REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT, 1920. 9 



As related in preceding reports, the Institution, like most 

 other contemporary estabUshments, has been profoundly affected 

 by the consequences of the world war, although 

 ConduS. these have come on so gradually and with such 

 diversified ramifications that only those giving 

 constant attention to them may be expected to be aware of their 

 present and ultimate effects. Nevertheless, one salient fact, 

 namely, the diminishing value of incomes, suffices to account 

 for the principal difficulties which have overtaken the Institu- 

 tion. It should be evident, indeed, that no altruistic organiza- 

 tion can go on expanding indefinitely when the purchasing 

 capacity of its income has fallen to one-half its initial value. As 

 a matter of fact, if the Institution did not have a reserve fund, 

 it would be obliged to restrict its work to something like two- 

 thirds to one-half the present program. As the case stands, it 

 is only truth to state that much of this work has been curtailed, 

 much has been postponed, while some projects have been aban- 

 doned so far as a speedy realization is concerned. 



In the meantime, conditions in the departments of research 

 and with the investigatory staffs generally have undergone some 

 degree of improvement. Most of the investigators who were 

 drawn off during the war into government service or into the 

 activities of industrial life have returned to their posts, in some 

 cases to accept salaries much less than those offered by industrial 

 concerns. But while the initial and the major derangements due 

 to the world war are subsiding, there remain more persistent, 

 though minor, sources of disquiet which must decrease efficiency 

 in research for a decade or more in the immediate future. These 

 sources are found mainly in the unprecedented costs of living, 

 in the general scarcity" of housing accommodations, and in the 

 prevalent depression of all Idnds of securities in which earnings 

 and savings have been invested. The immanence of these 

 untoward circumstances is little conducive to the serenity com- 

 monly held essential in the higher types of contemplative work. 

 It should be observed, however, in this connection, that many, 

 if not most, of the discoveries and advances of our race have been 

 made under the spur of dire necessity, and there is much reason 

 to hope that the hyper-anaemic and neurasthenic state in which 



