When your note of the 10th ult., addressed to me personally, arrived, I was absent in the South. Since my return, I have delayed replying to it, wishing when I did so to write of more important matters about which I thought that we might any day be hearing from you.

Your note refers to a letter addressed by me to the Governor, giving him a copy of an order signed by you and transmitted without comment by Douglas to us. There is no complaint in Douglas’s letter to us, nor, as you assume, in ours to the Governor, that Briggs was interfering with work in the nursery. I presume that you have my letter and I need not repeat what I did say.

From Douglas’s enclosure, and from a number of brief notes from McMillan, we understand that you have expressed opinions, issued orders [145]and taken action which must have seemed to them intended to show that in your opinion we had been assuming a position with reference to the University work which was not in harmony with yours and that you intended to set us down from it.

That you should have dismissed McMillan without conference with us, without notifying us of your intention to do so, or your reasons for doing so, and that we should be left for weeks without any advices from the work, sustains this view of your course. There can be no doubt that we are effectually set down.

I was, for a time, a little disposed to resent the implied imputation, but thinking over all the circumstances, I have seen that there may have been an accidental misunderstanding between us, and I have thought that if we could both clear ourselves of the feeling to which such misunderstanding has naturally led and talk over the matter in a frank and candid way, we should probably find ourselves not so very far apart. A personal interview being impracticable, I am going to try to give you a better notion of our ideas by letter.

That you may more nearly realize the spirit in which I shall write, please reflect, first, that we have nothing to ask of you. If at the bottom there is any substantial question between us, it is one which the Governor must settle; second, this being the case, I should not take the trouble to write at the length I shall, if I had a doubt of your sincerity, or if my attitude were not to be perfectly respectful to you.

Our ideas have grown naturally out of our special business experience and I wish to tell you something about what this has been.

I have sometimes been alone; sometimes have had a partner, sometimes two. To avoid complication of statement, I shall write as if I had always been alone.

Thirty-three years ago, I had an order to take general charge of the improvement of a piece of real estate that had cost five million dollars. The order provided that nothing should be done upon the work, except under my instructions; that no man should be employed or retained in employment, except by me; no payment made except on my certificate; no reports from the work received that I did not sign or countersign. The work was to be driven with all practicable speed. When it was well underway, I had nearly four thousand men employed. It was to be an intimate combination of such work as is commonly directed apart, respectively, by engineers, architects and horticulturists. Thus, there was to be grading, quarrying, dam-building, sewering; there were to be some thirty costly bridges on all sorts of foundations; there were to be numerous small buildings; there were to be many miles of heavy retaining walls, many miles of roads. Three hundred thousand trees were to be planted on ground, the greater part of which was a bare ledge of granite and another considerable part a swamp.

The organization and discipline of such a complex work was one of unusual difficulty. I had to deal with strikes and riots at the outset, and [146]continuously with all manner of efforts by unscrupulous men to destroy discipline and to harass, browbeat and influence me to aid political and personal projects. There was no end of plots and intrigues for this purpose, and several times I was placed by misrepresentations under the harrow of legislative investigating committees. The last of these started with a hostile purpose, employed experts to make searching examinations of the work in every aspect, its plans, construction, management and accounts. The experts swore that the work was the best of its kind in every respect of which they had any knowledge and that the reports upon which the investigation had been ordered were wrong in every particular, and the committee at length reported that the force was well directed and under rarely good discipline.

But as to my success, perhaps the simplest evidence may appear in the fact that, while I never directly or indirectly suggested that my pay should be increased, my salary was from time to time advanced until it came to be more than six times as much as it was at the start.

Probably the reason of this advance lay largely in the means I used to guard against fraud and inefficient service and the success of them; to illustrate which I may mention that I invented and carried into practice a system of time-keeping and accounts which operated so well that it was afterwards adopted and is yet in use by the United States Government.

But of course the real value of my service lay in the design of the work and in the ability to bring into successful co-operation with artistic unity under all the difficulties of the case, the varied elements of engineering, architecture and horticulture. It was because of this aspect of the business that those by whom I was employed gave me, at no suggestion of mine, the name of “Landscape Architect.” The term landscape architecture has since come in this country to be generally applied to operations of the like kind. It is not a very fitting term, but perhaps better than any other in as common use, and as such I use it.

I have told you about this passage in my life in order that you may not suppose that I do not understand, or have no fellow feeling with, your sensitiveness to what may seem to you an unauthorized interference with your responsibilities. I do not think that you could find a man, who, not being a prig or a martinet, could be more alive to the wrong of such meddling than I am.

