Smith had joined the Survey after receiving his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1896, and he was barely 36 years old when he was appointed director.

His Survey career had not been particularly distinguished, but he had come to the attention of the new Secretary of the Interior, James R. Garfield, in 1906 when Smith had served as chairman of one of the subcommittees of a Presidential commission that sought to put the operation of Government agencies on a modern businesslike basis.

Director Smith also served as Chairman of a three-man commission appointed by President Calvin Coolidge in March 1924, after the Teapot Dome scandal, to study the efficient management of the naval petroleum reserves, and as Chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Cabinet-level Federal Oil Conservation Board established in December 1924 to reappraise Federal oil policies.

)[5] In January 1931 the Senate purported to reconsider its consent to the appointment of Smith, and other members of the Commission, because it did not approve of their choice of subordinates.

[6] President Hoover did not recognise the Senate's authority to withdraw its consent to the appointment of officials after they had been commissioned.