1882.] EXPERIMENT STATION. 269 



such a station very comfortably. It is no more than they 

 have in New Jersey, and I suppose they could use more there 

 with advantage. There is one thing you must remember, 

 that when a man is qualified for this special line of work, it 

 is done at a great deal of expense. If I had what my educa- 

 tion has cost me invested at four per cent., I would be willing 

 to retire; I could live comfortably ; but I cannot have it; it 

 is sunk capital for me, to a large extent; and when a man 

 fits himself for scientific work, he is unfitted for other kinds 

 of work. I can not go out now and change my occupation; 

 I have got into a rut ; 1 am unfitted by my training in this direc- 

 tion for the general business of life. You have got to pay a 

 man, if you are going to induce him to go into this sort of 

 thing, a reasonable salary. Sometimes you will find a man 

 who will do it for notliing, and when you do, you are lucky, 

 and he is not lucky. In Germany, experiment stations have 

 been going on for about twenty years. Their chemists are 

 paid very low salaries, as everybody is paid a low salary who 

 works for the government. They have to work very econom- 

 ically ; they do not work very hard ; and now those who are 

 running the experiment stations have succeeded, some of 

 them, in obtaining the pension which the government officials 

 enjoy in that country as a reward for working for small 

 wages, and working in a line which unfits them for general 

 business. They work there very cheaply, but when they have 

 got done, or are disabled, then they have enough paid them 

 to live on. If you would pay pensions here, you might get 

 your work done more cheaply, but if you will not, you will 

 have to pay more than is paid abroad. It costs money to get 

 good assistants in places of this kind, and at the rates which 

 the station has been able to pay, we shall not be able to keep 

 the men that we have been employing or to get good succes- 

 sors. We have had some excellent chemists in our employ, 

 who, after working a year or two, have gone west to go into 

 some large manufacturing or mining establishment as chem- 

 ists, where, in three or four years, they will be enjoying more 

 income than the whole station has. 



Now, we ought to be able to pay good men such salaries as 



