SUPPORT FROM PRIVATE PHILANTHROPY 



strumentation without disturbing the peace of the natural his- 

 tory museum. Left to their own devices the universities could 

 not have responded nearly so quickly or extensively to the needs 

 of these newer basic researches. In most cases the universities 

 welcomed such outside help and, after a preliminary transition 

 period financed with risk capital from the foundations, they 

 gratefully shouldered more and more of the load themselves. 

 It is worth while remembering, however, that outside help is 

 not always welcomed by university administrators. There have 

 been times when professors and presidents have been enticed 

 into following the enthusiasm of some foundation ofhcer into 

 areas which turned out less productive than had been hoped or 

 more expensive than had been estimated. Discomfort and even 

 pain have sometimes been felt on both sides when the day 

 came for the foundation to withdraw its support and the uni- 

 versity found itself unable or unwilling to carry on as expected. 



On the whole, however, the grant-in-aid programs for 

 the promotion of newly developing areas of basic research were 

 well received and constituted the typical activity of private 

 foundations from about 1925 right clown to the present day. 

 After World War II it was these programs which presumably 

 formed the templates upon which the postwar programs of the 

 government granting agencies were fashioned. 



The private foundations also set a pattern for an even more 

 direct attack on the care and feeding of research workers. The 

 grant-in-aid programs, helpful though thev no doubt have been 

 for outstanding people already well established in research posts, 

 did not necessarily ensure a sufficient supply of basic investi- 

 gators. The fellowship programs for postdoctoral candidates 

 were designed to preserve for research outstanding individuals 

 who might otherwise be drawn into other pursuits at a critical 

 point in their careers. As we have seen above, the outstanding 

 investigators of the nineteenth century typically achieved 



237 



