556 



AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



music, are mainly innate, and that kinds of 

 character and degrees of ability are mainly 

 innate, but that the direction of performance 

 is mainly due to circumstances, and that the 

 environment imposes a veto on any perform- 

 ance not congenial to it. 



The present distribution of the 1,000 men 

 of science is somewhat the same as their 

 origin. The population of the country has 

 more than doubled since 1860, and the num- 

 ber of these scientific men per million popula- 

 tion is consequently less than half the num- 

 ber per million at the period of their birth. 

 There are in Massachusetts 144 of the 1,000, 

 which is 51.3 per million of the population, 

 according to the census of 1900. The num- 

 bers then decrease to 26.4 per million in New 

 York, 10.3 in Pennsylvania, 13.1 in Illinois, 

 8.2 in Ohio, 3.1 in Iowa, 1.1 in Alabama, 0.7 

 in Louisiana and in Mississippi. The most 

 striking development has been the attraction 

 to Washington of a large group of scientific 

 men, 119 of the thousand, nearly all in the 

 service of the government. This number has 

 been almost exactly supplied to the country by 

 the excess of scientific men born abroad 120. 

 This leaves an equal balance between the gains 

 and losses of other parts of the country. The 

 greatest gain has been made by California, 

 which has drawn 42 of the scientific men from 

 other states; Illinois and Maryland have -each 

 gained 21. Other states have gained consider- 

 ably in proportion to their total scientific pop- 

 ulation New Jersey 7, Minnesota 9, Mis- 

 souri 7, Nebraska 7 and Colorado 5. These 

 gains appear to be significant, attributable to 

 the establishment and growth of universities. 



Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania 

 have remained nearly stationary. Massachu- 

 setts has gained ten of the scientific men and 

 New York nine, while Pennsylvania has lost 

 one. The conditions in New York are by no 

 means creditable to that state, in view of its 

 great increase in wealth. Outside New York 

 City, the state has lost 31 men of science, 

 nearly one third of those it has produced, and 

 half the others are concentrated at Ithaca. 

 The conditions are somewhat similar in Mass- 



achusetts and Pennsylvania, outside Boston, 

 Cambridge and Philadelphia. 



The rural New England states, Maine, New 

 Hampshire and Vermont, have lost 48 of the 

 62 scientific men whom they have produced. 

 This is a loss that they can ill afford ; it signi- 

 fies a distinct decadence. Had each of these 

 states provided an income of $50,000 to retain 

 these men in their service, they would have 

 been repaid manyfold, commercially as well as 

 intellectually. The conditions in some of the 

 north central states are also ominous, though 

 more likely to improve. Thus Ohio has lost 

 forty-one of its scientific men, more than half 

 of those whom it has produced; Indiana has 

 also lost more than half and Iowa just half. 

 The south remains in its lamentable condition 

 of scientific stagnation, but we may hope that 

 material progress will be followed by an intel- 

 lectual awakening. All these figures become 

 more impressive when we remember that they 

 indicate performance in scholarship, in litera- 

 ture and in art, as well as in science. It would 

 be well if they were widely known, as they 

 would tend to awaken civic pride and to im- 

 prove the conditions of intellectual activity. 



The average standing of the scientific men 

 residing in different parts of the country 

 varies a little more than the standing of those 

 produced in different regions and is perhaps 

 less likely to be due to chance variations. 

 This appears to be somewhat paradoxical from 

 the point of view of the theory of probabilities. 

 The fact that of the 75 scientific men born in 

 Ohio, 42 belong to the first group and 33 to 

 the second is a natural result of chance dis- 

 tribution, and the fact that of the 34 scientific 

 men remaining in the state, 13 belong to the 

 first group and 21 to the second might equally 

 well be the result of chance distribution. But 

 apparently it is not. Ohio has lost more than 

 half the scientific men it has produced; it has 

 lost two thirds of its better men and one third 

 of its more mediocre men. The state has not 

 provided for its scientific men, and has pro- 

 vided less adequately for the better men than 

 for those who are not so good. Indiana has 

 lost three fourths of its men of the first class 



