In 1849 Dr. Lapham proposed to the American Antiquarian Society of Worcester, Massachusetts, to make an extensive survey of the mounds and other ancient remains in Wisconsin provided the society would defray the actual outlay of money involved. The enterprise thus proposed was adopted by the Antiquarian Society, as a result of which the survey was made, the fruits of it being given to the scientific world a few years later in Lapham’s Antiquities of Wisconsin. This work, published under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, is filled with the author’s drawings, beautifully executed, of the numerous earthworks and mounds he had located. Students of American archeology will always owe the patient author a heavy debt of gratitude for having carefully plotted and described these evidences of aboriginal habitation in Wisconsin before the work of destruction which inevitably attended the advance of white settlement had gained much headway.
Thus in many departments of learning—in geology, botany, conchology, in meteorology, history, and archeology—Lapham
busied himself, acquiring repute among the scholars of Europe as in America, all the while earning his simple living by such professional work as he permitted himself the time to do. Perhaps no single achievement of his possesses more of interest to the world in general or has directly added more to the well-being and comfort of every one of us than his work in securing the establishment of a weather-service bureau by the national government. It cannot be claimed that he fathered the idea of such a service and its attendant possibility of foretelling weather conditions far enough in advance to make the information of real commercial value. Neither can Robert Fulton be credited with having fathered the idea of the steamboat. Yet we rightly regard Fulton as its real inventor, since he was the first to demonstrate the practicability of the idea. So with Lapham and the weather bureau. For twenty years he urged upon the Smithsonian Institution, the Wisconsin legislature, and other agencies of society the practicability and the immense advantage of such a government service. For twenty years, as a private individual he made records and observations, seeking to demonstrate his claims. But in the nature of the case (as Lapham repeatedly pointed out) only some powerful agency like the national government could take the many observations at different points necessary to the success of the work, assemble their results, and make them known throughout the nation in time to be of practical use to the public. Finally, the persistent seeker after the public good succeeded in attracting the notice of men powerful enough to compel the attention of Congress. As a result the law for the incorporation of the signal service was passed. How the result was achieved by Lapham may best be told in the words of a man to whom he had appealed for assistance. At the meeting of the National Board of Fire Underwriters, held in New York in April, 1875, a resolution to appoint a special committee to correspond with the United States Signal Service Department in
relation to wind as an element in fire risks was under consideration when Hon. E. D. Holton rose and said:
There is a little man who lives in my town about so high (holding his hand a little lower than his shoulders) who lives in an obscure part of the town, and is known to comparatively few people in the town. You go to his house and find it filled with all the evidences of science, specimens from the vegetable world and the mineral world. Going to London a few years ago I was given by this little man a letter of introduction to Sir William Hooker, custodian of the Kew Gardens, which secured for me eminent entertainment and influence. Five years ago as I was about to leave my house to go to Richmond, Virginia, to attend a meeting of the National Board of Trade, he came to my house and had a resolution drawn to be submitted to the National Board of Trade, declaring that the national government should organize a service to look after the winds of the continent of America.
When I came to Richmond I presented that resolution. It received a most eloquent second from the late General Wolbridge, an eminent citizen of New York. The National Board of Trade immediately passed the resolution. As soon as it was passed I sent it to my friend, General Paine, then member of Congress from my district in Wisconsin, and in an incredibly short space of time for that august body—which is supposed to have at least as much red tape as the National Insurance Company—it was passed. I did not expect that the wind question would meet me at this angle of the insurance trade, but it seems it has.
That gentleman I will name. I rise to make these remarks and I wish to speak his name in this connection, because out of his labors so persistent, in his humble house, so unknown to his countrymen—for he is better known in foreign circles of science than in his own country—and through his labors and instrumentality, this thing has been brought into its present shape. His name is Dr. Increase Allen Lapham of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
And how, it may be asked, did Lapham’s fellow-men requite his lifelong labors devoted to the public good? The answer which must be made affords much support to the proverbial belief in the ungratefulness of republics. When in 1870 Congress passed the bill providing for the weather-signal service, its execution was entrusted to the chief signal officer of the army. By him Lapham was employed for a short time as special assistant in the War Department at a yearly salary of $2,000. When he sent home (he was stationed at Chicago) to his daughter the proceeds of his first month’s wages, she wrote to her brother as follows:
Last Friday father sent home $128.03 to be deposited as the first money of any amount he ever received for any scientific occupation (regular salary at least) and Thursday afternoon I was down town and met B. He said he had been around among some of father’s friends and collected $100 to make father a life member of the Chicago Astronomical Society—(You know this society owns the “big telescope” at Dearborn Observatory).
I forbear to quote the daughter’s delighted remarks which follow; more profitable will it be for us to consider for a moment the bitter irony of this situation. After more than forty years of zealous public service to receive so pitiful a salary, his first tangible reward, and to have this discontinued within a few months time! To be fitted both by inherent tastes and lifelong training to enjoy and profit by membership in such an association, and yet unable, because our countrymen estimate the services of scholars so low, to pay the paltry membership fee! Here, indeed, is the cross on which in the United States today we crucify scholarship.