it became necessary for him to expose and prosecute the corruption of Captain Howgate; again, when it became necessary in self-defense to expose the true reasons of the failure of the War Department to properly support and succor the Signal-Service Expedition to Fort Conger; and, again, when he had occasion to defend the advantages of the military character of the combined Signal Service and Weather Bureau organization against those who would take it from the army without making a proper provision for its work in any other department. The records of his successful defense against attacks prompted by implacable hate, official stubbornness, and personal ignorance are to be found in the proceedings of "Courts-Martial," "Courts of Inquiry," "Committee of Congress on Expenditure," and especially in the "Testimony before the Joint Commission to consider the Present Organization of the Signal Service," etc., which latter voluminous report with testimony was printed in June, 1886.
General Hazen's interest in meteorology, as before said, properly dates back earlier than 1873, at which time he prepared a letter "On our Barren Lands, or the Interior of the United States, west of the One Hundredth Meridian and east of the Sierra Nevadas." This was published in the "New York Tribune," February 27, 1874, and led to a discussion in that paper and in the "Minneapolis Tribune" between himself and General A. A. Custer, which is summarized in a pamphlet of the above title published by Robert Clarke & Co., of Cincinnati, in 1875. The motive of General Hazen evidently was the protection of investors and settlers against the too glowing accounts, which amounted to virtual misrepresentation, on the part of the employés of the Northern Pacific Railroad; his compilation of climatological data, and his statement of personal experience, based on long residence in that region, largely contributed to prevent blind emigration into an inhospitable country, while they doubtless also contributed to direct attention to the really valuable portions of our Northwest territory, so that the permanent development of that portion of the United States has been furthered by his action. It was, however, at the time, on his part, a very characteristic, outspoken exposition of what seemed to him a fraud and imposition perpetrated by unscrupulous financiers upon foreign immigrants and over-confiding settlers and investors.
During his connection with the Signal-Office, General Hazen frequently took occasion to show his appreciation of the fact that the weather predictions were essentially not a matter of mere military routine, but that in all departments the office had need of the work of specially trained experts; that it was a mistake to shut one's eyes to the fact that, in a matter of applied science like this, some of those whom the scientific world recognizes as meteorologists and physicists must be employed and be required to keep the chief fully informed of the progress of science. Perhaps this is best exemplified by a quotation from his letter of March 24, 1886, addressed to a Committee of
