Beyond The Hundredth Meridian Part 8

He wanted to map, carefully, with a consistent system of symbols and colors, and on a scale large enough to serve all normal foreseeable uses, the 3,000,000 square miles of the United States.

4. Maps for a Nation

You claim this to be a map of the United States?

Yes, sir; in one sense; a skeleton map.

Including a part of Mexico and a part of Canada, our neighboring countries?

Yes, sir.

Where did you get that map?

From a great variety of sources; it would be a long story to give you all of them. Several hundred original sources were consulted.

This represents the configuration and dimensions of the United States in every direction?

Yes, sir; imperfectly.

As well as its political divisions?

Yes, sir; but not with any great degree of accuracy.

Then we have no official map of the United States defining its frontiers in respect to foreign nations, except, perhaps, on the coast?

No, sir; no general map of the United States which gives its proper relation to other countries.

Likewise we have no official map showing the boundaries of the political divisions of the United States?

No, sir; not with any degree of accuracy.

Nor of the Territories and the District of Columbia?

No, sir; only so far as the topographic work of the Geological Survey has progressed.

We have no complete official map showing either the outline of our territory on land or sea, or showing the boundaries of the political divisions within the domain?

That is true.

(Major Powell before the Joint Committee of Congress, Dec. 19, 1885.)

Once the entire continent lay sunny and unknown with no names on its face, a vast Unity of ignorance. The fragmentation of Unity began with the first map and continued with every step of the European seizure, every increment to recorded knowledge. From the time when the Portuguese Diego Ribero incorporated on his 1539 map the discoveries of Magellan, and so anch.o.r.ed the uncertain continent of North America in approximately its proper place, the record was one of a gradual dispelling of the mists, a gradual clarification of the roil of speculation, superst.i.tion, guesswork, wishfulness, fear, and misunderstanding. What ignorance had been able to generalize, knowledge had to particularize, and that was a long process.1 The America that shows in Abraham Ortelius' The America that shows in Abraham Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern world atlas, published in 1570, has an immensely wide top penetrated deep down by an Arctic sea. It has no Alaska, no Great Lakes. It is a vague outline struggling toward definition, the kind of continent that could still contain Northwest Pa.s.sages and other wonders, and from whose edges men would sail up the James or the Potomac or the Hudson or the St. Lawrence hopefully looking for the Great South Sea. On those early maps California drifts in and out of the mists, now a nameless peninsula, as in Mercator's map of 1569, now an island. It did not get permanently tied down to the continent until DeLisle's map of North America in 1700. the first modern world atlas, published in 1570, has an immensely wide top penetrated deep down by an Arctic sea. It has no Alaska, no Great Lakes. It is a vague outline struggling toward definition, the kind of continent that could still contain Northwest Pa.s.sages and other wonders, and from whose edges men would sail up the James or the Potomac or the Hudson or the St. Lawrence hopefully looking for the Great South Sea. On those early maps California drifts in and out of the mists, now a nameless peninsula, as in Mercator's map of 1569, now an island. It did not get permanently tied down to the continent until DeLisle's map of North America in 1700.

And even after the outlines began to come into focus, the interior was guesswork and mystery and misunderstanding mixed with a few facts. One example taken from Powell's own part of the country will ill.u.s.trate. Father Escalante and Don Bernardo de Miera, talking with the Indians in Utah Valley in 1776, heard of a great lake to the north and of a salt lake to the south of the Lago de los Timpanogos (Utah Lake) which partially filled their valley. On his map,2 Miera correctly joined the northern lake (Great Salt Lake) to his Lago de los Timpanogos by a short strait (Jordan River). He was not too far wrong in the Rio de los Yamparicas which he brought into the northern lake from the northwest: that was either the Bear or the Weber, or a confused mixture of the two. Out of that northern and larger section of the Laguna de los Timpanogos, however, Miera drew a great and nameless westward flowing river, and that was a river of fable. Miera correctly joined the northern lake (Great Salt Lake) to his Lago de los Timpanogos by a short strait (Jordan River). He was not too far wrong in the Rio de los Yamparicas which he brought into the northern lake from the northwest: that was either the Bear or the Weber, or a confused mixture of the two. Out of that northern and larger section of the Laguna de los Timpanogos, however, Miera drew a great and nameless westward flowing river, and that was a river of fable.

The southern, brackish lake that the Indians spoke of was Sevier Lake. Miera named it Laguna de Miera, gave it vague and indeterminate extensions into the westward tierra incognita, tierra incognita, and endowed it too with some fabulous rivers: the Rio Salado, an affluent from the southeast, and the Rio de San Buenaventura, a much larger affluent from the northeast. This last was a confused mixture of the Sevier and the Green. and endowed it too with some fabulous rivers: the Rio Salado, an affluent from the southeast, and the Rio de San Buenaventura, a much larger affluent from the northeast. This last was a confused mixture of the Sevier and the Green.

There were considerable elements of truth in Miera's and Escalante's geography, and in the map which Baron von Humboldt, drawing upon their exploration as upon the explorations of all the Spanish adventurers and priests in the West, published in 1808. All Humboldt did to Miera's geography was to switch the Yamparicas around so that it came into the Laguna de los Timpanogos from the west, and to leave Miera's name off Sevier Lake.

Humboldt's was a tremendously influential map; it was the only map. But the elements of fable in it would not be dispelled for a long time, for upon the base of this Miera-Humboldt map were imposed the additions of information - fact and myth - brought home by Lewis and Clark. Lewis and Clark had (after missing its mouth twice) discovered the Willamette, which they called the Multnomah, flowing north into the Columbia. They thought it must drain that vast unknown interior south of the Snake River as far down as the 37th parallel, and they drew it on their map as coming from far to the south and east.

Later map makers drew conclusions and made improvements. The two parts of the Laguna de los Timpanogos were compressed into one, the great nameless river that Miera and Humboldt had shown draining it to the west was attached to the trailing end of Lewis and Clark's Multnomah, and the maps, with their misconceptions, were inseparably joined. For years those mythical rivers flowed westward from the half-formulated mountains and half-defined lakes. Different cartographers gave them different names: the Buenaventura ran straight westward into San Francis...o...b..y on one map; on another the Timpanogos, on still another the Multnomah; they flowed sometimes from the Laguna de los Timpanogos, sometimes from the Lago Salado which had replaced the Laguna de Miera. Eventually the Buenaventura, squeezed out of the Great Basin, got itself mixed up with the Sacramento and acquired a new lease on life. The other rivers - Multnomah, Timpanogos, Mongos, Salado - disappeared before the eyes of the mountain men who came poking into the deserts looking for beaver, excitement, knowledge, wonder, whatever else.