The work of which I have been writing gave me a reputation and before I left it I was called to take such part as I could in other works more or less of a similar character. Except for a short time during the war, I have ever since been constantly employed in planning and directing such works of landscape architecture. That I have secured their success and that my services have generally given satisfaction, may be inferred from the fact that the calls upon me have been constantly increasing. They have come from a majority of the States and Territories and from Canada. They have come unsolicited. Many of my appointments have been from political bodies, but they have not been [147]political favors. As many have come from one party as another, and in several important cases, my duties have continued through several administrations, in which one party has succeeded to power after another.

I am not a college bred man, but I have been employed by nine universities and colleges. I have been employed by the most prominent businessmen of the country, four of them, for example, have been at the head of trans-continental railways, and some have had a special reputation as exacting and close dealing men. But twice has there ever been a dispute as to what was due me. In one of these cases I went to the courts and, after two appeals, was paid my full claim, my employer paying the costs. The other was a trivial matter and I did not press my view. Of the thousands I have employed for the service of others, but one has been detected in any kind of criminal proceeding against those who have employed me, and in this case the loss was trifling.

I am at this time (with my partners) the landscape architect of twenty works of considerable importance; that is to say, I do not include in that number ordinary private grounds. Nine of these twenty are large public parks of cities; two, government works; three, works of commercial corporations; one, of a benevolent corporation, and six, private undertakings of such character as to make them matters of public interest, operations on them being systematically reported in the newspapers. I believe that we have in each of these cases been employed because of advice given privately to our employers by those who have previously employed us in works of a similar class.

If you have duly considered the significance of what I have said, you will not imagine that a business such as we have for a long time been doing is to be conducted without a close adherence to fixed principles, rules and customs. You will recognize that these principles, rules and customs must be such as, in the long run, with regard to a great variety of situations, requirements and personal tastes, have proved to be well adapted to accomplish results permanently satisfactory to those who have made use of our services.

You will reflect also that the larger part of our capital and stock in trade must be our professional reputation and that this rests finally, not on what is thought of our works while they are in a fragmentary state of progress, but on what proves to be thought of the complete result as a whole and in actual operation. You will see, therefore, that we cannot afford to be employed on any work upon conditions that involve much risk that the result will be very different from that which our judgment in the forecast of it would approve, and that the rules and customs of our business must be adapted to secure us from such risks.

If experience and practice are worth anything in such a business as ours, no one can know better than we do, what arrangements are necessary to the accomplishment of such results as we are called upon to aid in bringing about. Of such arrangements, the providing of drawings is but a very small part. We provide drawings as one means among other means of instructing those who are to personally and constantly direct the work that they are to have in [148]view. We have never supplied drawings which were to be worked from, except with such additional instructions, and under such superintendence as we have thought necessary to the realization of the results that we have had in view. We do not sell our drawings. They are our instruments for providing what we do sell. This will probably be a new view to you and a strange one, but if you give the question sufficient reflection, you will see that it is a just one, and there are legal decisions that it is a just view.

The works with which we have to do vary so much in purpose, and are so differently situated that the arrangements by which they are to be carried on must greatly vary, but the principles of these arrangements do not vary. They are the same in Florida and Canada as here in Massachusetts. They must be the same in California.

As a rule, those seeking our services are so much of the opinion that we know better than they do how the work should be organized and managed in order to accomplish the results which we are to plan for them, that they are apt to wish to put more responsibility upon us than we are willing to assume. In most cases, we are asked, and we agree to take a leading part in the organization of the work, the selection of those who are to locally direct it, the purchase of materials, employment, and the determination of financial methods, forms and regulations.

The heavier part of the work, especially at the outset, being nearly always of the sort which engineers are accustomed to lay out and superintend, it almost invariably happens that an engineer, and usually an engineer residing in the neighborhood of the work and familiar with the local conditions, is employed to obtain such information as we need before studying out the design, and to personally receive and superintend the carrying out of our instructions. Such is the case with each of the twenty works we now have on hand and to which we have referred, and as we infer that it is more particularly on this point that we have unwittingly moved in your opinion, out of our proper lines, I will mention the facts of a few particular cases. That you may not imagine them to be cases in which political considerations obtain, they shall be cases of private works for well-known men.

We are, as landscape architects, supervising the improvement of a place for Mr. William Rockefeller, another for Mr. H. McK. Twombly, and three others for the Vanderbilt family.

For each of these works there is an engineer under our instructions and reporting to us, as McMillan has been as to the University work. The arrangements vary according to local conditions. One of the Vanderbilt works is in Maine. The engineer for that work was chosen, engaged and installed by us. He was last week employing ninety men in grading, draining, dam-building and road-building. His pay-rolls are sent to us and then, with our endorsement, to Mr. Vanderbilt, who commonly sends a cheque for the amount to the engineer. But Mr. Vanderbilt has several times, when going from home, [149]placed a fund at our command sufficient to cover pay-rolls and bills for materials to be bought, for some months in advance, asking us to make payments for him. In fact, we serve with respect to this work a good deal as purchasing and financial agents.

