Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/868

846 who get possession of high government offices are apt to be especially incompetent in all matters of science; and, consequently, they must, as a class, be the worst judges of the technical labors of scientific men. What, then, is to be done? The politicians impeach a scientific department for inefficiency, and the scientific men reply by a virtual protest against their capacity to judge of the conduct they condemn. In this they are right; but is it therefore inferable that the scientists are to be left to themselves, and exempted from scrutiny and criticism in the management of their affairs? This assuredly will not do; for if scientific men are qualified on one side, they are disqualified on another and very important side. Like other men, they are self-seeking, ambitious, and have their personal ends to gain. Can we assume that morally they are any better than their neighbors; or that, if they get possession of place and power, they will not use and pervert them to the promotion of their selfish objects? It is to be hoped that in the future science will become so developed as to react upon character and give us men morally as well as intellectually superior; but we are far from any such happy result as yet. Government has boundless wealth at command; it is a mighty patron. Everybody is tempted to get some private advantage through its influence, and scientific men are no exception to their fellow-citizens in exemplifying the general passion, and in desiring to get a share of government patronage. The "scientific politician" has made his appearance in Washington, and the political element in him will dominate the scientific. That he will be a lobbyist and intriguer, and become skilled in the art of getting favors and appropriations from Congress, is but to say that he will work according to his opportunities, objects, and the nature of the materials to be manipulated. An unsupervised and irresponsible scientific department at Washington would be run in the interest of its sharpest managers, would be filled with sinecures, give the least results at the greatest expense, while these results would be aggravated by the sense of exemption from criticism.

We draw a different conclusion from the fact that scientific men are the best judges of their own work, and the politicians who have got the national offices the poorest judges of it. We infer that duties which those officers can not perform in a proper manner they should not undertake. The policy of extending what may be called Government science at Washington is a bad one; whatever is indispensable must be tolerated, but with this qualification the less we have of it the better. The Coast Survey is a work of undoubted national necessity. Its investigations are essential to the national defense; it was begun long ago, in a small way, with no reference to any Government policy respecting the promotion of science; and it has been systematically prosecuted as a matter of unquestionable public importance. But the modern extensions of Government science, as the Department of Agriculture, for example, stand upon no such ground. They have not been called into existence by any special or urgent needs of the state, or to subserve any legitimate function of Government; but they have come through the agency of scheming and ambitious scientific men who sought official power for the advancement of their own objects. Under such inspiration the national Government has entered into rivalry with the private investigators of the country to promote research, develop resources, and accumulate useful knowledge for the people. Millions of money are now spent on investigations of all kinds, on collections and surveys, buildings, apparatus, salaries, and publications made at extravagant cost, and which are without that warrant of necessity which should be