THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE 



3°7 



Main Building, Desert Laboratory, Tucson, Arizona. 



thus opportunity for more workers. 

 But the difficulty in the United States 

 appears to be a lack of men rather 

 than a lack of positions or of equip- 

 ment. Those employed by the Carnegie 

 Institution are somewhat isolated in 

 their research stations and their influ- 

 ence in attracting men to research 

 work and training them to it is less 

 than it would be at the universities. 

 University professors have positions 

 which should make the scientific career 

 attractive to young men of ability and 

 purpose. The associations of the uni- 

 versity are on the whole pleasant and 

 honorable. With his colleagues, his ] 

 assistants and his more advanced stu- 

 dents the professor has a stimulus to 

 good work and opportunity to make it I 

 effective. As a rule the position is a 

 life appointment; there are pensions, 

 vacations and sabbatical leaves of ab- 

 sence. Yet, in spite of these attrac- 

 tions, it is difficult to find men of 

 distinction for university chairs. It 

 may be that they are not being born 

 in sufficient numbers, but it is more 

 likely that they are not found. The 

 comparatively small salaries and the 

 somewhat unsatisfactory methods of 

 university control may be partly re- 

 sponsible. Whatever the difficulty may 

 be, the pressing need of the present 

 time is to find men: providing positions 



and equipment is scarcely of use except 

 in so far as this may attract men. 



The Carnegie Institution has taken 

 men from universities and from other 

 institutions; it has not made new men 

 of science or attracted men to scientific 

 work. This it might have done by 

 giving opportunity to men who could 

 not otherwise find it, or by paying 

 such salaries and conferring such priv- 

 ileges on scientific men as would make 

 the career attractive to the best men. 

 The salaries paid are not made public, 

 but they are probably as small as will 

 obtain and retain the men that are 

 needed. The bureaucratic or depart- 

 ment store system, which is the chief 

 danger of the university, is in the 

 case of the Carnegie Institution carried 

 to an extreme, for the collective senti- 

 ment of a group of scholars, which is 

 the balance wheel of the university, is 

 there absent. It may be impossible for 

 such an institution to accomplish more 

 for science than it is doing; but cer- 

 tainly the official statement of its plans 

 published eight years ago appeal more 

 to the imagination. It reads: 



It is proposed to found in the city 

 of Washington, in the spirit of Wash- 

 ington, an institution which, with the 

 cooperation of institutions now or here- 

 after established, there or elsewhere, 

 shall, in the broadest and most liberal 

 manner, encourage investigation, re- 



