2o8 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



benefit of every one employed in the works. This is managed by a 

 board composed of the scientific directors of the different branches of 

 the business, the whole constituting a magnificent monument to Ger- 

 man science and cooperation. 



If the view that I have taken is correct, the practical question pre- 

 sents itself, what has been done by the colleges and universities in this 

 country to provide for research ? I should like to ask all the trustees 

 and governing boards of the institutions of the country the question: 

 Gentlemen, what is your policy — have you any — do you believe in 

 research — if so, what provision have you made for it ? Do you believe 

 that you have any duty to the nation in this matter? Who, in your 

 expectation, is to do the amount of research necessary to constitute us 

 a world-power in the intellectual sense ? Do you realize that the prose- 

 cution of research is a very engrossing pursuit, consuming great 

 amounts of time, and not to be carried on in those leavings of moments 

 when the tried teacher has finished his day's task of instruction ? That 

 it is also a very expensive process, requiring elaborate laboratories fitted 

 with the ever-changing apparatus quite distinct from the stereotyped 

 stock in trade necessary for the imparting of first principles to the 

 tyro in science? Of the forty million dollars now spent annually in 

 the United States on colleges and universities, what proportion now 

 goes for the provision for research? This it is impossible to tell, but 

 we find that in comparison with the hundred thousand students in our 

 colleges there are only seven thousand graduate students. Of these by 

 far the greater proportion are not to be counted in the research class, 

 but are preparing to be routine teachers of a somewhat superior grade 

 to those who go immediately from undergraduate colleges. These 

 graduate students are largely being taught by professors whose main 

 duties are in undergraduate teaching, and even in our largest and 

 richest institutions the complaint is made that it is impossible for the 

 graduate student to secure any considerable attention from the pro- 

 fessor. In many cases expensive laboratories are erected with little 

 or no provision for buying books. I know of but two physical labora- 

 tories in this country that have an endowment to be devoted to the 

 fostering of research, the Jefferson Laboratory at Harvard and the 

 Phoenix Laboratories at Columbia. 



Fellowships are, to be sure, provided, but not nearly enough. For it 

 is a strange fact that the sons of the rich seldom or never in this coun- 

 try take up learning as a profession, and that most of our serious 

 students have exhausted their means in the four years of college. In 

 a family where there are several children, it is a serious matter to 

 provide a college education for all, to say nothing of the extra three 

 years of graduate work, and the ideas that I have been advocating are 

 so little familiar to the public that many fathers do not understand 



