REPORT OF S. P. LANGLEY, SECRETARY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, FOR THE YEAR ENDING JUNE 30, 1897. To the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. GENTLEMEN: I have the honor to present herewith the Secretary's report, showing the operations of the Institution during the year ending June 30, 1897, including the work placed under its direction by Congress in the United States National Museum, the Bureau of American Ethnology, the International Exchanges, the National Zoological Park, and the Astrophysical Observatory. Following the custom of several years, I have in the body of this report given a general account of the affairs of the institution and its bureaus, while the appendix presents more detailed statements by the persons in direct charge of the different branches of the work. Independently of this, the operations of the National Museum are fully treated in a separate volume of the Smithsonian Report prepared by Acting Assistant Secretary C. D. Walcott, and the report of the work of the Bureau of American Ethnology constitutes a volume prepared under the supervision of Maj. J. W. Powell, the Director of that Bureau. THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. THE ESTABLISHMENT. The Smithsonian Establishment, as organized at the end of the fiscal year, consisted of the following ex officio members: WILLIAM MCKINLEY, President of the United States. GARRET A. HOBART, Vice-President of the United States. LYMAN J. GAGE, Secretary of the Treasury. SM 97-1 1 THE BOARD OF REGENTS. In accordance with a resolution of the Board of Regents, adopted January 8, 1890, by which its annual meeting occurs on the fourth Wednesday of each year, the Board met on January 27, 1897, at 10 o'clock a. m., and not being able to complete the business before it on that day, an adjourned meeting was held on February 1. The journal of its proceedings will be found, as hitherto, in the annual report of the Board to Congress, though reference is made in this report to several matters upon which action was taken at these meetings. The Secretary formally announced to the Board the death of Dr. G. Brown Goode, assistant secretary of the Institution, in charge of the National Museum, and the following resolutions were adopted by a rising vote: Whereas the assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Dr. G. Brown Goode, died on September 6, 1896: Resolved, That the Board of Regents wish to here record their sense of the devotion to duty which in the late Dr. Goode came before any consideration of personal advancement, or even before the care of his own health, and of their recognition that his high administrative ability and wide knowledge were devoted unselfishly to the service of the Institution, with results whose value they can not too highly acknowledge; and they desire to express their feeling of the loss that the Institution, the National Museum, and the cause of science has sustained in his untimely death. Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be suitably engrossed and transmitted to the family of Dr. Goode. In this connection, the Secretary brought up the matter of a successor to Dr. Goode, and stated that he had decided to ask the permission of the Board to appoint as acting assistant secretary in charge of the National Museum, Prof. Charles D. Walcott, Director of the United States Geological Survey, and for more than twelve years honorary curator in the Museum. Professor Walcott having consented to assume the duties of the office until a permanent selection could be made, the Secretary's action was approved by the Board by the adoption of the following resolution: Resolved, That the appointment by the Secretary of Prof. Charles D. Walcott as acting assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, with duties confined to the charge of the National Museum, be approved. The Secretary also announced the death of Mr. W. C. Winlock, assistant in charge of office and curator of exchanges, and stated that he had already appointed as his successor in that office Mr. Richard Rathbun. Mr. Rathbun had been for twenty years connected with the Institution, and, for reasons which the Secretary had submitted to the Regents, he now nominated Mr. Rathbun as Assistant Secretary in charge of office and exchanges. The Board approved the Secretary's action by the adoption of the following resolution: Resolved, That the appointment by the Secretary of Mr. Richard Rathbun as Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, with duties connected with the bureaus of the Institution other than the National Museum, be approved. ADMINISTRATION. The present writer has been occupied during his tenure of office as Secretary much more with administrative than with purely scientific duties, which latter have been relegated to moments of comparative leisure. In the pursuit of duties in the past years, as executive officer of the Regents, he has endeavored to improve the business methods in use in the Institution for its correspondence, its relations to its bureaus, and in some measure for the details of its finance. It is perhaps well to speak briefly here of the system which is followed in the expenditures of the Institution, which are in the main like those of other Government bureaus with some slight modifications as regards the Institution's own practice. The Secretary is by law the custodian of the funds of the Institution, consisting at present of moneys deposited in the United States Treasury and of certain bonds, held by the Regents through him under the instructions of the permanent committee on the administration of bequests and their investment, consisting of the executive committee and the Secretary. The Revised Statutes of the United States, section 5593, provide: Whenever money is required for the payment of the debts or performance of the contracts of the Institution, incurred or entered into in conformity with the provisions of this title, or for making the purchases and executing the objects authorized by this title, the Board of Regents, or the executive committee thereof, may certify to the chancellor and secretary of the Board that such sum of money is required, whereupon they shall examine the same, and, if they shall approve thereof, shall certify the same to the proper officer of the Treasury for payment. In practice, the Chancellor and the Secretary of