(Confidential)

PHILADELPHIA, PA., February 5th, 1889.

No. 4400 Sansom Street.

To Prof. O. B. Marsh

Assistant Coast and Geodetic Survey.

INasmuch as it is matter of notoriety that the appointment to the superintendency of the Coast and Geodetic Survey has lapsed through default of action of the present Administration; and that, through long-established precedent as to appointments, save as to exigencies, within a brief period of a new Administration, it will be made by the incoming Administration,—the undersigned deems it proper to present for the information of such officers of the Survey as may be interested in the fact, the definite platform upon which he wishes to accept the superintendency.

1. Certain changes have been introduced in the Survey during the last few years which he deems prejudicial to its morale, and therefore to its efficiency. He would therefore use his best endeavors, in the event of his appointment as Superintendent, to have all regulations that violate comity rescinded by the Department, and to raise the status of the Survey to the highest point of efficiency under the law.

2. The regulations are in some places framed, as regards directions and penalties, in terms such as are not properly addressed to officers and gentlemen, and in these lapses are not conducive to promoting and maintaining that wholesome

self-respect which should belong to every service assumed to be conducted by educated men.

3. While the office service has improved, and may even be said to be perfected, that of the field has proportionally declined. In a field service, singularly limited in personnel, where a single officer is often obliged to execute the whole instrumental work of a party, he is often also navigator, purveyor, accountant, and clerk. In a sphere of duty—the field—where mobility is of paramount necessity, it is largely ignored and often prevented. In that sphere of the service, where it is laid down as axiomatic that good instrumental work is conditioned upon the circumstance that the observer shall be at ease, such trammels have been imposed on his administrative acts, that if desirous to produce the maximum amount of real work, he must accomplish it at the expense of additional personal labor during periods which should be those of rest. This friction, mistaken for work, lessens production.

4. At a time when successive increases in pay, designated promotions, as the recompense of faithfulness to and efficiency in duty, had gradually, over a long term of years, been awarded to officers, a clause was introduced in the regulations fixing a relative status for field pay, full pay, and pay while awaiting instructions. This, going into effect without any corresponding increase in the salaries of officers, therefore had the effect of largely reducing all that long years of meritorious service had won. Contrasted with the manner in which the military branches of the Government are treated,

where even a longevity increase is recognized as the proper reward for long service, as an element entitling to consideration additionally to faithful and meritorious service, this action does not bear scrutiny.

5. The status of compulsory furlough without pay is illegal. It takes a collocation of words, individually established as to meaning by good general usage, and places a construction upon them which is supposed to render possible an impossibility. It ignores the mutuality of obligation. It places, under specious guise, in the hands of a Superintendent of the Survey a power which no Superintendent of the Survey should possess—that of virtually dismissing an officer from the service. It is not to be credited that a Secretary of the Treasury ever approved of this status, save unknowingly, in a signatory capacity, and, consequently, that any Secretary of the Treasury would deliberately maintain it.

6. Certain pay due officers under the law, under the regulations, and under special appropriation of Congress, has been withheld from them. For that and other just claims relating to disallowances, redress would certainly be obtained through a proper representation to the Department.

It is fruitless to promise what is not in the power to perform. But it may not be fruitless to declare that what may be in the power shall be performed. It is not visionary to believe that the Government, through the Secretary of the Treasury, will rectify, upon proper representation to him by the Superintendent of the Survey, evils which did not exist

at first upon the Survey, but which have been introduced of late years through leadership which lacked insight, through lacking sympathy, through lack of experience. The Superintendent of the Survey is not only the representative of the Government. He is also the representative of the officers of the Survey. He is the intermediary between the Government and the Survey's officers, representing the authority of the Government in the administration of the law, or rules under the law, and of its aim to obtain equal justice for both sides—the employer and employed. When that rule of conduct obtains in any corps, as it once did on the Survey, the officers are at their best in morale, and the Government is best served, with a zeal beyond price.

Without further specification, the undersigned, being pledged to himself to bring about these reforms, in the event of his receiving the appointment to the superintendency of the Survey, and under the other condition of his utmost endeavors being successful in the attempt to bring them about, can have no hesitation, and has none, in communicating to those whom it may concern the fact that he does so pledge himself to use his utmost endeavors, if appointed Superintendent, to secure justice to the officers of the Survey, whether with relation to the past or to the future, whether by his direct instance, argument, and appeal to the Department, or by his moral support in case the channel of application must be the Court of Claims.

R. Meade Baker