p.4

(4)

through their influence that the elusion was made
to the observatories, and the astronomers in charge
of them

I cannot learn that the Executive Council
of the National Board of Trade ever complied
with the request to recommend the subject to the
attention of Congress, unless the presentation
of the paper I had prepared, by Gen 11: E. Paine,
the member of Congress from Milwaukee on the
14th of December of 1869, can be deemed as such
compliance.

On the 8th of December there was published
in the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel a list of 1914
lake disasters causing damage to the amount
of $4,100,000 carefully prepared by their marine
Editor of that paper, Mr. Louis Bleyer; a copy
of which I immediately sent- to Gen. Paine with the
suggestion that the appalling magnitude
of these disasters made it the duty of the
government to see whether anything
could be done for its future abatement.

The paper, and this list of disasters