16 Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute 



The administration of a university may not usually express itself in 

 the same way as the State Governor just referred to, but its policy is 

 frequently just as effective in discouraging research. The business 

 administration of an American university when it comes to engaging 

 instructors is apt to apply the law of supply and demand ruthlessly. It 

 takes no account of the motives or ideals of those who are seeking posi- 

 tions on the teaching stafif. Among the candidates may be one whose 

 dearest desire in life is to, find the opportunity to do research. This 

 privilege he would not forego for anything which fortune or favour could 

 offer him. He has already made his first contributions to knowledge 

 and there is every reason to believe that nature has endowed him with 

 gifts of the highest order. The findings of research appear to him to 

 be the most permanent contribution to our civilization. The great 

 pathfinders in science he regards as the highest product of the race. 

 By identifying himself with science through research it seems to him 

 that he associates himself more closely with the eternal than he can do 

 in any other way. The only opportunity to do research would appear 

 to lie in a university career. The administration offers him a beggarly 

 pittance barely sufificient to hold soul and body together. This he 

 accepts in the expectation that he will find the time for research. Vain 

 delusion! He is loaded down with lectures and tutorial work on the 

 general business principle that the more hours his employers squeeze 

 out of him, the more they are getting for their money. This is the kind 

 of policy which kills the goose that lays the golden egg. The years pass. 

 Possibly our research man gets married. He has no margin to come and 

 go on. Promotion comes slowly. Financial worries multiply. He 

 finds himself at last compelled to abandon his long cherished plans for 

 research. He broods over the futility of his sacrifices and eats his very 

 heart out. 



Some there are who are more fortunate, who find it possible to reserve 

 a little time for research and who manage to produce, though under 

 handicap. A few, too, there are who, after years of struggle, arrive 

 in a position where they are masters of the major part of their time 

 and can devote themselves to research, if in the intervening years their 

 productive ardor has not abated. 



If then scientific productivity in the American universities to-day 

 is greater than it was a quarter of a century ago the credit therefore is 

 due not to the university administrations, but, as we have already 

 stated, to members of the academic staffs, which members are also 

 responsible for the increased efficiency of scientific instruction in the 

 universities. For the more advanced instruction these men often 

 receive no remuneration. They are permitted as a privilege to under- 



