104 The Fokest Products Laboratory 



Look })ack at the condition of science in that earher period to 

 which the Governor referred in his talk about the forests. We cele- 

 brated here in Wisconsin a few weeks ago the fiftieth anniversary of 

 the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, founded in 1870. We talked 

 about the men who were the fathers of that Academy. There was 

 Lapham, a surveyor of JNIilwaukee; there was Dr. Hoy. a ])usy phy- 

 sician, in wide practice at Racine. This was the type of man who first 

 brought science to Wisconsin. Fifty years ago, science ^vas mainly 

 in the hands of people busily engaged in other matters; that was true 

 all over this country. Science was a side issue for people whose work 

 and thought were chiefly given to other things. Since that time the 

 situation has changed completely. In those days there were single 

 individuals working at the exploration of nature, many of them doing 

 this as a task for leisure hours: today we have an army of people who 

 are devoting all their time to the exploration of nature and are deriv- 

 ing their living from this work. Thus the knowledge hich these men 

 and women are bringing together, the knowledge which they have 

 been bringing together during the past generation, has been accumu- 

 lating at a rate which one may almost call tremendous. We look 

 with surprise at the rapid increase of population during the past half 

 century ; we look with even greater surprise at the enormous increase 

 of wealth during the same period. But neither of these facts is in any 

 way comparable to the increase of scientific knowledge during the 

 same years. Here, then, is an enormous asset which has been grow- 

 ing rapidly, increasing indeed at a geometric rate, and of which by far 

 the greater portion has accumulated during the memory of men here 

 present. It is an asset whose increase is still going on at a rate which 

 is constantly accelerated. To this asset there are contributing, not 

 merely a few men, not merely a few great men, but the labors of lum- 

 dreds of thousands of men, working each in his own field of explora- 

 tion. 



This, then, is a new situation in the history of the world. It has 

 made necessary the development of a new type of profession, of a new 

 type of institution. It has made necessary men and institutions who 

 are to mediate between knowledge in this sense of the word and prac- 

 tical life, between scientific knowledge and aff'airs. This situation has 

 brought about the establishment of institutions of various types and 

 in various directions. Such are agricultural colleges and experiment 