Yet as late as 1828 there could be published in New York a Mapa de Los Estados Unidos de Mejico Mapa de Los Estados Unidos de Mejico ... ... construido por los mejores autoridades construido por los mejores autoridades3 which still clung to most of Miera's misconceptions and some of the embroiderings of later cartographers. The Rio Timpanogos still bravely drained the Great Basin into something like a fusion of Drake's Bay and San Francis...o...b..y. The Rio Buenaventura still came down from the region of the Wind River Mountains where the Green did actually rise, and it combined itself as in Miera with the Sevier, and emptied into the Lago Salado. Out of the Rio Salado, in defiance of the law which says that salt lakes have no outlets, went a continuing great river, the Buenaventura, to join the Pacific in the vicinity of Morro Bay. On that map the Colorado River headed near the headwaters of the Del Norte (Rio Grande) and ran almost straight southwest to the Gulf of California. The Gila joined it at right angles, precisely at its mouth. which still clung to most of Miera's misconceptions and some of the embroiderings of later cartographers. The Rio Timpanogos still bravely drained the Great Basin into something like a fusion of Drake's Bay and San Francis...o...b..y. The Rio Buenaventura still came down from the region of the Wind River Mountains where the Green did actually rise, and it combined itself as in Miera with the Sevier, and emptied into the Lago Salado. Out of the Rio Salado, in defiance of the law which says that salt lakes have no outlets, went a continuing great river, the Buenaventura, to join the Pacific in the vicinity of Morro Bay. On that map the Colorado River headed near the headwaters of the Del Norte (Rio Grande) and ran almost straight southwest to the Gulf of California. The Gila joined it at right angles, precisely at its mouth.

In his instructions to Lewis and Clark, Jefferson had spoken disparagingly of the Spanish maps, but it was decades before American exploration provided something materially better. One of the final acts in that long drama of clarification was Powell's exploration of the Colorado and the country back from its canyons. He had played a part in disproving fable, added to the sum of knowledge. And in doing so he had, inevitably, contributed to complexity. His Plateau Province had little of that grand simplicity and unity that Gilpin's . and Sam Adams' had; his West, the more he learned about it, became less and less a single thing susceptible to Jeffersonian agrarian-ism, laissez faire inst.i.tutions, Common Law practice, or the Land Office surveys. Whether it occurred to him or not, he was in the position of the evolutionist who according to Henry Adams had succeeded in bewildering himself by his own study of change in form and force. "The wisest of men," Adams said, "could but imitate the Church, and invoke a 'larger synthesis' to unify the anarchy again."

A larger synthesis. Specifically, a topographic map laid down on the scale of four miles to the inch for desert areas, two miles to the inch for most of the country, and one mile to the inch for special industrial districts. This map to be divided into quadrangles bounded by parallels and meridians, and printed on sheets seventeen by twenty inches. The smallest-scale map thus would cover a s.p.a.ce of one degree of longitude by one degree of lat.i.tude, the middle-sized one thirty minutes by thirty minutes, the largest fifteen by fifteen. Most areas were surveyed by the method Powell had borrowed from the King Survey and had used from the very first. An initial point was determined by astronomical observations, a base line was measured from it, and from the two ends of the base line a triangulation network extended in all directions. Elevations were established by barometrical measurement ( Gilbert devised a three-barometer method that gave additional accuracy) and by leveling, and were checked against the known elevations determined by the Coast and Geodetic Survey and the railroads. Elevations were expressed in contours, which were harder for the inexperienced to read but much more accurate than the hachures that Wheeler had preferred. The two-miles-to-the-inch scale was large enough to show not only every hill and valley of any size, but the most important cultural features - towns and villages, ca.n.a.ls, railroads, roads. Those quadrangle maps could be, and have been, useful to every sort of citizen, whether a farmer wanting to establish the fall of an irrigation ditch or a city official authorizing a suburban development or a vacationer planning a trip into the back country. Upon them, too, could be overprinted in colors, at first by lithography but later by cheaper and more flexible engraving on copper, the surface geology or the hydrography or the land cla.s.sification or the ethnography or whatever other scientific data were desired. Where the Land Office maps showed a hopeful homesteader nothing but the two-dimensional outline and location of his land, maps like these could tell him its alt.i.tudes (and consequently its desirability for irrigation or for various crops), its cla.s.sification as desert, swamp, timber, arable, pasturage, or irrigable land, its water supply, whether spring or creek or pond, seasonal or permanent, its degree of settlement when the map was made, the development of its roads and improvements, and its more or less precise position with relation to the fixed meridians and parallels. Powell was not planning maps for the mining industry, as King might have, or for land disposal, as the General Land Office long had; he was planning maps for a nation.

Characteristically, he took on more than he could finish. He was a Thor, always getting caught in an attempt to drink the ocean dry or uproot the Midgard serpent. In the year after he took over from King he was confined to the public lands, but he immediately restored topography as a Survey activity, rehired his brother-in-law, Thompson, whom King had let go, and had a party mapping in the vicinity of Fort Wingate, New Mexico. The next year, with his enlarged appropriation and his authorization to map the whole country, he collated the usable work already done by his own and the other surveys, including the state surveys, and he divided the nation into seven districts and began work in six of them, with Henry Gannett in general charge of all topographical surveying. He threw a third and more of his appropriation toward topography, which he considered the prerequisite to accurate geological work. He hit the line like a fullback, and he made about a yard. After his first optimistic report ( 1882-83 )4 in which he had summarized the accomplishments of previous surveys and presented a map showing the areas adequately mapped already and those still needing surveys, his reports of progress were increasingly unsatisfactory to a Congress wanting to be shown miracles. In 1884 he could report 57,508 square miles surveyed and mapped during the year. The next season, after a considerable currying by committees, he stepped it up to 81,829 square miles, but when the Congressional pressure was relieved, the 1886-87 accomplishment dropped back to 55,684. In 1885 he had to admit to a Joint Committee that not a single sheet of the map was printed and that only thirteen were engraved. in which he had summarized the accomplishments of previous surveys and presented a map showing the areas adequately mapped already and those still needing surveys, his reports of progress were increasingly unsatisfactory to a Congress wanting to be shown miracles. In 1884 he could report 57,508 square miles surveyed and mapped during the year. The next season, after a considerable currying by committees, he stepped it up to 81,829 square miles, but when the Congressional pressure was relieved, the 1886-87 accomplishment dropped back to 55,684. In 1885 he had to admit to a Joint Committee that not a single sheet of the map was printed and that only thirteen were engraved.5 The total area covered by atlas sheets engraved up to June 30, 1887, was approximately 250,000 square miles: By 1894, when Powell retired as director of the Geological Survey, he reported 619,572 square miles surveyed and mapped - approximately one fifth of the United States. Some quadrangles had been compiled from earlier surveys, some done by state surveys working under matching-funds agreements, most by the Geological Survey's own parties. And already some of them were having to be done over. The total area covered by atlas sheets engraved up to June 30, 1887, was approximately 250,000 square miles: By 1894, when Powell retired as director of the Geological Survey, he reported 619,572 square miles surveyed and mapped - approximately one fifth of the United States. Some quadrangles had been compiled from earlier surveys, some done by state surveys working under matching-funds agreements, most by the Geological Survey's own parties. And already some of them were having to be done over.