The second of these works is in Richmond County, New York. The engineer is also one of our selection, and neither Mr. Vanderbilt nor any other agent of his but ourselves, has ever seen or had direct communication with him. Bills are paid upon the engineer’s certificate, when endorsed by us.

The third of these works is that for the improvement of an estate of six thousand acres in North Carolina. This is under the general supervision of a resident attorney and business agent, who is also a friend and relative of Mr. Vanderbilt. This agent pays the hands on the work and, as a rule, pays bills, without our certificate. Most of the supplies are bought by him direct. But we have made purchases of such things as it is supposed that we can select and buy to the best advantage, and these have amounted in the last six months to about eight thousand dollars, bills for which have not been paid until verified and approved by us. Otherwise, we are not concerned with the financial arrangements. We do not see the pay-rolls.

Visiting the ground before the work began, we found that the agent had employed a local engineer to make surveys. This engineer appeared to us capable, honest and efficient. He knew the country and, at our suggestion, was taken as the engineer of the work. He is paid $1800.00, has a house and garden on the property, with fuel and a horse and horse keep. There are three assistant engineers at a hundred dollars a month; a resident horticulturist at $1800.00 and a house, with an assistant and a nurseryman foreman. All our plans and instructions for this work have been given to the engineer and the horticulturist and they are constantly reporting to us. While writing this letter, three reports have come from them. The office of the business agent is under the same roof with their office and he sees, or may see, all our letters to them. And he may, and we presume he does, examine the letter books recording their reports to us. We believe the arrangement is satisfactory to him and to Mr. Vanderbilt. Not one twentieth part of our correspondence with the estate is directly with the agent.

You will notice that this last case is almost exactly parallel with that of the University work. When I first visited Palo Alto, I found on the ground an engineer employed by you and I was referred to him for such engineering information and assistance as we wished. We presumed that you and the Governor wished us to instruct and employ him as the engineer of the work in the customary way, and not finding him evidently incompetent, we did so. I can see now that this may not have been your understanding or your wish, but it has only lately occurred to me to doubt it. I do not yet realize why the arrangement has not been satisfactory to you, except as you have misunderstood the spirit in which we have accepted it.

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You may ask if we have not generally paid, or partially paid, the engineer, architect and horticulturist in such cases. Never, in a single instance, any more than we have paid the decorators of the house, or the sculptor supplying fountains or statuary. It has never been suggested to us that we should. We know of no large work in this country or in Europe, the general designer of which pays the resident technical directors of operations. We have known hundreds where they were paid by the proprietor. We should be perfectly willing to adopt such an arrangement if the Governor wished it, of course at an additional charge. The Governor has never expressed such a wish, nor is he paying us more than our usual charge.

When the Governor wished to engage our services as landscape architects, had we not a right to suppose, nothing being said to the contrary, that he desired such services as it has been customary with us to supply, to be rendered in the usual manner, with the facilities usually provided? Could any other theory of our duty be sustained in a court of justice?

But our view is sustained on stronger grounds than this inquiry would imply. In some cases, those who employ us wish to have a written agreement with us. We have such an agreement with Mr. Vanderbilt, and with the city of Boston, for example. A copy of the form used was last year shown the Governor, but he did not wish a written agreement. He assented to the provisions of the form shown him, however, among which was the following:-

“Adequate surveys and maps and all other means, aid and service required for the information of the parties of the second part, and for the elaboration and setting out upon the ground of the intended plans shall be provided without expense to the parties of the second part, and in order to secure good work of its kind in all that is to be undertaken under this agreement, men of good standing and competent in the opinion of the parties of the second part (F. L. Olmsted & Co.) shall be employed by the party of the first part in each of the several departments of Engineering, Architecture, Forestry, and Gardening, who with suitable assistants, shall act co-operatively with, and under the general direction and supervision of the parties of the second part.”

We believe that the best way for the Governor to get from us the services he desires is the one we supposed had been adopted, and upon which we have been working for four years. Your recent actions show evidently that your views either were never in accord with ours as to this, or that you have lately changed them and we therefore request that you at once define your policy so that we may know what our position is to be. We will promise to consider it with every disposition to accommodate your wishes. But please remember that our arrangement with the Governor was made with such understandings as we have indicated, and that we have never assented, nor could we assent to an arrangement such as your understanding of the matter has lately seemed to us to be.

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I assure you that no man competent to do what the Governor has told us that he wished us to do would accept such an arrangement.

Yours Truly