514 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



excess of any one sum ever before in the history of the world by a single 

 legislative enactment. This was in Lorimer's state and in Lorimer's 

 time, strange as it might seem. 



According to Dr. W. E. Whitney, in charge of the General Electric 

 Company research laboratories, the advances in incandescent lighting 

 alone in this country in the last ten years represent a saving of $240,000,- 

 000 a year or nearly a million dollars a day. He also calls attention to 

 the fact that as a result of investigations with the mercury arc, his com- 

 pany has already had a sale of over a million dollars extra. There are 

 a great many concerns in this country spending over a hundred thou- 

 sand dollars annually on research. And why do they do it? Because 

 it pays the company. Dr. Whitney believes that the advances of Ger- 

 many over the other countries is largely traceable to their apparent over- 

 production of research men by well-fitted universities and technical 

 schools. My argument is very simple. If an electrical concern that 

 must at all odds pay dividends to the present generation, can afford to 

 pay over a hundred thousand dollars annually for research, how much 

 can the state afford to pay for research in pure science, in physics, in 

 mathematics and chemistry, which will be absolutely essential to rad- 

 ical progress a century hence. The law governing the relation between 

 visible radiation and temperature has been the guiding principle to 

 most of the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by present day com- 

 mercial firms for more efficient lighting. New laws by the physicists 

 of to-day will set new guiding principles for the millions of the future. 

 The laws of induction as discovered in pure physics had to precede the 

 most wonderful development in electrical engineering that this age or 

 any age has witnessed in any line. My whole argument can be summed 

 up here briefly as follows. Knowledge is the source of all power. If 

 the state would get more power it must gain more knowledge. No 

 wonder President E. J. James has been led to exclaim, 



Why, research is the life of the state university! It (research) is funda- 

 mental to it! Without that it could not be a university in any proper sense of 

 the term. If its professors are not doing this, they are not qualified to give the 

 training which we have in mind for the youth of the state who go there. So 

 that research, investigation, is a fundamental quality of the state university, 

 which is going to do for the people of the state the service which they have a 

 right to expect. 



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Perhaps the moral status of the state is as important as food and 

 shelter. I believe that the moral condition can be improved only by a 

 further acquisition of the facts as to what promotes and what hinders 

 well-being. Thus all knowledge improves moral conditions. The in- 

 telligent investigation of the results of alcoholic drinks is doing more 

 toward driving out the drink habit than all the hatchets. The intelli- 

 gent and unbiased investigation of the moral status of small towns 