When Congress investigated government scientific bureaus in 1884-85 and called on Powell to justify his topographical expenditures, he said he could finish the work in twenty-four years at a cost of $18,000,000. Some members of Congress a little later were ready to bet him that he couldn't do it in a hundred years for a hundred million, and though they ignored what was palpably true - that the maps were worth anything they cost, and more - they were closer to right than he was. By December,1952, with the costs approaching the $100,000,000 Powell's worst enemies had extravagantly predicted, 10,500 quadrangle maps on scales ranging from 1:24,000 to 1:250,000 had been published by the Geological Survey. The original estimate had guessed that 2600 quadrangles would complete the whole map, but the 10,500 completed by 1952 represented only about sixty per cent of the country.6 Even while he was energetically pus.h.i.+ng his topographical work, Powell got trouble from both sides. Certain members of Congress, notably Representative Hilary Herbert of Alabama, attacked all the surveys as too detailed and expensive, and certain rivals, particularly the Coast and Geodetic Survey whose triangulation across the continent was much more painstaking than Powell's topographical triangulation, denounced Powell's as not detailed enough. Powell himself believed he was building, if not for the ages, then for a long time to come. He foresaw no uses, except possibly irrigation works, which would demand a special engineering survey, or the determination of the exact shape of the earth, which was the business of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, that his own maps would not serve. He admitted he was not absolutely accurate; he insisted that he was accurate enough.

Congressman Herbert's criticisms, read now, do not give him a high rating for prophecy, or even for intelligence. Powell and the Coast Survey were both right, Powell in his actionist policy of providing good maps as quickly as possible, the Coast Survey in insisting that the most accurate survey methods would eventually have to be applied. They are being applied now - but meantime the nation has had the use of Powell's maps for a mult.i.tude of purposes.

The Chief of the Map Information Office of the Geological Survey reported in 1952 that though more than half of the United States was topographically surveyed and mapped by that year, only about twenty-five per cent was mapped on the scale needed for contemporary planning.7 Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico were adequately mapped, no other states or territories were. And Kentucky, which was then beginning a five-year co-operative mapping project in conjunction with the Geological Survey (a pattern of collaboration between state and federal surveys that Powell inaugurated in 1883) was committed to a scale twice as large as Powell's largest. A scale of 1:62,500 such as Powell used in his collaborative survey of Ma.s.sachusetts was larger than he thought necessary for any but the most special uses. Kentucky will be mapped at 1:24,000, or one inch to two thousand feet. Presumably, so will much of the rest of the United States, and before the atlas is completed at that scale, it may be overtaken again by newer needs and newer methods. The larger synthesis is like a temporary platform erected in the raising of a building. The building itself overtakes it, the unity is formed only to be swamped in multiplicity again, to become one more complication in the maze of complexity. Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island, and Puerto Rico were adequately mapped, no other states or territories were. And Kentucky, which was then beginning a five-year co-operative mapping project in conjunction with the Geological Survey (a pattern of collaboration between state and federal surveys that Powell inaugurated in 1883) was committed to a scale twice as large as Powell's largest. A scale of 1:62,500 such as Powell used in his collaborative survey of Ma.s.sachusetts was larger than he thought necessary for any but the most special uses. Kentucky will be mapped at 1:24,000, or one inch to two thousand feet. Presumably, so will much of the rest of the United States, and before the atlas is completed at that scale, it may be overtaken again by newer needs and newer methods. The larger synthesis is like a temporary platform erected in the raising of a building. The building itself overtakes it, the unity is formed only to be swamped in multiplicity again, to become one more complication in the maze of complexity.

Today there are more than two dozen government bureaus engaged wholly or partially in the preparation and printing and use of maps. Their work is so intricate, complex, and overlapping that it takes a special agency to keep them straight with the public. Geological Survey, Coast and Geodetic Survey, Bureau of Land Management, Hydrographic Office, Corps of Engineers, Forest Service, Bureau of Reclamation, Office of Indian Affairs, International Boundary Commission, Lake Survey, Post Office Department, Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, Bureau of Public Roads, Soil Conservation Service, TVA, National Resources Committee, OSS, Navy, Air Force, the prodigious Army Map Service, have proliferated out of the handful of map producing and map using agencies since Powell's time. There is often close co-operation among them, and undoubtedly there is some duplication. But their continued existence makes one thing abundantly clear: that though the Geological Survey remains the chief mapping bureau of the federal government, Powell's hope of providing map sheets good enough to meet all foreseeable needs was a pipedream.

Yet the roughly 10,500 sheets completed in the first seventy years are the most important maps ever made in America, if we measure them by actual distribution and use. In the beginning Powell did not even have authority to print topographical maps, except in small quant.i.ties for the use of his own staff, for they could be justified only as preliminary to the geological map of the United States. By 1885 he was beginning to have so many calls for them that, he had to press for sanction of their publication and sale. By 1952 more than twenty-three million of them had been distributed.

Nevertheless, the larger synthesis couldn't quite synthesize, foresight could not sufficiently foresee. Good as they were and are, the topographical quadrangles of the Geological Survey could not serve every need that arose.8 Industrious as their production has been, they could not in seventy years cover much more than half of the nation's area. Carefully as Powell worked out his system of symbols and colors, later and greater experience would modify it. And accurate as was the Hoffman-King triangulation method, later methods, especially aerial photography, whose possibilities Powell overlooked, would revolutionize mapping. Industrious as their production has been, they could not in seventy years cover much more than half of the nation's area. Carefully as Powell worked out his system of symbols and colors, later and greater experience would modify it. And accurate as was the Hoffman-King triangulation method, later methods, especially aerial photography, whose possibilities Powell overlooked, would revolutionize mapping.

