The Department of the Interior was created by act of Congress in 1849. When the names of its subdivisions are enumerated, it will readily be seen that no adequate description of it can be given in one or two chapters.
It comprises the Patent Office, the Pension Office, General Land Office, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Education, Commissioner of Railroads, and the Office of the Geological Survey. Each office is managed by a commissioner or director, who has under him a large force of officials and clerks.
In the chief building of the Department of the Interior, fronting on F Street, and extending from Seventh to Ninth, and from F to G Streets, may be found the Patent Office of the United States. No other department so well reveals the inventive genius of the most inventive people on earth.
Once at a table in Paris a Frenchman said to me: "The Americans are inventors because they are lazy."
"Well," I said, "I have heard many surprising charges against my countrymen, but that excels all. How do you make that out?"
"Well, I am a manufacturer. I set an American boy to keep a door open; before half an hour he has invented a machine which will open and shut it, and I find my boy playing marbles."
Photo by Clinedinst
THE PATENT OFFICE
"Sensible boy! Yes, with that view of it, maybe we are; we certainly do not care to do by hand that which a machine can better perform."