4 GROWTH OF PLANTS 



aspirations of a growing boy. To this boy the Methodist religion represented 

 a vengeful rather than a just and sympathetic God. Arthur Cotton Newell, 

 a classical student from Baliol College, Oxford, and a high-school teacher 

 at Butte, seems to have given the boy the first start in proper orientation 

 Avdth the world, both by personal contact and by placing in his hands Olive 

 Schreiner's "African Farm" and Herbert Spencer's "Data of Ethics." 

 The logical orientation Avith the world was furthered still more during his 

 happy days at Exeter. Here he came under the influence of able teachers 

 and outstanding characters: George Wentworth, teacher of mathematics 

 and author of textbooks on the subject; Professor Tufts, English; George 

 Lyman Kittredge, Latin ; and Bradbury Cilley, Greek. 



After two very busy decades in developing mining interests, Colonel 

 Thompson at last found some leisure time to indulge his two natural bents: 

 the desire for beauty and the desire to understand and contribute to the 

 logical order of society. Furthermore, he had acquired the wherewithal to 

 gratify these mterests. His fine home on North Broadway, Yonkers, mth 

 its beautiful landscaping, largely planned and developed by himself, is an 

 expression of his sense of beauty. With the aid of the artistic touch of Dr. 

 Fred J. Pope, a mining and chemical engineer in the Colonel's employ, he 

 collected and arranged in the basement of his home two valuable and beau- 

 tiful exhibits: one of minerals and another of carved jades. 



While Dr. Duncan had impressed the Colonel with the social value of 

 research, the Colonel had to decide the area in which such research was 

 most needed. In planting his estate, he learned from consulting experts 

 that there was much still unkno\\Ti about factors affecting plant develop- 

 ment, especially about controlling insect pests and plant diseases. His ex- 

 periences in starving and freezing Russia emphasized the significance of 

 plants to man as the ultimate source of all his food, nearly all his clothing, 

 and much of his shelter. Statements of the Colonel quoted from "The 

 Magnate" (pp. 290-291) show how his mind was working. "'When I have 

 enough money,' he said one day, 'I am going to build a laboratory to study 

 some of the fundamental things. I want to do something to get at the bot- 

 tom of the phenomena of life processes and I think a good place to study 

 them would be in the realm of plants. Any principles concerning the nature 

 of life that you can establish for plants will help you to understand man, 

 in health and in disease. So, by helping men to study plants, I may perhaps 

 be able to contribute something to the future of mankind.' 



"The thought made contact in his mind with other thoughts rising out of 

 his Russian experience, his impatience with the ineffectiveness and unreality 

 of the political approach to national problems, the waste and stupidity of 

 politics. The phrase, 'when there are two hundred million of us' came again 

 and again to his lips. He saw hope only in an order based on economics, 

 illuminated and disciplined by science. He sent his imagination playing 

 along the highways of tomorrow. 'What you are doing in politics and social 

 welfare is all right, Panther,' he said to Robins one day as they stood to- 



