I have a great admiration for the scientific parts of the Government of the United States, and it has amazed me that so few men have discovered them.  Here in these departments are quiet men, trained to the highest degree of skill, serving for a petty remuneration along lines that are infinitely useful to mankind; and yet in some cases they waited to be discovered until this Chamber of Commerce of the United States was established.  Coming to this city, officers of that association found that there were here things that were infinitely useful to them and with which the whole United States ought to be put into communication.

The Government of the United States is very properly a great instrumentality of inquiry and information.  One thing we are just beginning to do that we ought to have done long ago:  We ought long ago to have had our Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce.  We ought long ago to have sent the best eyes of the Government out into the world to see where the opportunities and openings of American commerce and American genius were to be found—­men who were not sent out as the commercial agents of any particular set of business men in the United States, but who were eyes for the whole business community.  I have been reading consular reports for twenty years.  In what I came to regard as an evil day the Congressman from my district began to send me the consular reports, and they ate up more and more of my time.  They are very interesting, but they are a good deal like what the old lady said of the dictionary, that it was very interesting but a little disconnected.  You get a picture of the world as if a spotlight were being dotted about over the surface of it.  Here you see a glimpse of this, and here you see a glimpse of that, and through the medium of some consuls you do not see anything at all.  Because the consul has to have eyes and the consul has to know what he is looking for.  A literary friend of mine said that he used to believe in the maxim that “everything comes to the man who waits,” but he discovered after awhile by practical experience that it needed an additional clause, “provided he knows what he is waiting for.”  Unless you know what you are looking for and have trained eyes to see it when it comes your way, it may pass you unnoticed.  We are just beginning to do, systematically and scientifically, what we ought long ago to have done, to employ the Government of the United States to survey the world in order that American commerce might be guided.

But there are other ways of using the Government of the United States, ways that have long been tried, though not always with conspicuous success or fortunate results.  You can use the Government of the United States by influencing its legislation.  That has been a very active industry, but it has not always been managed in the interest of the whole people.  It is very instructive and useful for the Government of the United States to have such means as you are ready to supply for getting a sort of consensus of opinion which proceeds from no particular quarter and originates with no particular interest.  Information is the very foundation of all right action in legislation.