98 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 34 



steady flow of new industries to absorb the labor they displace, 

 cannot but lead to unemployment and chaos in the field of labor. 

 At present we have a want of balance resulting in unemployment, so 

 that our great need at the moment is for industry-making discov- 

 eries. Let us remember Faraday's electromagnetic induction, Max- 

 well's Hertzian waves, and the Otto cycle — each of which has 

 provided employment for millions of men. And, although it is an 

 old story, let us also remember that the economic value of the work 

 of one scientist alone, Edison, has been estimated at three thousand 

 million pounds. 



Unhappily, no amount of planning can arrange a perfect balance. 

 For as the wind bloweth where it listeth, so no one can control the 

 direction in which science will advance; the investigator in pure 

 science does not know himself whether his researches will result in 

 a mere labor-saving device or a new industry. He only knows 

 that if all science were throttled down, neither would result; the 

 community would become crystallized in its present state, with 

 nothing to do but watch its population increase, and shiver as it 

 waited for the famine, pestilence, or war which must inevitably come 

 to restore the balance between food and mouths, land and population. 



Is it not better to press on in our efforts to secure more wealth 

 and leisure and dignity of life for our own and future generations, 

 even though we risk a glorious failure, rather than accept inglorious 

 failure by perpetuating our present conditions, in which these 

 advantages are the exception rather than the rule? Shall we not 

 risk the fate of that over-ambitious scientist Icarus, rather than 

 resign ourselves without an effort to the fate which has befallen the 

 bees and ants? Such are the questions I would put to those who 

 maintain that science is harmful to the race. 



