William Darrah Kelley

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Powell, John Wesley (1834–1902), geologist, anthropologist, director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).Born in New York and raised on the Ohio and Illinois frontiers, Powell attended Oberlin College and was a teacher before joining the Union Army in the Civil War. Losing an arm at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, he left the military with the rank of major. Active in the Illinois State Natural History Society before the war, he returned in 1865 to become professor of geology at Illinois Wesleyan College. An 1869 expedition down the Colorado River brought Powell national notice and a federal appropriation. His U.S. Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain region (1870–1879) won him recognition for explaining the role of structure, uplift, and stream erosion in shaping topography. Also a student of native Indian language and culture, Powell organized the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of Ethnology in 1879 and directed it until his death.

Concerned about the risks of American expansion into the arid West, Powell in his 1878 Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States warned policy‐makers about settlement laws that ignored scarcity of water. His desire for a scientific bureau to replace Land Office surveys was partially realized in 1879, when he worked with Clarence King to establish the USGS. Powell became its second director in 1881. Buoyed by a Spencerian faith in science and progress, Powell worked to extend the survey beyond the mining regions and into general geology, topographic mapping, and natural‐resource assessment.

The USGS under Powell won international acclaim. The most prominent federal scientific institution of the late nineteenth century, it laid a foundation for the growth of federal scientific agencies during the Progressive Era. It also sparked controversy when it clashed with traditional congressional prerogatives. Powell's planning of irrigation development (1888–1890) angered some members of Congress and led to his retirement in 1894.
See also Earth Sciences; Geological Surveys

Bibliography

William Culp Darrah , Powell of the Colorado, 1951.
Mary C. Rabbitt , Minerals, Lands, and Geology for the Common Defense and General Welfare, 2 vols., 1979–1980.

John J. Zernel

William Darrah Kelley , 1814–90, American legislator, b. Philadelphia. He was admitted (1841) to the bar and served (1847–56) as judge of the court of common pleas for Philadelphia. Originally a Democrat and a believer in free trade, he joined the Republican party when it was founded, because of its antislavery stand. The depression of 1857 and his fear that goods produced by low-paid foreign labor would flood the country converted him to protectionism. He was elected to Congress in 1860 and was continuously reelected for the rest of his life. As a staunch radical, he supported black suffrage and military reconstruction in the South. He served on the Committee on Ways and Means for 20 years. His sincerity and financial disinterestedness were never questioned, but his constant emphasis on protection as a cure-all and his frequent mention of Pennsylvania's iron industry led his colleagues to call him "Pig Iron" Kelley. He was an advocate of currency inflation for the sake of labor and the farmer. He published a number of books, including Speeches, Addresses, and Letters on Industrial and Financial Questions (1872), Letters from Europe (1879), and The Old South and the New (1888).

Kelley, William Melvin (1937–), New York‐born novelist, inspired to write by John Hawkes and Archibald MacLeish, his teachers at Harvard, has since become a leading African‐American author. His first novel, A Different Drummer (1962), is a mythic tale of a black sharecropper who in destroying his farm and discarding his heritage inspires others to seek a better future. Later fiction includes A Drop of Patience (1965), about a blind black jazz musician who turns to his people's evangelical religion; dem (1967), a satirical and sometimes surrealistic story of a white Madison Avenue advertising executive as he searches for the father of the black baby to which his wife has given birth; and Dunfords Travels Everywhere (1970), contrasting a Harvard‐educated black in France and a Harlem swindler. Dancers on the Shore (1964) collects stories.