The topographical atlas of the United States as Powell planned it is only now nearing completion, and when it is done it will be the accomplishment of the Army Map Service, not of the civilian agency Powell established. The detailed geological atlas which Powell planned as a second step is, in its perfected state, a project for the twenty-first century.9 But the Geological Survey remains what Powell more than any other man made it: the authoritative source of cartographical information. Even the Army Map Service's topographical atlas is printed by the Survey's Map Information Office, and in most respects the mapping of the United States has been since the eighteen-eighties largely a civilian operation for the benefit of the whole nation. Though his individual maps have been in large part superseded, the inst.i.tution which he created for making them, and the general plan of attack which he outlined, are as solid as when they were laid out. Solider, for in 1952 government investment in science has few enemies. In the eighteen-eighties it had plenty. But the Geological Survey remains what Powell more than any other man made it: the authoritative source of cartographical information. Even the Army Map Service's topographical atlas is printed by the Survey's Map Information Office, and in most respects the mapping of the United States has been since the eighteen-eighties largely a civilian operation for the benefit of the whole nation. Though his individual maps have been in large part superseded, the inst.i.tution which he created for making them, and the general plan of attack which he outlined, are as solid as when they were laid out. Solider, for in 1952 government investment in science has few enemies. In the eighteen-eighties it had plenty.

5. Spies and Whisperers

THE ORGANIZATION, reorganization, and disorganization of government science in the eighteen-eighties was similar in many ways to the organization, reorganization, and disorganization of government welfare in the nineteen-thirties. The motive power was not a depression and a social revolution, as in the nineteen-thirties, but a scientific revolution. The aim was not the correction of catastrophe, but the seizing of opportunity. The tone was not desperate, but hopeful. But the result was in each case a sudden multiplication of government bureaus, a p.r.o.nounced s.h.i.+ft of the national emphasis as reflected in budget bills, an intense and often wrathy debate about the propriety of governmental intrusion into the preserves of private enterprise, private scholars.h.i.+p, private charity. It was as inevitable as that apples fall off trees that Major Powell, being one of the truly effective creators of the system of government science, should acquire, inherit, or create antagonism. reorganization, and disorganization of government science in the eighteen-eighties was similar in many ways to the organization, reorganization, and disorganization of government welfare in the nineteen-thirties. The motive power was not a depression and a social revolution, as in the nineteen-thirties, but a scientific revolution. The aim was not the correction of catastrophe, but the seizing of opportunity. The tone was not desperate, but hopeful. But the result was in each case a sudden multiplication of government bureaus, a p.r.o.nounced s.h.i.+ft of the national emphasis as reflected in budget bills, an intense and often wrathy debate about the propriety of governmental intrusion into the preserves of private enterprise, private scholars.h.i.+p, private charity. It was as inevitable as that apples fall off trees that Major Powell, being one of the truly effective creators of the system of government science, should acquire, inherit, or create antagonism.

His enemies matured along with his power, and like his power they were personal, scientific, and political, sometimes all in one and sometimes separately. He moved in a scientific world, so that his personal and scientific enemies merged. His political enemies were sometimes personal and sometimes merely anti-scientific, or anti-federal, but more often than either they were the representatives of vested interests or petrified beliefs which seemed to be threatened by Powell's policies. Their essential tone was set by the Western Senators and Congressmen who stomped his Arid Region proposals to death in 1879; their full hatred would not be generated for a decade, when it would drown whole days and weeks of congressional debates and committee hearings in adrenalin and bile. Congressmen were his most dangerous enemies because they were, as law-makers, the immediate source from which he derived power. Personally and scientifically Powell could be attacked but hardly hurt; politically he could be destroyed. And it was mainly as eaves-droppers, whisperers, and spies for these politicians that Powell's personal and scientific enemies, always lurking behind the arras, could hope to be effective.

Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, like a bull elk defeated and driven from the herd by a younger rival, had all but retreated from Was.h.i.+ngton after King's appointment in April, 1879. His health grew steadily worse.1 He was, moreover, in spite of his personal weaknesses and his dislike of Powell, not so murderously envious as some of his followers, so that after 1879 he caused Powell no trouble. The Geological Survey was very truly a consolidation, and contained men of all four of the earlier Western surveys among its personnel, but one man it could never placate was Professor E. D. Cope. He was, moreover, in spite of his personal weaknesses and his dislike of Powell, not so murderously envious as some of his followers, so that after 1879 he caused Powell no trouble. The Geological Survey was very truly a consolidation, and contained men of all four of the earlier Western surveys among its personnel, but one man it could never placate was Professor E. D. Cope.2 He took over Hayden's place as leader of the anti-Powell forces among scientists; he sedulously beat the bushes for disgruntled former employees who might talk spitefully against Powell or Marsh. He and his engineer Fred Endlich made every effort to suborn Gannett, Holmes, Peale, and other former Hayden men from loyalty to the Survey. Undoubtedly much of his detestation for Powell was a spilling over of his monomaniac hatred of Marsh, now enjoying a comfortable appropriation as Powell's paleontologist, but that did not lessen its malevolence. Cope was a character out of fiction, a distinguished scientist with an emotional life like that of the villain of a Jacobean tragedy. The very bones of Tertiary mammals, as he cleaned and arranged them in his Philadelphia home, cried out to him "Revenge!" Vanity and hatred stained Marsh's career, but they utterly corroded Cope's. He resisted Powell's efforts to bring him into the fold, and as he could, through his connection with the holdover work of the Hayden Survey, he did everything in his power to disrupt the bureau. His vote against the committee's report in the National Academy in 1878, a vote which he cast because he knew the report stemmed from Powell, had put him in a minority of one. He submitted an angry and ineffectual minority report to Congress in that squabble, and in later years he never changed his position by a hair. He took over Hayden's place as leader of the anti-Powell forces among scientists; he sedulously beat the bushes for disgruntled former employees who might talk spitefully against Powell or Marsh. He and his engineer Fred Endlich made every effort to suborn Gannett, Holmes, Peale, and other former Hayden men from loyalty to the Survey. Undoubtedly much of his detestation for Powell was a spilling over of his monomaniac hatred of Marsh, now enjoying a comfortable appropriation as Powell's paleontologist, but that did not lessen its malevolence. Cope was a character out of fiction, a distinguished scientist with an emotional life like that of the villain of a Jacobean tragedy. The very bones of Tertiary mammals, as he cleaned and arranged them in his Philadelphia home, cried out to him "Revenge!" Vanity and hatred stained Marsh's career, but they utterly corroded Cope's. He resisted Powell's efforts to bring him into the fold, and as he could, through his connection with the holdover work of the Hayden Survey, he did everything in his power to disrupt the bureau. His vote against the committee's report in the National Academy in 1878, a vote which he cast because he knew the report stemmed from Powell, had put him in a minority of one. He submitted an angry and ineffectual minority report to Congress in that squabble, and in later years he never changed his position by a hair.

