SCIENCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN AMERICA 



little considered by the schoolmen and the graduates of schools is also 

 true, but happily, less conspicuously so as the years advance. 



The evil consequences of this mistake develop themselves in various 

 ways. The recent graduates of schools do not, indeed, expect immediate 

 positions of responsibility and authority, but they often demand them 

 after too short a term of object-teaching. Perhaps the greatest advantage 

 of their scientific training is that thev can learn from objects and phe- 

 nomena faster than can the mere workman, who, although full of the 

 elements of new and useful conclusions, lacks, if I may so say, the 

 scientific reagent which precipitates the rubbish and leaves a clear solu- 

 tion of the problem. It is however true — in the iron manufacture, per- 

 haps, especially true — that men of wide learning and of great mental 

 dexterity, unless they have studied at least as many years in the works 

 as they have in the school, do not successfully compete for the desirable 

 places with the men who have come up from the ranks. Narrow, un- 

 systematic, and fruitless of new results as his knowledge may be, he 

 who has grown up steadily from the position even of puddler's helper, 

 will be selected to take the manager's post in preference to him whose 

 reputation is founded solely on the school. 



Nor does this prove, as the schoolmen too often believe, that the 

 owners and directors of metallurgical enterprises are generally unap- 

 preciative of scientific culture. It rather proves that the lowest func- 

 tions, as in the case of poor humanity, must first be considered; that the 

 conditions of maintenance and regular working, which constant familiar- 

 ity with objects and phenomena alone can provide, are earliest in order. 

 Conservation first and improvement afterwards. 



Another consideration in this connection is that scientific aid ap- 

 pears to be more readily provided for the "practical" man than practical 

 aid for the "scientific" man. The trained scholar can the more readily 

 adapt himself to the situation. He should suggest many more improve- 

 ments than would ever crystallize in an equally good but undisciplined 

 mind. Yet his attempt, with mere scholastic aids, to carry these improve- 

 ments out, might disorganize a whole establishment. As there must be 

 one final authority, judgment founded on experience almost universally 

 ranks the wider and more fruitful culture of the school. And if we ask 

 those great masters whose experimental knowledge is as wide as their 

 scientific culture, they will tell us, that as the inert and clumsy flywheel, 

 that typical conservator, is more helpful to a steam-engine in the long 

 run, than a valve-gear so highly organized that it seems to know what it 

 ought to do, so in their own undertakings, plodding, practical economics 

 must sit in judgment upon theory and limit the reaches of imagination. 



Another evil growing out of the inadequate regard of mere school- 

 men for practice, is the frequent failure of their works or their inability 

 to complete them. Inventions and constructions, designed after a scien- 

 tific method and under the light of organized facts and detailed history 

 as laid down in books, may fail simply in default of a practical knowl- 

 edge of how far the capital at hand will reach, or what the means at 

 hand will do, or what the materials at hand will stand, or \\ hat the labor 

 and assistance at hand can be relied on to accomplish. A vast number of 

 facts about the operation of forces in materials are so subtle, or so in- 



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