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William H. Goetzmann, Ferdinand V. Hayden: Entrepreneur of Science. By James G. Cassidy. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000. xxviii, 389 pp. $55.00, isbn 0-8032-1507-X.), Journal of American History, Volume 88, Issue 3, December 2001, Pages 1092–1093, https://doi.org/10.2307/2700462
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This biography of Ferdinand V. Hayden is well named. The author's general approach is a sociological study of Hayden's entrepreneurship. As such, it becomes a social science case study of one of the most important figures in Gilded Age America, since Hayden spent more than twentyfive years exploring and surveying the American West, first as a scientist adjunct to U.S. Army topographical engineer expeditions in the Dakotas, Montana, and northern Wyoming, where he did his best scientific work. After the Civil War, as head of the U.S. Survey of Nebraska and finally as head of the Interior Department's U.S. Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories—one of the most substantially funded of federal agencies—he became the manager of a vast public enterprise. Hayden was an empire builder for science in an age of captains of industry—something this reviewer discerned long ago in labeling him “Gilded Age Explorer.”
The streng th of James G. Cassidy's biog ra phy, which draws heavily on Mike Foster's 1994 biography of Hayden, is in the incredible detail that he adduces to demonstrate Hayden's influence in Washington. Here the author makes maximum use of the abundant correspondence to and from Hayden, all marshaled to demonstrate Hayden as a model of entrepreneurship. Besides using the correspondence, Cassidy also is adept at pointing up the role of Hayden's extensive publications, W. H. Jackson's hundreds of photographs, Thomas Moran's paintings, and Hayden's planting of stories in newspapers and magazines whenever and wherever he could. Through all these means, Dr. Hayden, M.D., became truly a captain of government science of the most exalted order.