Spite and ambition can be direct or devious. From the moment when Powell, at Hayden's request, undertook to see the unpublished Hayden reports through the press, Cope dragged his feet. His work on paleontology was to make up Volumes III and IV of the Hayden series. First he tried to build up each volume into two book-length parts and in that way stretch his contribution to four volumes. Throughout 1882 he kept gathering new bones and adding new sections to the ma.n.u.script and new plates to the ill.u.s.trations. In May, 1883, a series of letters and telegrams from Powell and Pilling3 failed to extract a finished ma.n.u.script from Cope, and the Public Printer stopped work on the book in disgust. In consultation, Powell and Hayden agreed that it was best to publish the work as it then stood, without further additions, and persuaded the printer to resume its preparation. But Cope balked. His book was not finished and he would permit no partial publication. failed to extract a finished ma.n.u.script from Cope, and the Public Printer stopped work on the book in disgust. In consultation, Powell and Hayden agreed that it was best to publish the work as it then stood, without further additions, and persuaded the printer to resume its preparation. But Cope balked. His book was not finished and he would permit no partial publication.

There the matter stood, with Cope holding the specimens, with part of Volume III set up and the plates engraved, and with an irritated Powell standing between an angry Public Printer and an angrier Professor Cope. Sometime during the months-long deadlock Cope showed his teeth. He sent back a batch of proof to Holmes, in direct charge of the Hayden publications, and in a postscript added, "Can't we scotch Powell?"4 Holmes had been a Hayden man but he was not interested in puddling old blood. He showed the letter to Powell, who could afford to ignore it. Cope was blocked in the National Academy and in the government bureaus, and could do no harm. But then in July, 1884, Congress pa.s.sed the Sundry Civil Bill with a proviso: a Joint Commission should be appointed to investigate "the present organizations of the Signal Service, Geological Survey, Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department, with the view to secure greater efficiency and economy of administration of the public service in said Bureaus."5 That investigation was in part the work of Senators and Congressmen who, looking at Powell, had begun to ask themselves on what meat doth this our Caesar feed. In part it was a continuation of the 1874 and 1878 wrangles about the propriety of government in scientific research. Again, as in 1878, the National Academy was asked to submit a report, and again, as in 1878, Powell asked Marsh for permission to address the Academy's wise men. The value of his carefully nurtured connections, and his persuasiveness before committees, should again have paid off with a report entirely to his own liking. That investigation was in part the work of Senators and Congressmen who, looking at Powell, had begun to ask themselves on what meat doth this our Caesar feed. In part it was a continuation of the 1874 and 1878 wrangles about the propriety of government in scientific research. Again, as in 1878, the National Academy was asked to submit a report, and again, as in 1878, Powell asked Marsh for permission to address the Academy's wise men. The value of his carefully nurtured connections, and his persuasiveness before committees, should again have paid off with a report entirely to his own liking.

In the event, it did not quite work out that way. The Academy's committee heard Major Powell, but he had barely begun to outline his notions of how the government should organize its scientific bureaus when he was stricken with a recurrence of the iritis he had been suffering from, and had to be led back to his darkened room. The Committee later submitted a report with which Powell did not entirely agree, and in December the Joint Commission opened its hearings.

If it thought that it could really report to Congress by the third Monday in December, 1884, as it had been instructed to, the first days of hearings disillusioned the Joint Commission. It was the end of February, 1886, before it was ready to submit the 1100 pages of testimony it had gathered. When that testimony appeared, Powell occupied more of the 1100 pages than anyone else.

There were a number of questions the three Senators and three Representatives on the Commission wanted to ask Major Powell. Eugene Hale wanted to know how that clause about "continuing the preparation of a geological map of the United States" had got into the Sundry Civil Bill in 1882. Why Senator, Powell said, everyone understood about that. It was thoroughly discussed in terms of its implications for the extension of the Survey before it was pa.s.sed. But not everybody had had understood; a good many Congressmen understood now, some of them angrily, but they hadn't all understood then. And Hale, a member of the Appropriations Committee that permitted the clause to be written in, quite evidently had not understood it. Also, how about that word "continue" - an obviously deceptive word? Oh, that, Major Powell said. The Survey was already making topographical and geological maps in the Territories and the Public Lands states. This clause gave it the authority to continue the same work in the rest of the country. understood; a good many Congressmen understood now, some of them angrily, but they hadn't all understood then. And Hale, a member of the Appropriations Committee that permitted the clause to be written in, quite evidently had not understood it. Also, how about that word "continue" - an obviously deceptive word? Oh, that, Major Powell said. The Survey was already making topographical and geological maps in the Territories and the Public Lands states. This clause gave it the authority to continue the same work in the rest of the country.

Hale did not press the questioning too far; he was friendly enough, and so, in the main, were Chairman Allison of Iowa and the rest of the Commission. They gave Powell every courtesy, as if they were indeed a fact-finding committee and Powell was indeed their chief scientific informant. He explained to them why the Land Office Surveys, made without reference to geodetic points, sometimes out of line with the true meridians and parallels, and without topography, were useless for anything but land parceling. They sniffed for illegitimacies around his arrangement with Ma.s.sachusetts and New Jersey whereby the states paid part of the expenses of the survey and placed the conduct of the work in the hands of Major Powell. There was a technical illegitimacy, all right; Powell was as usual crowding the limits of his authority and a.s.suming a function not specifically allowed him by law. Yet there was nothing venal about this arrangement; it was obviously mutually beneficial; it demonstrated a laudable co-operativeness between state and federal agencies; it cost the general government nothing; it produced a better map. They pa.s.sed that question and went on.

