"Very well, then," answered the director; "I'll write to him about it. I thought you would accept, unless you had made other plans."
"I don't think I know much about the statistical side of the Bureau," said Colin; "just what does that take up?"
"Statistics mainly, but I can explain its value best by what I know it has done," the director said thoughtfully. "One of the very best things it accomplished, I think, was an investigation into the cause of the heavy loss of life among the crews of New England fishing-vessels."
"What was the cause, sir?"
"The statistical division of the Bureau ascribed a great many of the fatalities to badly-built vessels, so that a number of them foundered at sea in bad weather."
"How could the Bureau help that?"
"It did help it wonderfully," the director answered. "A thorough investigation was set on foot and all kinds of vessels examined. The experts of the country were consulted and hundreds of models made to find out just which was the
most seaworthy. The fishing-fleets of all the world were visited, and as a result a schooner was built and called the Grampus, which became a model for all that was most to be desired in fishing-vessels. The boat-builders of the country since then have followed that type, and the loss of life from vessels of the Grampus type in the last ten years has been less than one-fourth of that from the older vessels in the ten years preceding. From the port of Gloucester alone, this has meant in the ten years a saving of over six hundred lives."
"That's getting results!" said Colin admiringly.
"And the commercial results, while they don't compare in importance with the saving of life, of course, are even bigger. The winter cod-fishery of New England was absolutely revolutionized by the introduction of gill-nets with glass-ball floats, the catch becoming three times as large, while at least one hundred thousand dollars was saved annually in the single item of bait. Scores of new fishing-grounds have been located, and apparatus has been devised which enables the fishermen to exploit grounds which they previously had been unable to reach.