2oo SCIENCE PROGRESS 



aff in all departments (that is all members of the teaching staff 

 who are not full professors), not more than six receive a stipend 

 greater than £250 a year ! Some of the salaries given, especially 

 for part-time work, amount to little over £1 a week — and this, 

 be it remembered, often to senior persons who have spent a 

 large sum of money in obtaining full degrees, besides special 

 acquirements. It should be also remembered that rises of 

 salary according to length of service are seldom arranged for, 

 and that the pensions, if any, are extremely small and are mostly 

 established upon a contributory basis. The proportion of 

 assistants, lecturers, and demonstrators who ever become pro- 

 fessors is not large ; and, as a matter of fact, many of these 

 persons end by drifting into mercantile laboratories, or return 

 at a late age to the practice of various arts and professions — in 

 which they are at a disadvantage compared with those who 

 started in the same more lucrative lines of work at an 

 earlier age. 



Regarding the British professorships themselves, we should 

 note that many of them are temporary or assistant professor- 

 ships, tenable only for a short term of years, after which the 

 holders may be cast loose without any donation or pension. 

 Even in the case of full professorships, superannuation at the 

 age of sixty-five, with a pension amounting to from £100 to 

 £200 is often insisted upon ; while in many cases the professor 

 must be re-elected every few years. As w 7 e have pointed out, 

 such scales of payment compare most unfavourably with the 

 emoluments of work in nearly all other professions. Thus, 

 Government employment is generally associated with a bonus 

 on retirement at an early age, and a pension on retirement at a 

 later one. The highest salaries and pensions in academical life 

 are extremely small compared with those given in military 

 service or the law — and the position is also comparatively 

 lower. In Germany, most of the professorships are held for 

 life, with pensions varying from 40 per cent, to 100 per cent, of 

 salary, according to length of service — so that an aged pro- 

 fessor can often retire upon his full salary when he is no longer 

 capable of performing the duties of his chair. Nothing like this 

 appears to hold in Britain, where an old man is often driven 

 out of his post on payment which is less than that of many an 

 enterprising chauffeur. We should add that cases have 

 occurred in which professors have been obliged to leave their 