They listened with attention while Powell read the statement he had prepared for the Academy on the organization of the scientific bureaus. The Academy in its report to the Commission had proposed a new cabinet Department of Science. Powell, fearing any mingling of military and civilian bureaus, proposed instead that all the "informational" bureaus - Geological Survey, Coast and Geodetic Survey, Signal Service, Fish Commission, Hydrographic Bureau, National Observatory, and National Museum - which was already there - be put under the directors.h.i.+p of the regents of the Smithsonian. That was where he himself had best liked to be; that was where the political winds blew least; that was, in fact, perhaps the best place that could have been suggested. But to put the bureaus there would take power from political or military hands and put it in hands that were scientific and perhaps even disinterested. Apparently no one seriously considered Powell's plan. As for the Academy's suggested Department of Science, that was opposed not only by Powell but by the Coast Survey, the Secretary of the Navy, and everyone else concerned.

Jealousies among bureaus cropped up: Though Powell went out of his way to credit the geodetic work of the Coast Survey, Coast Survey witnesses ungratefully doubted the worth of Powell's topography, and that too was an echo of the old debates of 1874 and 1878. The Academy-Powell plan of 1878 had recommended that the triangulation and topographical mapping of the continent be turned over to the Coast Survey, and perhaps by that concession Powell had for the time blunted the antagonism of General Patterson, the Superintendent. But now the Coast Survey was looking to the future. The survey of the coasts was nine tenths completed, and the princ.i.p.al work remaining concerned the belts of triangulation across the country by which the Coast Survey was meticulously working out the problem of the shape of the earth. These were a valuable preliminary to topographical mapping, as Powell admitted. The Coast Survey, fearing dissolution when the coasts were charted, would clearly welcome the authority to map the entire continent by its slow, careful, and expensive methods, and its witnesses therefore attacked Powell's maps as inaccurate. Powell replied, without heat, that when the width of a line on a map represented in itself a thousand feet or more, an error of a few feet was not vital, and could not even be shown. His triangulation, much faster and much cheaper, was accurate enough for mapping, though admittedly not for geodesy.

He was a sound, agile, and effective witness. Questions about the conduct of his own two bureaus he answered directly, frankly, and in great detail. He produced all his books and business forms, vouchers, receipts, regulations, and it was clear that his departments ran like fine watches and that in spite of his cunning status as special disburs.e.m.e.nt officer and his freedom from Congressional supervision in budget matters, he could account for every penny he spent. He went into his special arrangements with universities and with professors such as Marsh, and demonstrated that, as in his collaboration with the states, the scientific work of his bureaus gained by the relations.h.i.+p. He defended government science in all fields where the problems were too large for individuals or for private inst.i.tutions, but he warned against the politically ambitious: "Whenever the scientific works of the General Government fall out of the control of scientific men, and into the hands of officers or functionaries whose interest is not in all research, but only in official position and dignity, such a political inst.i.tution for the political advancement of science at once becomes severed from the great body of scientific men; it no longer takes a proper part in the great work to be done, and it speedily decays in influence and value,"6 He justified his appointments, his co-operation with states and universities, his publications, his maps, his expenditures, and he did so with confidence and dash. His handling of the Commission was like a skilled muleskinner's handling of a twenty-mule team. He thanked it for the chance to answer its questions. Blandly a.s.suming that the Commission was after facts and not anyone's scalp, he thanked it especially for the questions that he might have thought embarra.s.sing. He pointed out that the changes made in the organization of government science in 1879 had had important results, and he asked for more: "If the work thus begun can be continued through the labors of this Commission, and all of the scientific operations of the Government placed under efficient and proper control, scientific research will be established in America upon such a basis that the best and greatest results will accrue therefrom. The harvest that comes from well-directed and thorough scientific research has no fleeting value, but abides through the years, as the greatest agency for the welfare of mankind." 7 7 He could talk that way because he believed that way, and because the hearing gave him a chance to be a scientific missionary to Congress and the public. But there were those who thought the Joint Commission had been formed to smell out pollution rather than find facts, and who did their best to bring up old shoes and bits of clothing and other spoor to help the bloodhounds on the trail. In the midst of the hearings, in October, 1885, Fred Endlich, evidently on the suggestion of Cope, wrote letters to Holmes, Gannett, and A. C. Peale, all ex-Hayden men on Powell's staff. The one to Gannett was the model for the others: Dear Gannett -I presume you are aware of the fact that the Powell Survey is going to the wall. I have been called upon for certain information which I cannot just now get without calling on my friends. I want to know all about the deadheads on the survey, favoritism, misapplication of funds, waste of money, &c. If you are in the position to give me the information, I shall be very much obliged, and will remember it in the sweet by and by. Your name will not appear in any way, and I will ask you to keep this letter quiet....8 Unfortunately for the industrious Endlich, all three correspondents turned his letters over to Powell, so that Endlich and Cope had to sc.r.a.pe up their gossip from less authoritative sources. But they sc.r.a.ped it up. Before long it began to be known that a 23,000 word doc.u.ment blasting Powell was circulating among members of Congress, and in the December 19 meeting Representative Hilary Herbert of Alabama, the one definitely unfriendly member of the Joint Commission, had new and ugly questions to ask.

Was it true that not a single sheet of the map Powell had been working on for three years had been printed? Yes, it was true; none had been printed, though thirteen sheets had been engraved.9 Was it true that King, Wheeler, and the United States Geological Survey had all published voluminously on the Comstock Lode, and was it true that one of those books was not a scientific work at all but a history of the lode's discovery? And was it the province of a scientific bureau of government to publish the history of accidental discoveries, and was there anything in all that work on the Comstock that a private individual or corporation could not have done? Yes, and yes, and no, and yes. Under Herbert's grilling Powell had to admit that Elliott Lord's history of the Comstock, authorized by King, was a book he himself would not have undertaken. But he defended the extensive Comstock studies, he defended his own announced plan to send G. F. Becker to Spain to study quicksilver mines there, and he said that since it appeared outside his authority to send him with Geological Survey funds, he would ask the Smithsonian to send him. Well; how did he justify Dutton's being sent to Hawaii to study volcanoes? Did that have anything to do with a geological survey of the United States? No, sir, it did not. He had checked with the Secretary of the Treasury, found that he would not be authorized in sending Dutton with Geological Survey funds, and persuaded the Smithsonian to pay his expenses. Was it true that King, Wheeler, and the United States Geological Survey had all published voluminously on the Comstock Lode, and was it true that one of those books was not a scientific work at all but a history of the lode's discovery? And was it the province of a scientific bureau of government to publish the history of accidental discoveries, and was there anything in all that work on the Comstock that a private individual or corporation could not have done? Yes, and yes, and no, and yes. Under Herbert's grilling Powell had to admit that Elliott Lord's history of the Comstock, authorized by King, was a book he himself would not have undertaken. But he defended the extensive Comstock studies, he defended his own announced plan to send G. F. Becker to Spain to study quicksilver mines there, and he said that since it appeared outside his authority to send him with Geological Survey funds, he would ask the Smithsonian to send him. Well; how did he justify Dutton's being sent to Hawaii to study volcanoes? Did that have anything to do with a geological survey of the United States? No, sir, it did not. He had checked with the Secretary of the Treasury, found that he would not be authorized in sending Dutton with Geological Survey funds, and persuaded the Smithsonian to pay his expenses.

