and the paths of inquiry diverge: we may follow the personnel and its preparation, the matériel and its properties, the service and its requirements, the legislation and its methods, or the finances and their disbursements, but the short cut to the goal will be found in a consideration of the defects of the present system and their remedies.
And what is the present system of conducting the civil public works of the government?
It is in most instances a tentative, temporary, and temporizing policy, based upon appropriations made or withheld as circumstances may decree, and upon estimates which are generally greatly exaggerated to provide for such contingencies.
Some of the civil works for which appropriation bills are prepared are summarized by General Smith, as follows:
1. The Improvement of Rivers and Harbors, which, by precedent only, is in the hands of the Secretary of War, and carried on by the Engineer Corps of the Army.
2. The Coast and Geodetic Survey, under a bureau attached to the Treasury Department.
3. The Geological Survey, under the Interior Department.
4. The Survey of Public Lands, under the Interior Department.
5. Public Buildings, including court-houses, post-offices, mints, monuments, State and departmental offices, etc., mostly under the control of the Treasury Department.
6. The Meteorological or Weather Bureau, in the hands of the War Department, because the idea of collecting and uttering the data originated in the brain of a clever army officer, who organized the Signal Service of the army and became head of a bureau for its administration.
7. The Agricultural Bureau, belonging to the Department of the Interior.
8. The Bureau for the Administration of the Light-House System, which is an appendage to the Treasury Department.
9. The National Observatory, which, with its varied duties, is assigned to the Navy Department,—a disposition which could hardly be explained without going into a history of the passage of the law creating the bureau.
10. The Bureau of Patents, one of the largest and most important of the administrative bureaus of the government. This is under the Interior Department.
11. The Inspection of Hulls and Boilers of Steamers, under laws and regulations for the protection and preservation of life and property afloat,—a branch controlled by the Treasury Department.
12. The Bureau of Pisciculture.
Such are the principal bureaus requiring the services of specialists and a technical training of a broad range, covering the mathematical, physical, chemical, and natural sciences with their applications. The incongruity of the assignments to the departments is at once apparent; and it may well be asked, why should the Treasury Department, which
