the publication and distribution of the reports, maps, and documents, and other results of said surveys.

The National Academy submitted its report to the House of Representatives on December 3, 1878 (House Executive Document No. 5, 45th Congress, 3d Session). In this report the academy, after briefly discussing the systems of survey then existing, recommended that the Coast and Geodetic Survey be transferred from the Treasury to the Interior Department and there take over all surveys of mensuration, including those being performed by the four surveys heretofore enumerated, as well as the work performed by the surveyors of the General Land Office. The report proceeds to state that:

The best interests of the public domain require, for the purposes of intelligent administration, a thorough knowledge of its geological structure, natural resources, and products. The domain embraces a vast mineral wealth in its soils, metals, salines, stones, clays, etc. To meet the requirements of existing laws in the disposition of the agricultural, mineral, pastoral, timber, desert, and swamp lands, a thorough investigation and classification of the acreage of the public domain is imperatively demanded. The committee, therefore, recommend that Congress establish, under the Department of the Interior, an independent organization, to be known as the United States Geological Survey, to be charged with the study of the geological structure and economical resources of the public domain, such survey to be placed under a Director, who shall be appointed by the President, and who shall report directly to the Secretary of the Interior.

The recommendations of this report were incorporated in the legislative, executive and judicial appropriation bill, and in this form favorably acted upon by the House, but in the Senate, owing to the congestion of business at the close of the session, and for other reasons not connected with the merits of the matter, these provisions failed of passage. In the resulting conference committee the provisions intended to con

solidate all surveys of mensuration in a single service to be organized around the Coast and Geodetic Survey were dropped, but the following was agreed on for insertion in the sundry civil appropriation bill:

For the salary of the Director of the Geological Survey, which office is hereby established, under the Interior Department, who shall be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, $6,000; provided, that this officer shall have the direction of the Geological Survey,5 and the classification of the public lands and examination of the Geological Structure,5 mineral resources, and products of the national domain, and that the Director and members of the Geological Survey shall have no personal or private interests in the lands or mineral wealth of the region under survey, and shall execute no surveys or examinations for private parties or corporations; and the geological and geographical survey of the Territories, and the geographical and geological survey of the Rocky Mountain region, under the Department of the Interior, and the geographical surveys west of the one hundredth meridian, under the War Department, are hereby discontinued, to take effect on the 30th day of June, 1879. And all collections of rocks, minerals, soils, fossils, and objects of natural history, archæology, and ethnology, made by the Coast and Interior Survey, the Geological Survey, or by any other parties for the Government of the United States, when no longer needed for investigations in progress, shall be deposited in the National Museum.

For the expenses of the Geological Survey and the classification of the public lands and examination of the geological structure, mineral resources and products of the national domain, to be expended under the direction of the Secretary of the Interior, $100,000. * *

The publications of the Geological Survey shall consist of the annual report of operations, geological and economic maps illustrating the resources and classification of the lands, and reports upon general and economic geology and paleontology. The annual report of operations of the Geological Survey shall accompany the annual report of the Secretary of the Interior. All special memoirs and reports of said Survey shall be issued

The capitalization of these words, which appears in the Statutes (Vol. 20, p. 394), is doubtless a typographical error.

in uniform quarto series if deemed necessary by the Director, but otherwise in ordinary octavos.

On March 3, 1879, the bill containing these provisions became law (20 Stat. L., 394).

Pursuant to the provisions of this law, the President appointed as Director of the Geological Survey, Clarence King, who, as already stated, had directed the geological exploration of the fortieth parallel. Mr. King organized a corps of geologists, most of whom had been connected with one or another of the former government surveys, among them being Major John W. Powell, who had conducted the exploration of the Colorado River and the geographical and geological survey of the Rocky Mountain region. This corps was organized by Mr. King in four sections, each to operate, under the direction of a chief, in a definite geographical district. For this purpose the territory west of the one hundred and second meridian was divided into four districts.

Extension of Operations to the Country at Large. As has been seen, the law of 1879 creating the Geological Survey authorized it to operate in the "national domain." This phrase was interpreted by Director King as referring only to "the region of the public land." At the same time, however, he urged upon the congressional committee the desirability of extending the operations of the Survey over the country as a whole. On June 28, 1879, the House of Representatives accordingly passed a joint resolution amending the act of March 3, 1879, by inserting after the words "national domain," the words, "and he may extend his examination into the states." In the Senate this joint resolution was reported back from committee with amendments authorizing such extension with the consent of the states, but it did not come to a vote.

The case for operations on a national scale was forcefully argued by the Director in his first annual report.

The great extent of the United States and the widely separated sources of the national resources render the acquisition by private citizens of information on almost any single product always difficult, often impossible.

As a direct result of the size of the country, the government and people have long been uninformed as to our primary industries; those, I mean, which yield the raw materials-mineral, vegetable, and animal.

To the Agricultural Department we owe the first reforms from this condition of wide-spread ignorance. In the realm of mineral productions the only efforts made to acquire any positive knowledge have been the highly useful, but feebly endowed, works of the late mining commissions, whose investigations were suffered to end for lack of appropria

tions.

Today no one knows, with the slightest approach to accuracy, the status of the mineral industry, either technically, as regards the progress and development making in methods, or statistically, as regards the sources, amounts, and valuations of the various productions.

Statesmen and economists, in whose hands rest the subjects of tariff and taxation, have no better sources of information than the guesses of newspapers and the scarcely less responsible estimates of officials who possess no adequate means of arriving at truth.

In no other intelligent nation is this so; on the contrary, mineral production is studied with the most elaborate effort. England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Italy consider it essential to know, from year to year, not only the source and aggregates of amount and value of mineral yield, but many lesser facts relating to the modes and economies of the industries.

Upon considering the extent of country over which our minerals occur, their wonderful variety and yet unmeasured amounts, it cannot fail to be apparent that no private individual or power is competent to do what ought long since to have been done, namely, to sustain a thoroughly practical investigation and exposition of the mineral industry.

By way of example, and to show how hopeless it is to look to any other source than the government for this service, I select iron.

The lack of comprehensive knowledge of the occurrence and distribution of iron, despite numerous state and private investigations, is then set forth at length:

To claim that the iron question will ever be adequately investigated as a whole, either by private enterprise or State surveys, is to betray a total lack of appreciation of the character, magnitude, and needs of the industry.

What is true of this single metal is equally true of nearly the whole catalogue of the mineral products of the United States. A few exceptional items, like quicksilver, occur in such restricted areas that private or State enterprises could contribute all the knowable facts and features of the business of production. But as a whole it is true, and can never be refuted, that the Federal Government alone can successfully prosecute the noble work of investigating and making known the natural mineral wealth of the country, current modes of mining and metallurgy, and the industrial statistics of production.

Provided Congress extends the field of the Geological Survey over the whole national territory, and appropriates the comparatively small amounts necessary for the maintenance of the organization, it will be entirely practicable to carry forward this work, and contribute powerful aid to the mineral industries. Of the desirableness, from every point of view, of the results of a general geological survey, I conceive there cannot be two opinions. That these results can only be attained by an organization under Federal patronage, is, in my opinion, scientifically certain.

It was not until two years later that the recommendation of the Director was adopted by Congress and then only in part. The sundry civil appropriation act of 1882 (act of August 7, 1882, 22 Stat. L., 329) added to the original words of appropriation, which had been repeated in the act of 1880 and 1881, the words, "and to continue the preparation of a geologic map of the United States." It will be observed that the provision for "examination of the mineral resources and products" which had been made in the original act with respect to the national domain was not by this act extended to the country at large. It was not indeed until 1888 that all re