate to the agency 
which controls the land work, because it relates to that subtle element 
which, while it may, as forming the ocean, be said to be everywhere, 
may also be said to be nowhere without the land. From the days of the 
ancients, when the ocean was believed to be the universal mother, and the 
ebb and flow of tides to be caused by the breathing of the old man Dem- 
agorgon, seated in the bowels of the earth ; when the ocean was the source 
of abject terror to the noblest minds, as something vast, illimitable, im- 
measurable, reaching infinitude; when it inspired even more than terror, 
—horror, at its glassy or turbulent surface, its treacherous and brutal 
power;—from these, even to our days, when the sentiment, divested of 
fear, is still one of awe, mirroring in the mind, not the image only, but 
the very presence of eternity, blended with a feeling which could speak 
in the magnificent strain of Byron in “ Childe Harold”; yet, from the 
beginning to the present day, the ocean has been physically, although 
not morally to man, the same vast, untamed and untamable force lying 
in wait and roaring around the habitable earth, its treachery and fierce- 
ness conquered never by the strength of man, but mitigated only by 
the knowledge and address of the powerful hand that science has laid 
upon its mane. This, the same,—the ever to be the same, until all 
things cease to be themselves,—this ocean, fluid, is nowhere without 
the land. The position of not one drop of water that goes to form its 
mass is known without reference to the land. The briny deep that is 
at our doors might be translated to another part of the globe, and other 
water take its place, and we never the wiser for the fact. Indeed, it is COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
49 
just so,—the ocean-streams making endless flow from one ocean-basin to 
another. And just as this is so of the individual drops of water and 
of the mighty mass in the ever-shifting sea, the surface presented to 
the eye, or the mass recognized by the plummet, is here to-day and 
gone to-morrow. The sea is the same through all the gamut of its 
moods, and yet, is of all things, except the air, the most inconstant and 
evanescent. 
This ocean off our shores might be any other ocean but for this par- 
ticular land. But for the land, any other ocean might be this. It is 
the bottom, that despite all this protean fickleness of being, gives indi- 
viduality by which any place in the ocean can be identified, no matter 
through what processes of nature, short of cataclysm, it may have been 
changed. Consequently, it is not because the ocean on this coast is, as 
everywhere else, water, that the Coast and Geodetic Survey claims the 
survey of the coast as belonging of right to it as a survey of mensuration. 
It is because, as the reader will have observed, the bottom is nothing 
but an extension under water of the land, and, as such, is susceptible 
of being associated with the nicest geodetic operations. The ocean off 
our coast being, with reference to surveying, virtually the land, the 
hydrographic part of the work, equally with the topographical part, 
should be subordinate to the Coast and Geodetic Survey. 
The case of the relations of the Coast and Geodetic Survey to the 
Geological Survey is widely different. These relations should, from 
the nature of the circumstances, be made relations of co-ordination with 
correlated aims. The Coast and Geodetic Survey being a work of 
scientific mensuration, wherever the system is applied by the Survey, 
it is applied with the most refined methods known to geodesy. The 
Geological Survey, on the one hand, deals oidy with investigation of 
the structure of the earth’s crust, for the discovery of mineral deposits, 
for the promotion of paleontology, ethnology, etc.; and on the other 
hand, the Land Survey deals only with the rude measurement of lands 
in the public domain. Both of these works need scientific bases from 
which to proceed with their labors. The Geological Survey, for ex- 
ample, obtaining from the Coast and Geodetic Survey the length of a 
side of one of the triangles with which the Survey is proceeding across 
the continent, the azimuth (that is, the direction with reference to the 
true north and south) of the line, and the geographical position (that 
is, the latitude and longitude) of its extremities, possesses a base from 
which can be conducted over large areas what are called geographical 
reconnoissances, with all the nicety requisite for the purposes that the 
Geological Survey has in view. To carry with the Geological Survey 
the refinements of measurement practiced in the Coast and Geodetic 
Survey would be the most preposterous of plans, and most onerous to 
the Treasury. Suppose that that is not intended,—that these parcel- 
learned gentlemen, as Bacon calls such persons, should say, “Just 50 
2 HE LATE ATTACKS UPON THE 
what you are proposing we have had in our minds in making our 
proposition, just the combination described between the Geodetic 
Survey and the Geological Survey, by which the Geological Survey 
could proceed from bases of precision upon long geographical recon- 
noissances.” “Well, for that purpose,” let us inquire, “is there any 
necessity for combination between the two Surveys, greater than that 
required for obtaining from the Coast and Geodetic Survey such bases 
as are needed ; which would always be at the disposal of the Geologi- 
cal Survey in proportion to the means that Congress would furnish the 
Coast and Geodetic Survey for the purpose of determining such bases? 
Do the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy, whose De- 
partments pay officers and men in their respective services, consider it 
necessary to have little Treasuries for themselves ?” They draw upon 
the Treasury Department, and the requisition is promptly filled. 
