SCHOLARSHIP AND THE STATE 5*3 



state, must first of all not merely consent to train men for the profes- 

 sions that serve the masses, but that it must demand this right. Of 

 course we are assuming that the state is not a poverty-stricken one, and 

 that it is not fighting for a bare existence. Secondly, the state's uni- 

 versity must insist on giving its students a broad education. By this 

 is meant that all students should not only be trained toward a profes- 

 sional career, but that they should also have the elements of a liberal 

 education. They should by all means appreciate the value of scholar- 

 ship in most lines of endeavor. President James says : 



I believe that the proper way to train a man or woman who is going to 

 practise one of these learned professions, so far as a school can train him, is to 

 prepare him for independent work in the sciences underlying his profession. 



I understand that to mean that a graduate in electrical engineering 

 should be prepared to carry on research work in physics. 



And what is scholarship? It is the discovering of new knowledge 

 and the proper dissemination of this knowledge. The discovery is the 

 most important because it is the basis and the inspiration. There can 

 be no permanent scholarship without research. I believe that it is more 

 difficult to keep a semblance of scholarship alive without research, than 

 it is to keep religion alive without spiritual leadership. 



In how far is it wise to expect the state to foster research? To 

 answer this question we may first inquire into the economic importance 

 of investigation. A few years ago the members of the agricultural col- 

 lege of the University of Illinois went before the legislature and showed 

 that they could make it possible to increase the yield of corn in Illinois by 

 one bushel per acre, and that thereby they would repay all the money to 

 run their college, if they did nothing else. This argument was so plain 

 that the legislators could understand it and they gave practically all 

 the money asked for. The money showed such good results in such a 

 short time, that the engineering departments were then emboldened to 

 lobby before the legislature, trying to show that money expended on re- 

 search in engineering would be of great benefit to the state. They said 

 that in ceramics they would investigate all the clays of the state to find 

 building materials to replace the fast vanishing supplies of wood and 

 iron. In mechanics they would investigate reinforced concrete so as to 

 make it possible to construct buildings that would last for generations 

 at a small cost. The legislature could understand this argument and so 

 it gave bounteously to the engineering experiment station. The ex- 

 periments in this station attracted attention over the whole world. The 

 president then asked for an unheard-of lump sum of money for the 

 graduate college in arts and sciences, merely to further knowledge in 

 those subjects which were not of immediate value to the masses. This 

 also was granted. The result of all this movement was that at the last 

 legislature the University of Illinois was granted a sum of money in 



vol. Lxxxir.— 35. 



