INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTRY—BAEKELAND. Q47 
However, their sphere of action, until now, seldom goes beyond 
that of private technical enterprises for private gain. And yet, there 
is not a chemist, not an engineer, worthy of the name, who would not 
prefer efficient, honorable public service, freed from party politics, to 
a mere money-making job. 
But most Governments of the world have been run for so long 
almost exclusively by lawyer politicians, that we have come to con- 
sider this as an unavoidable evil, until sometimes a large experiment 
of government by engineers, like the Panama Canal, opens our eyes 
to the fact that, after all, successful government is—first and last— 
a matter of efficiency, according to the principles of applied science. 
Was it not one of our very earliest American chemists, Benjamin 
Thompson, of Massachusetts, later knighted in Europe as Count 
Rumford, who put in shape the rather entangled administration of 
Bavaria by introducing scientific methods of government ? 
Pasteur was right when one day, exasperated by the politicians 
who were running his beloved France to ruin, he exclaimed: 
In our century, science is the soul of the prosperity of nations and the living source 
of all progress. Undoubtedly, the tiring daily discussions of politics seem to be our 
guide. Empty appearances! What really leads us forward are a few scientific 
discoveries and their application. 