the Institution make a written requisition upon the Secretary of the Treasury twice a year for the semi-annual interest on the fund, and this sum is held in the Treasury subject only to the order of the Secretary. Money is not, as a rule, kept on hand or drawn except for the payment of a specific account, while at the same time it has been the practice of the present Secretary, as of his predecessors, neither to receive nor pay personally any moneys of the Institution, but to perform such transactions through a bonded disbursing officer of the Government, who is also the accountant of the Institution. The Secretary, as the disbursing officer of the Institution, never makes payments in cash, but only through checks prepared by the accountant. The actual course of an ordinary account is as follows: Every purchase is preceded by a requisition which is approved by the Secretary, except in certain excepted cases of expenditure of a very minute amount. Upon this approved requisition an order is issued by the Assistant Secretary, and when the bill is rendered it is certified by the proper official and a voucher is prepared which receives the certificate of two persons, one to the effect that the article has been received or the services rendered, the other to the effect that the charge is reasonable and just. The voucher is then examined by the Secretary, and, if approved, payment is made by a check on the United States Treasury signed by him. The actual conduct of these transactions is through the bonded disbursing officer above referred to. The Secretary makes it a rule as far as possible to examine personally all the vouchers; but while it is not always possible for him to thus examine every one or to be personally cognizant of every item of detail, he has always the foregoing assurance of the propriety of his signature before he affixes it to the check, which finally concludes the monetary transaction. These are the safeguards which the Secretary employs in regard to the actions of subordinate officials, in whom, nevertheless, he has the fullest personal confidence; and the Secretary's own accounts are in turn examined by the executive committee-a most important function, which completes the chain of responsibility. In thus briefly describing the business forms of the monetary transactions of the institution, it will be understood that the integrity of the officials on whom the Secretary relies has never in any instance been called in question, and he desires to repeat this, and to acknowledge in particular the acceptable service of the present accountant, in thus speaking of what may be called the mechanism of this part of the administrative order. What has preceded refers particularly to the administration of the private funds of the Institution. In regard to the bureaus supported by Government appropriations which are placed under the charge of the Regents, the methods of keeping the accounts are assimilable to those of other Government departments, the moneys being placed by the United States Treasurer, on requisition by the Secretary, at the disposal of a bonded disbursing officer, who prepares the vouchers, which are then certified by the heads of the different bureaus to the Secretary for his approval. The methods of conducting the finances and of regulating expendi tures and payments here described have been so effective that in the fifty years of the life of the Institution no loss has ever occurred. With the steady growth of the several bureaus under the direction of the Institution there come increased demands for their general administration not only upon the Secretary but also upon his immediate assistants. The clerical force of the Secretary's office has been chiefly supported from the income of the Institution, though a great deal of the work pertains directly to the business of the bureaus, which should be at the cost of Government appropriations. I have several times called attention to this matter, and the Regents have authorized me to request from Congress a specific appropriation for the Secretary's office, to be expended for necessary assistance in the administration of Government trusts, but it has thus far seemed inopportune to include a request for such appropriation in my estimates to Congress. FINANCES. The unexpended balance at the beginning of the fiscal year, July 1, 1896, as stated in my last annual report, was $57,065.78. Interest on the permanent fund in the Treasury and elsewhere, amounting to $56,400, was received during the year, which, together with a sum of $6,128.71 received from the sale of the publications and from miscellaneous sources, made the total receipts $62,528.71. The disbursements for the year amounted to $58,061.99, the details of which are given in the report of the executive committee. The balance remaining to the credit of the Secretary on June 30, 1897, for the expenses of the Institution was $61,532.50, which includes the sum of $10,000 referred to in previous reports, being $5,000 received from the estate of Dr. J. H. Kidder, and a like sum from Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the latter a gift made personally to the Secretary to promote certain physical researches. This latter sum was, with the donor's consent, deposited by the Secretary to the credit of the current funds of the Institution. This balance also includes the interest accumulated on the Hodgkins donation, which is held against certain contingent obligations, besides relatively considerable sums held to meet obligations which may be expected to mature as the result of various scientific investigations or publications in progress. The permanent funds of the Institution are as follows: The Regents also hold certain approved railroad bonds, forming a part of the fund established by Mr. Hodgkins for investigations of the properties of atmospheric air. By act of Congress approved by the President March 12, 1894, an amendment was made to section 5591 of the Revised Statutes, the fundamental act organizing the Institution, as follows: The Secretary of the Treasury is authorized and directed to receive into the Treasury, on the same terms as the original bequest of James Smithson, such sums as the Regents may, from time to time, see fit to deposit, not exceeding, with the original bequest, the sum of $1,000,000: Provided, That this shall not operate as a limitation on the power of |
