REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT, lOlfi. 9 



long as there is no general recognition of existing conditions or 

 of practicable ways of improving them. 



3. Each research organization must therefore choose for itself 

 at any epoch the field, or the fields, it will cultivate, and must 

 restrict itself to them. No such privately endowed organization 

 may seek to delegate its duties to others, to play the role of pater- 

 nalism, to undertake the functions of a scientific clearing-house, 

 to secure monopolistic privileges, or to engage in propagandism, 

 without danger of defeating its primary purposes. 



That large sums are now spent annually by governments, by 

 municipalities, and by industrial organizations in defraying the 

 costs of investigations, sums vastly greater in the aggregate than 

 the combined incomes of all existing endowed research organiza- 

 tions, is a fact which needs to be visualized as a preliminary to 

 an understanding of the relatively narrow limitations of the 

 resources and capacities of the Institution. Thus, to illustrate, 

 in the conduct of work which may be fittingh^ called research, the 

 United States Government spends annually not less than twenty 

 times the income of the Institution. It matters not that this 

 work is often designated by the ambiguous word '^practical," 

 or by the misleading phrase ''applied science." In so far as it 

 deals with facts and principles, and substitutes knowledge for 

 ignorance, it is worthy of prompt recognition and unstinted 

 support. If, for example, the United States Department of 

 Agriculture can succeed in supplanting "lunar methods" in 

 husbandry by methods founded on physical fact and verifiable 

 induction, it will be entitled to conspicuous distinction in the 

 annals of American science. But while antithetical words and 

 phrases continue to befog contemporary^ thought it may be easily 

 ascertained, and should be better known, that the United States 

 Government, through its numerous departments and bureaus, 

 is now carrying on, and has in recent decades accomplished, 

 a large amount of high-class research, the annual costs of which 

 quite overshadow the income from any existing research endow- 

 ment. It jnay be as easily ascertained, and should be as well 

 known, that no such endowment can be reasonably expected to 

 supplant governmental functions or to supplement governmental 

 resources. The legislator who sees no reason why the Institu- 

 tion maj' not undertake electrification of postal routes, the pub- 



