FEB. If), 1921 sosman: distribution of scientific information 71 



on the shelves. Meanwhile there came into the story a wandering 

 lumber-cruiser, who happened to pick up a piece of the "marble" 

 in the weed-grown quarry, and showed it to an official of a pulp 

 company, who gave it to his chemist. The chemist reported that 

 it was nearly pure MgCOs. The official promptly bought the quarry 

 for a nominal sum, resigned from the pulp company, and in a few 

 months was shipping several hundred tons of magnesite per day, 

 at about forty dollars per ton, to Ohio and Pennsylvania steel com- 

 panies. 



The producers of the original information did their task well; its 

 distributors did theirs so poorly that the product never reached its 

 ultimate consumer, the average citizen of the United States, in the 

 crisis when he most needed it, and he had to fall back upon its redis- 

 covery through the chance curiosity of a wandering lumberjack who 

 had never read a geological bulletin in his life. 



Probably every one of you could provide a similar story from 

 your own experience to illustrate the futility of publication. But why 

 should anyone be so unaware of vital facts, in a land which is flow- 

 ing with publications and in which nearly everyone can read? The 

 consideration of this question brings us to our second heading : 



II. THE CAUSES OF ineffective DISTRIBUTION 



In the case of that minority of the population which can not read, 

 ignorance of the very existence of useful information is sufficient 

 to account for its failure to be distributed. This obvious cause 

 needs no analysis. 



The case that requires looking into is the case of that large propor- 

 tion of the population which can read, if it will. The present in- 

 effective distribution of information to this part of the population 

 ma}^ be traced to two causes: (1) disinclination to use the knowledge 

 we possess; (2) inaccessibility of the information when it is desired. 



It is a familiar fact that the first reaction of the average individual 

 to a new situation which contains element? of danger is to "hope 

 for the best." This is true over the whole range of incidents from 

 a "common cold" to those sources of international friction which 

 result in wars. Scientific information — which means simply the 

 systematized results of experiment and observation — is available 

 as a guide to action in most of these situations, but we quite often 

 proceed as if no human beings had ever had to grapple with such 

 a problem before, or as if no record existed of the results of such 



