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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



now published by the Carnegie Founda- 

 tion give details for 103 institutions 

 paying $45,000 a year or more in sal- 

 aries, to the instructing staff, and of 

 54 smaller institutions which were 

 selected as showing that good results 

 can be obtained with comparatively 

 small resources. The average salary 

 of the full professor in the hundred 

 leading institutions is about $2,500, 

 varying from about $4,800 to about 

 $1,400. Higher salaries are paid in a 

 few cases, but salaries of $5,500 at 

 Harvard or $5,000 at Columbia are 

 practically the maximum money prizes 

 open to teachers. These prizes are not 

 open to free competition; for in' this 

 country a professor can as a rule only 

 reach the highest position in his own 

 institution. In this regard, the Ger- 

 man method of calling a man freely 

 to what is regarded as a better position 

 has certain advantages. A professor 

 may be called to Berlin at the age of 

 sixty, receiving a higher salary and a 

 more honorable position than any that 

 we have, and this possibility may be a 

 stimulus to good work. Here a man 

 who receives the average salary of 

 $2,500, at the average age of appoint- 

 ment of 35 years, is not usually able 

 to look forward to further promotion. 

 His expenses increase, especially if he 

 has a family, and he finds himself less 

 well off than the successful physician 

 and lawyer in the same town, who are 

 continuously increasing their incomes 

 and the material advantages they can 

 give to their children. 



The Harvard plan seems on the whole 

 to be the best hitherto put in practise 

 in this country. After a graded series 

 of promotions and increments of salary, 

 a full professorship is reached at the 

 average age of forty with a salary of 

 $4,000, and the salary is increased by 

 $500, at intervals of five years, until it 

 reaches $5,500. If a man shows un- 

 usual ability — ordinarily it must be 

 acknowledged by being called elsewhere 

 — he may be promoted more rapidly 

 than in accordance with the usual 



routine; in general, however, the sal- 

 aries are not in proportion to ability 

 or to needs, but are equal with slowly 

 increasing increment. This method 

 and the system of pensions gives se- 

 curity and dignity to the office. It is 

 an open question whether the lessening 



] of competition and ambition which it 



j favors is a good or an evil. 



The comparison of the salaries given 

 by different institutions should result 



i in the improvement of conditions where 

 these are unsatisfactory. Thus Syra- 

 cuse University pays its assistant pro- 

 fessors an average salary of $978 and 

 its full professors an average salary of 

 $1,808, and in its non-professorial de- 

 partments has one instructor for 

 twenty students. Haverford College 

 pays its assistant professors $2,240 and 

 its full professors $3,440 and has one 

 instructor for six or seven students. 

 These are extreme cases, but there are 

 many anomalies in the tables. It is 

 of course true that the effective salary 

 is dependent on the cost and standard 

 of living. A salary of $2,000 in a 

 small town may have as much pur- 

 chasing power as twice that amount in 

 >Jew York City. 



SCIENTIFIC ITEMS 

 We record with regret the deaths of 

 James Duncan Hague, the American 

 geologist and engineer ; of Anceto- 

 Garcio Menocal, an eminent Cuban en- 

 gineer in the service of the United 

 States government; of Mr. Arthur 

 Lister, F.R.S., known for his work on 

 the mycetozoa ; of Mylius Erichson, the 

 Danish explorer; of Dr. F. Noll, pro- 

 fessor of botany at Halle, and of Dr. 

 Oskar Liebreich, professor of pharma- 

 cology at Berlin. 



Pkofessor George E. Hale, direc- 

 tor of the Solar Observatory of the 

 Carnegie Institution, has been elected a 

 foreign correspondent of the Paris 

 Academy of Sciences in the place of the 

 late Asaph Hall. — Count Zeppelin, on 

 the occasion of his seventieth birthday, 

 has been awarded an honorary doctor- 



