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found evidence that the relations between observers and bureau officials
were often flexible and personalized. Local officials of the bureau kept in
close contact with the cooperatives. They gave careful thought to questions
such as how to deal with a suspected error in a volunteer's observations. A
South Carolina official stressed that the volunteers were as dedicated to sci-
entific accuracy as the bureau itself: “The voluntary observers are, as a class,
men [
sic
] who take up the work in a spirit of scientific investigation after
truth, and in that spirit are as desirous as the Bureau possibly can be to have
their observations and reports as nearly absolutely correct as painstaking
care and thorough examination can make them.” Therefore bureau officials
should not “assume the role of censor,” but “should frankly and courte-
ously inform” the observer when an error has been discovered. Since this
address was delivered to an audience of bureau officials, there is no reason
to suspect that it was meant to flatter the cooperatives. even if the intention
was to reprimand more authoritarian types, one can only conclude that
communication between scientists and cooperatives was often respectful
and lively. As another bureau official described, the relationship between
a section director and his volunteers was “of a dual nature, namely, official
and personal, perhaps better expressed as friendly or social. The two are not
inconsistent. The first, although always pleasant, is usually formal, the latter
sometimes very cordial. The section director regards the voluntary observer
as an indispensable aid in his work, to whom all encouragement should be
given and every courtesy extended, and who is worthy and deserving of all
that can be done for him, either officially or in any other manner in which
the director can show his appreciation.”
55
The director of the iowa Weather Service, Gustavus Hinrichs, had gone
so far as to erect iowa's central observatory in his own home.
56
He spoke
fondly of his cooperatives. One, whom Hinrichs called “my friend,” had
taken up observing a full thirteen years earlier, when “his home was happy
and wife and daughter aided him.” This observer had since lost both family
members, but his reports continued to arrive, now in a “masculine hand-
writing” that reminded Hinrichs of his loss. “is it not worthy of special
praise to keep up such public work under so depressing circumstances?”
57
nipher, the director of the Missouri Weather Service, vouched for the ac-
curacy of one of his observers, who set his clock to the telegraphic signal
and was “a faithful observer.” “i wish you would be kind enough to send
them copy of any publication in which their names may appear,” he added
to Charles Rockwood. “it is well enough to encourage such men—they are
scarce in this part of the moral vinyard [
sic
].”
58
The bureau also valued cooperative observers for their ability to serve