With the exception of the Lord book, which he could not defend, he parried Herbert's grilling, but the malice of Cope reached beyond Herbert, and threatened him scientifically as well as politically. Shortly after receiving the Cope charges, Herbert wrote to Alexander Aga.s.siz, who as the son of the revered Louis and as one of the world's great marine biologists had the highest standing in scientific circles. Herbert asked for information favorable to the Coast Survey - Aga.s.siz had worked closely with the Coast Survey and had published much of his work out of specimens collected on Coast Survey expeditions. But Herbert added that if the Geological Survey couldn't be confined it ought to be junked, and requested specific criticisms of Powell's topographical work, of the excessive Comstock coverage, anything else. Aga.s.siz replied promptly and in a way to please Powell's enemies: 10 10 He disapproved of government science (but he went into detail about the valuable contributions of the Coast Survey in geodesy, topography, and zoology). He dutifully disapproved of the work of King and Powell on the Comstock, and thought private individuals had learned nothing from the reports. He thought that economic geology should be left to the mining companies, paleontology to the universities and private individuals. He saw no reason why scientists should ask more of the government than literary men or artists or any of the other learned professions. He thought the publications of the government bureaus wasteful and extravagant. And though he granted that it was impossible to make a geological map without a good topographical map as a base, he felt that the failure of the states to authorize topographical maps meant that they didn't want the general government to go to that expense for them. He disapproved of government science (but he went into detail about the valuable contributions of the Coast Survey in geodesy, topography, and zoology). He dutifully disapproved of the work of King and Powell on the Comstock, and thought private individuals had learned nothing from the reports. He thought that economic geology should be left to the mining companies, paleontology to the universities and private individuals. He saw no reason why scientists should ask more of the government than literary men or artists or any of the other learned professions. He thought the publications of the government bureaus wasteful and extravagant. And though he granted that it was impossible to make a geological map without a good topographical map as a base, he felt that the failure of the states to authorize topographical maps meant that they didn't want the general government to go to that expense for them.

And that, because it came from Aga.s.siz, demanded an answer. Just why it came from Aga.s.siz at all, why the man whom Henry Adams admired next to Clarence King should not only allow himself to be used by an anti-intellectual States' rights politician but should in the act criticize the work of his friend and business partner King, is not so clear. Perhaps Aga.s.siz's close affiliation with the Coast Survey is enough explanation. Perhaps too he had already begun to cool off on Clarence King, perhaps he and Higginson had already begun to smell the rats in the London office which King ran but rarely entered, and perhaps the near-collapse of the company that Aga.s.siz's and Higginson's personal investigation would bring on within a year was already becoming an unpleasant possibility.11 Or perhaps, as Powell suggested, Aga.s.siz as a very rich man did not understand the difficulties that individual scientists without wealth encountered in following their research, and perhaps his grandiose plan for making his own museum at Harvard a center of American research was threatened by the swift expansion of government science. In any case his was too influential a voice to be ignored. As his last act before the Joint Commission Powell wrote a long and careful letter answering Aga.s.siz's general criticism. Or perhaps, as Powell suggested, Aga.s.siz as a very rich man did not understand the difficulties that individual scientists without wealth encountered in following their research, and perhaps his grandiose plan for making his own museum at Harvard a center of American research was threatened by the swift expansion of government science. In any case his was too influential a voice to be ignored. As his last act before the Joint Commission Powell wrote a long and careful letter answering Aga.s.siz's general criticism.12 He had one central question to ask of Aga.s.siz and those who honestly held Aga.s.siz's views: Was knowledge the private possession of an elite, or was it something broader? "Shall the work of scientific research and the progress of American civilization wait until the contagion of [Aga.s.siz's] example shall inspire a hundred millionaires to engage in like good works? Before that time comes scientific research will be well endowed by the people of the United States in the exercise of their wisdom and in the confident belief that knowledge is for the welfare of all the people." And to the view that the government might monopolize scientific work there was only one answer. "The learning of one man does not subtract from the learning of another, as if there were a limited quant.i.ty to be divided into exclusive holdings; so discovery by one man does not inhibit discovery by another.... That which one man gains by discovery is a gain of other men. And these multiple gains become invested capital, the interest on which is all paid to every owner, and the revenue of new discovery is boundless. It may be wrong to take another man's purse, but it is always right to take another man's knowledge, and it is the highest virtue to promote another man's investigation... "

That was the true crux of the hearings before the Joint Commission. At stake was Powell's concept of government science in areas where private initiative or private capital could not operate, the concept of publicly-supported science for the general welfare. Powell believed that such public science, far from robbing or suppressing private research, could by its centrality stimulate and encourage individuals, universities, or local governments, and on occasion could collaborate with them to their mutual benefit. Opposed to him was the notion of private property in science, the notion of Cope and Marsh and to a degree Aga.s.siz, rich men all with a proprietary feeling for their specialities. The proprietary sense was so developed in Cope and Marsh that they snarled and fought over every bleached bone, every note in a learned journal. It was somewhat unfortunate that Powell was allied with Marsh, for he was certain sooner or later to have his flank exposed by Marsh's intemperate feuds. But for the time being, at least, and thanks mainly to the quality of Powell's testimony, government science and especially the Geological Survey came out of the Commission's hearings in 1886 very much strengthened. The Coast Survey took a moderate thumping. The charges circulated by Cope and Endlich were not read into the record of the testimony, and the spies and whisperers slipped back behind the arras to await another chance. For a little while, at least, Major Powell would have the opportunity, relatively unhampered, to cultivate his "highest virtue."

V.

THE OPPORTUNITY.

1. Disaster on the Great Plains

TAKE THREE acts of G.o.d. acts of G.o.d.

