THE PROGRESS OF Si'IEM'E 



283 



THE PROGRESS OF SCIEXCE 



THE REWARDS OF SCIEXTIFIC 

 RESEARCH 

 Our economic system rests on the 

 free exchange of services. A state of 

 society may some day be readied in 

 which each will aim to give as much 

 as he can and to take as little, but at 

 present it appeals to our sense of fair- 

 ings that each should ask for his serv- 

 ices what someone else is willing to 

 pay. In the increasing complexity of 

 our society this method is working two 

 serious injustices. One of these is the 

 formation of monopolies. Thanks 

 chiefly to the applications of science, 

 many services can now be supplied at 

 a cost less than people would be willing 

 to pay. 'When free competition is ex- 

 cluded, either by the conditions of the 

 case or by ingenious combination, 

 people may be made to pay more than 

 a fair return for certain services. The 

 problems of monopoly are being dis- 

 cussed on all sides and remedies are 

 being sought in all directions; but the 

 injustice, which in a way is the con- 

 verse of monopoly, has scarcely been 

 noticed. This is the case in which an 

 individual gives services without an 

 adequate return, owing to the fact that 

 they are not rendered to a single indi- 

 vidual or group who will pay for them, 

 but to society as a whole. A surgeon 

 may ask for an operation for ap- 

 pendicitis as large a fee as his patient 

 is willing to pay. but should he after 

 years of research discover a method of 

 preventing appendicitis altogether, he 

 would receive no payment at all, but 

 would, on the contrary. <jive up all fu- 

 ture fees for the operation. The sur- 

 geons who by risking and sacrificing 

 their lives discovered how to suppress 

 yellow fever have received 110 return 

 for their great sen ices. 



This state of affairs not only does 



injustice to the unrewarded individual, 

 but works immeasurable harm to so- 

 ciety — a greater injury probably than 

 all existing monopolies. There are 

 more than a hundred thousand physi- 

 cians in the United States who are 

 practising on their patients for fees, 

 while there are scarcely five hundred 

 who are studying seriously the causes 

 of disease and the methods of prevent- 

 ing it. The conditions are similar in 

 law and in all professions and trades. 

 The scientific investigator is usually 

 an amateur. He has wealth cr earns 

 his living by some profession, and inci- 

 dentally does what he can to advance 

 science for love of the work. This has 

 its good side in producing a small 

 group of men who are not subject to 

 purely commercial standards. But 

 this is after all a minor factor, and 

 the scientific man is likely to look for 

 fame, which is scarcely more ideal than 

 money and can be supplied to but few. 

 Satisfaction in the work itself is the 

 best reward for work; but no one can 

 know that his work is of value except 

 by the reflected appreciation of others, 

 and in the existing social order the 

 simplest and probably the most ade- 

 quate expression of this appreciation is 

 direcl payment for the service rendered. 

 The methods that society has de- 

 vised to meet this situation, apart 

 from the conferring of honors and 

 fame, are recent and inadequate. 

 Copyrights and patents are the most 

 direct acknowledgment of property in 

 ideas. They have accomplished a 

 good deal, and their scope should be 

 extended. At present only a small 

 part of discovery is covered by the 

 patent office, and this perhaps not the 

 part requiring the greatest genius. It 

 i-. however, leading, especially in Ger- 

 many, to the development of discovery 