So it is with the Coast and Geodetic Survey with reference to the 
Geological, Land, and State Surveys. The Coast and Geodetic Survey 
is, with reference to them all, a treasury of information about mensura- 
tion on the coast, and in the interior, on the lines of triangulation pro- 
ceeding between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and is capable of 
furnishing the best data to the Geological Survey, to the Land Survey, 
and to the State Surveys. All that is necessary for any one of these 
is for it to draw upon the treasury of the Coast and Geodetic Survey 
for any geodetic information, and the draft can be honored promptly 
in proportion to the means that Congress places at the disposal of the 
Survey to expend in acquiring the information for which it is to be 
drawn upon by any authorized agency.15 
It is thus seen that there is no close combination, such as that de- 
scribed by the Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Sundry Civil Ex- 
penses, necessary between what he is pleased to call the geodetic portion 
of the Survey and the Geological Survey, but that between them there 
should be functional co-ordination. 
The basal condition of civilization is the power of association. 
The higher the development of civilization, the more are co-ordination, 
subordination, and combination in every form, manifested in the fact 
of originally segregated individuals and masses working more and more 
to common ends through the division and correlation of labor. In this 
development is to be observed the action of the fundamental law of life, 
in the ascension from less to more complex forms, in the endless differ- 
entiation of parts maintaining coherence of design. In the Fable, the 
Belly did not claim to be prehensile, nor the hand to be able to digest 
upon its palm. The conspiracy against the former alleged that it con- 
15 The Survey acts on occasions even in the capacity of pedagogue. Included in 
the manual of instructions to the Surveyors-General of the United States, is a 
treatise, prepared in 1878, by the Survey, for the use of the U. S. land-surveyors, 
showing how to determine the true and the magnetic meridian. COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
51 
tributed nothing to the common stock of good. When, however, it 
was starved by the Members, it was soon found out that all the Mem- 
bers were dependent upon it, as well as it upon them, and had wellnigh 
come to grief. The moral applies to the Survey at this day. 
All is said that can be said. If the reader is not convinced, then 
neither will he be, though one should arise from the dead. 
The Survey has been loyal to its work, loyal to the country in the 
hour of need in war, loyal within and beyond its line of duty, in season 
and out of season, in all times and places. Humphreys, Stevens, 
McClellan, Sherman, Thomas, Poe, Foster, and many others of the 
Army; Porter, DuPont, Craven, Davis, Wainwright, and many others 
of the Navy, attest its war record. The daily, monthly, yearly record 
of its civil career lies in its magnificent contributions to science in books 
and maps, and in the warm friendship of the whole country’s scientific 
and commercial life. 
The Survey has had, could have had, but little ambition save to do 
its duty. It has had daily danger, exposure, small emolument, no 
retired pay, no pension-list, nothing, in fact, but the privilege of doing 
its duty. Its revered chief, Professor Bache, sometimes soothed re- 
pining at ignorance of it in high quarters, by the wTords, “ Be patient; 
all will yet be well ; the day will come when the work will be appre- 
ciated.” Perhaps!—as in many another case, when those who have 
made it are not here to know. Ah, it was from his kindly nature that 
he judged too well of men ! The children of this world are in their 
generation wiser than the children of light. 
Yet, after all, the Survey has its reward in consciousness of having 
done its duty,—the highest reward possible to men ;—no body of men 
was ever more devoted to duty. That must be enough; it must, it 
seems, suffice. Then, at the worst, having lived nobly, it can as nobly 
die. Of the two greatest things, not even the gods can deprive a man. 
Fame is a trumpet and its words are wind that bloweth where it listeth. 
Fortune showers her favors on the deserving and the undeserving 
alike, and deserved or undeserved, they come and go. But the two 
things of which not even the gods can deprive a man, are to live and 
to die well. Like Achilles, the Survey has lived in the light of open 
day, fearing no man, invulnerable to attack in front. Like Achilles, it 
is capable of speaking winged words, because they are the words of 
truth. Like him, it is capable in its wrath of dragging its foe behind 
its chariot around the plain of Troy. And like him, it can, after 
having spoken, be silent, and as calmly die. 
“And as Achilles turned, with curving lip, 
Contemptuous, to his men, an arrow sang, 
And cleft the middle air, and dipped, and plunged 
Full on the naked marble of his foot. 
Through high-arched instep, ankle, and the strings 52 
THE COAST AND GEODETIC SURVEY. 
That bind the straining heel, it sped, and nailed 
The wolf-skin sandal to the crimson sand. 
Slow on one knee he sank, his strong, right hand 
Staying his fall, and watched with steady eye 
The full life draining from the wound, and spake,— 
‘ Mother, thy word was true. The end is come.’ 
Nor never spake again.” 
But the Survey is not yet ready to believe that it must die. Before 
the intelligence and justice of the American people its cause is to be 
tried. Small fear is there that the American people are not well repre- 
sented by the agency which has been selected for the trial in the form 
of the joint Commission of Congress.