In the West the winter of 1886 clenched and loosened and clenched in blizzard and cold snap and January thaw, cold again, blizzard again. Sometimes after sundown the sky was the clear green of forty below, and sometimes wind reached down out of the north to whine across the flats. Snow moved before it, dry as sand, light as smoke, s.h.i.+fting in long ropy trails, and white coned against clumps of gra.s.s and the broken clods of fields, long cone and dark hollow formed in furrows and the ruts of wagon trails, and deeply, with edges like scimitars, around the corners of shacks and sod-dies. In some of the shacks, after five days, a week, two weeks, a month, of inhuman weather, homesteaders would be burning their benches and tables and weighing the chances of a desperate dash to town - lonely, half-crazed Swedes, Norwegians, Russians, Americans, pioneers of the sod-house frontier. Sometimes they owned a team, a cow, a few chickens; just as often they had nothing but a pair of hands, a willingness to borrow and lend, a tentative equity in 160 acres of Uncle Sam's free soil, a shelf full or partly full or almost empty of dried apples, prunes, sardines, crackers, coffee, flour, potatoes, with occasionally a h.o.a.rded can of Copenhagen snus snus or a bag of sunflower seeds. More than one of them slept with his spuds to keep them from freezing. More than one, come spring, was found under his dirty blankets with his bearded grin pointed at the ceiling, or halfway between house and cowshed where the blizzard had caught him. or a bag of sunflower seeds. More than one of them slept with his spuds to keep them from freezing. More than one, come spring, was found under his dirty blankets with his bearded grin pointed at the ceiling, or halfway between house and cowshed where the blizzard had caught him.

Still farther west, out on the dry plains, the short-gra.s.s country, there were few shacks, but ranch houses crouched in the shelter of the river-belting cottonwoods along the valleys of the Powder, the Belle Fourche, the Cheyenne, the Niobrara, the Republican and Solomon and Smoky Hill. The ranchers were warm enough, their stocks of wood and shaly lignite sufficient even for such a winter as this. In some of them, men whose names adorned Burke's Peerage pigged-it between hunting trips with their Scottish or American managers.1 But out on the ranges where a single company might own three or four hundred thousand acres, and control as much more by owning its water or fencing in with its own land large chunks of the public domain, the cattle drifted, and where the snow was deep found nothing to eat, and where the brown gra.s.s was blown bare found the wind. With ice-coated backs humped to the wind they were pushed off the flats and into the bottoms and the drifts, or they were forced like logs in a sluggish current along the lines of fences until they packed together in the corners, unwilling to turn again into the wind that had driven them there. Riders going out when winter finally released the land found them by the hundreds uncovered by the thaws, longhorns or Oregon cattle, sometimes even whiteface and Angus from British breeding stock. They lay like carefully packed fish, their bellies bloated huge, mouths open, vents blown and distended as if poles had been run through them, stiff legs jutting from the swollen bodies like the wooden legs of toys. Flies were busy on the eyeb.a.l.l.s, and the spring-revived carrion beetles were so thick sometimes in a carca.s.s that it seemed to move. But out on the ranges where a single company might own three or four hundred thousand acres, and control as much more by owning its water or fencing in with its own land large chunks of the public domain, the cattle drifted, and where the snow was deep found nothing to eat, and where the brown gra.s.s was blown bare found the wind. With ice-coated backs humped to the wind they were pushed off the flats and into the bottoms and the drifts, or they were forced like logs in a sluggish current along the lines of fences until they packed together in the corners, unwilling to turn again into the wind that had driven them there. Riders going out when winter finally released the land found them by the hundreds uncovered by the thaws, longhorns or Oregon cattle, sometimes even whiteface and Angus from British breeding stock. They lay like carefully packed fish, their bellies bloated huge, mouths open, vents blown and distended as if poles had been run through them, stiff legs jutting from the swollen bodies like the wooden legs of toys. Flies were busy on the eyeb.a.l.l.s, and the spring-revived carrion beetles were so thick sometimes in a carca.s.s that it seemed to move.

The winter of 1886, the end of the big bonanza of the cattle industry, the point upon which the "cattle bubble" broke in London and Dundee and Aberdeen. British companies, taking advantage of the disaster to correct their inflated "book count" of cattle, reported as much as 65 per cent loss of their herds. Even an honest report would have shown a 15 to 30 per cent loss, enough to break some companies and weaken all but the strongest, both British and American. The cattle interests which had gone a good way toward engrossing the Great Plains were not precisely stopped in their tracks, but they were slowed down, their power and their will to fight for their privileges temporarily weakened. And not only the cattle interests but the nesters, squatters, pre-emptors, homesteaders who like young Hamlin Garland had hopefully planted their strad dlebug markers on quarter sections in the salubrious early years of the eighties, could take a warning. They began to comprehend how little stood between the Plains and the North Pole, and it began to be clear that neither their "improvements" nor their mortgages - the two things that all homesteaders had in common - could shelter them from the loneliness and the cold.2

The second act of G.o.d also began, on parts of the wheat frontier, in 1886. It too was a lesson in meteorology, but it did not come like a frantic, continued las.h.i.+ng from Heaven as the winter had. It was a slow starvation for water, and it lasted through 1887, 1888, 1889, into the eighteen-nineties. Homesteader hopes survived its first year; in fact, the speculative prices of land in eastern Dakota continued to spiral upward, and the rush to Indian Territory took place in the very heart of the dry years.3 By the second year the marginal settlers had begun to suffer and fall away; by the third the casualties were considerable. By the fourth it was clear to everybody that this was a disaster, a continuing disaster. What began in 1886 was a full decade of drouth, the cyclic drying-out that Powell had warned of in 1878. But since the late sixties increasing rainfall, with only one short drouth, had persuaded the westward-moving nation that settlement, sod busting, and tree planting modified the climate, evaporated more water into the air and milked the clouds down again as rain, made something out of nothing. A year's drouth could not shake that belief, two would not seriously damage it, three or four would not by any means destroy it. Nevertheless the rumble of dissatisfaction and the clamor for help - government help - would begin early. Within a very few years it would become articulate in the Populist movement, and for a brief while radical agrarian politics and the economics of Henry George would bend the stubborn trend of American inst.i.tutions. As stump-speaker and propagandist, busted-homesteader Hamlin Garland would help lead that last protest of the doomed Jeffersonian yeoman. But John Wesley Powell would have a better chance to do something practical about insuring the continued existence of the arid-belt farmer than any other man, and he would be angrily misunderstood and bitterly fought for his pains. Better than anyone else, he understood what was happening in the subhumid and arid lands, and he knew that not the railroads, for all their sins, nor the speculators and landlords, for all of theirs, nor the banks, fo