$50,000 was wanted for instruments and outfit. Hon. James
A. Garfield was then chairman of the committee on appropriations.
His principles and methods of arranging appropriations for the
government were, in some features, so different from those generally
in vogue that it will be of interest to describe them.

First of all, Garfield was rigidly economical in grants of money.
This characteristic of a chairman of a committee on appropriations
was almost a necessary one. But he possessed it in a different
way from any other chairman before or since. The method of the
"watch dogs of the treasury" who sometimes held this position was to
grant most of the objects asked for, but to cut down the estimated
amounts by one fourth or one third. This was a very easy method,
and one well fitted to impress the public, but it was one that the
executive officers of the government found no difficulty in evading,
by the very simple process of increasing their estimate so as to
allow for the prospective reduction. [2]

Garfield compared this system to ordering cloth for a coat,
but economizing by reducing the quantity put into it. If a new
proposition came before him, the question was whether it was advisable
for the government to entertain it at all. He had to be thoroughly
convinced before this would be done. If the question was decided
favorably all the funds necessary for the project were voted.

When the proposition for the transit of Venus came before him,
he proceeded in a manner which I never heard of the chairman of an
appropriation committee adopting before or since. Instead of calling
upon those who made the proposition to appear formally before the
committee, he asked me to dinner with his family, where we could
talk the matter over. One other guest was present, Judge Black
of Pennsylvania. He was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, wielding
as caustic a pen as was ever dipped into ink, but was, withal,
a firm personal friend and admirer of Garfield. As may readily be
supposed, the transit of Venus did not occupy much time at the table.
I should not have been an enthusiastic advocate of the case against
opposition, in any case, because my hopes of measuring the sun's
distance satisfactorily by that method were not at all sanguine.
My main interest lay in the fact that, apart from this, the transit
would afford valuable astronomical data for the life work which I
had mainly in view. So the main basis of my argument was