cal schools of the country a uniformly 

 ad\'anced status not enjoved hv other 

 di\'isions of our uni\crsities. In fact, 

 only in the case of medical schools 

 can the United States be said to excel 

 all other countries in the number of 

 first-rate research institutions per unit 

 of population. 



Almost equally significant is the 

 growth of the Federal Government's 

 own scientific bureaus. The existing 

 agencies and departments, especially 

 the Department of Agriculture, un- 

 derwent an extraordinary develop- 

 ment. An outstanding feature was 

 the expanding program of grants-in- 

 aid to the State agricultural experi- 

 ment stations. The first decades of 

 the twentieth century saw the crea- 

 tion of a number of new scientific 

 bureaus and laboratories: the Bureau 

 of Mines, the Bureau of Standards, 

 and the National Institute of Health. 

 The First World War led to the crea- 

 tion of the principal service labora- 

 tories, the Na\'al Research Labora- 

 tory, for example, and the National 

 Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. 

 By 1932 the total Government ex- 

 penditure for research had risen to 

 over 40 million dollars, more than 

 double the figure for 1922. 



But no factor in the gradual emer- 

 gence of American science from its 

 dependent state is more striking than 

 the growth of research laboratories in 

 industry. Prior to 1880 there were 

 few, if any, commercial laboratories 

 worthy of the name; but in the last 

 decades of the nineteenth century 

 powerful new industries, especially 

 in the electrical field, grew out of 

 basic technological discoveries and 

 the inventive genius of men like Bell, 

 Edison, and Elihu Thomson. Firms 

 in these new industries almost from 

 the outset adopted the policy of main- 

 taining their lead by energetic pro- 



grams of scientific and technological 

 research resulting in patents based 

 in large part on the work of their own 

 laboratories. 



The First World War provided a 

 further stimulus to the growth of 

 commercial laboratories by revealing 

 the inadequacies of our position in 

 industrial research as compared to 

 Germany, especially in the chemical 

 field. Much of our present chemical 

 industry, together with its vast re- 

 search potential, grew up in response 

 to needs which were demonstrated in 

 the war, aided by the availability of 

 patents seized from their former 

 German owners. 



C. The National Research Budget 



The over-all picture of the devel- 

 opment of research in the United 

 States, as reflected in the changed 

 structure and magnitude of the na- 

 tional research expenditures of the 

 last 15 years, is shown in table I and 

 in the corresponding figure I. 



Since statistical information is nec- 

 essarily fragmentary and dependent 

 upon arbitrary definitions, most of 

 the estimates are subject to a very 

 considerable margin of error. Never- 

 theless, the following generalizations 

 seem warranted: 



(1) Of the three principal groups 

 engaged in research, private industry 

 contributes by far the largest portion 

 of the total national expenditures, 

 with the Government coming next 

 and the educational institutions last. 



(2) Research expenditures of in- 

 dustry, Government, and industrial 

 institutes have been expanding con- 

 siderably more rapidly (fig. I), than 

 research in uni\'ersities and science 

 institutes. 



During the war, the Government 

 expanded its research budget from 



85 



