“As explorers, as early as 1820, Long’s expedition containing Bell, Graham and Swift, explored as far as Pike’s Peak, and first ascended it; Allen, in 1832, first traced the source of the Mississippi; and Bonneville’s great exploration, in 1832-1834, penetrated Wyoming, Utah, California, and the Columbia and Yellowstone regions, and supplied the first hydrographic maps of the country. “For half a century West Point was the principal and almost the only school of science and technology in America. Its graduates not only furnished presidents and teachers of scientific institutions as they appeared, but were the pioneer engineers who laid out the trans-continental routes of the great western railways, besides surveying and developing as engineers and presidents other systems in the East.... More than one hundred and seventy-five thousand miles of routes, lines and marches.” And graduates have had charge of “the Lake surveys; the Coast and Geodetic survey, reorganized and for twenty-four years superintended by a graduate; the surveys west of the one hundredth meridian; the river and harbor improvements of the United States; the control and building of the Panama Canal; the superintendency and construction of public buildings in Washington, including the wings and dome of the Capitol, and the Congressional Library; the rectification and completion of the Washington Monument; the construction of lighthouses, including the remarkable one of Minot’s Ledge; besides many other works of survey and construction, of which the Chicago (drainage) Canal is one of the most important. The disbursements of public funds for river and harbor work alone approximate six hundred million dollars and if other civil and military works are included, the grand total will be not far from one thousand millions.... Our officers ... have been: Governors of provinces, mayors of cities, collectors of customs, school commissioners, sanitary engineers, civil engineers, police commissioners, judges of courts, architects, superintendents of railroads, heads of departments of state, and even commanders of vessels.... “Half of the (4,121) graduates in the first century of the academy’s existence entered civil life, and in the civil career alone their record shows nineteen per cent of distinguished success—far in excess of that of any other institution in the land....” In an article that appeared in 1904 in the New York Sun he gave the following data for— _West Point Graduates Who Have Attained Distinguished Success._ 1 President of the United States. 1 President of the Confederate States. 3 Presidential candidates. 1 Vice-Presidential candidate. 4 Members of the Cabinet of the United States. 1 Ambassador. 14 Ministers from the United States to foreign courts. 2 Chargés d’Affaires from the United States to foreign courts. 12 United States Consuls-General and Consuls.