246 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
But the most striking symptom of newer times is that some wealthy 
men of America are rivaling each other in the endowment of scientific 
research on a scale never undertaken before, and that the scientific 
departments of our Government are enlarging their scope of usefulness 
at a rapid rate. 
But we are merely at the threshold of that new era where we shall 
learn better to use exact knowledge and efficiency to bring greater 
happiness and broader opportunities to all. 
However imposing may appear the institutions founded by the 
Nobels, the Solvays, the Monds, the Carnegies, the Rockefellers and 
others, each of them is only a puny effort to what is bound to come 
when governments will do their fullshare. Fancy that if, for mstance 
the Rockefeller Institute is spending to good advantage about half a 
million dollars per annum for medical research, the chewing-gum bill 
of the United States alone would easily support half a dozen Rocke- 
feller Institutes; and what a mere insignificant little trickle all these 
research funds amount to if we have the courage to compare them to 
that powerful gushing stream of money which yearly drains the war 
budget of all nations. 
In the meantime the man of science is patient and continues his 
work steadily, if somewhat slowly, with the means hitherto at his 
disposal. His patience is inspired by the thought that he is not 
working for to-day, but for to-morrow, He is well aware that he is 
still surrounded by too many ‘‘men of yesterday,” who delay the 
results of his work. 
Sometimes, however, he may feel discouraged that the very 
efficiency he has succeeded in reaching at the cost of so many pains- 
taking efforts, m the economical production of such an article of 
endlessly possible uses as Portland cement, is hopelessly lost many 
times over and over again by the inefficiency, waste, and graft of 
middlemen and political contractors, by the time it gets on our public 
roads, or in our public buildings. Sometimes the chaos of ignorant 
brutal waste which surrounds him everywhere may try his patience. 
Then, again, he has a vision that he is planting a tree which will 
blossom for his children and will bear fruit for his grandchildren. 
In the meantime, industrial chemistry, like all other applications 
of science, has gradually called into the world an increasing number 
of men of newer tendencies, men who bear in mind the future rather 
than the past, who have acquired the habit of thinking by well- 
established facts, instead of by words, of aiming at efficiency instead 
of striking haphazard at ill-defined purposes. Our various engineer- 
ing schools, our universities, are turning them out in ever-increasing 
numbers, and better and better prepared for their work. Their very 
training has fitted them out to become the most broad-minded 
progressive citizens. eat 
