August 20, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



177 



ulated by the war and is especially reflected by 

 the demand for investigators by the industries. 

 Obviously, if this interest is to be maintained, 

 if indeed it is not to be seriously checked by 

 unsatisfactory work of poorly trained men, a 

 supply of investigators must be available, and 

 they must come from the colleges. Of course, 

 a student can not be taught to be an investi- 

 gator. He can only be given the tools of the 

 trade, the essential training in the funda- 

 mentals, and the opportunity to make himself 

 into an investigator if he has the proper 

 mental equipment. He must learn first of all 

 that there is such a thing as research by which 

 a livelihood and an honorable position can be 

 gained. Through contact with research work- 

 ers he must acquire that spirit which is ab- 

 solutely essential to continued investigation, 

 and without which few young men will choose 

 the laboratory in preference to the more 

 lucrative offerings of the business and pro- 

 fessional world. This contact can be ob- 

 tained only in colleges doing research work. 

 Every one who has had experience in main- 

 taining the personnel of an investigational in- 

 stitution knows that the chances of getting 

 good research men is much greater in the 

 colleges doing research work. IsTot only does 

 he find there students sufficiently interested 

 in research to consider it as a calling, but 

 those who are temperamentally adapted to 

 this exacting type of work have had some 

 opportunity of demonstrating their fitness. 

 Colleges doing no research work rarely turn 

 out an investigator. It is improbable that 

 the students in these institutions differ 

 essentially from those whence most of our 

 investigators come. The difference lies in the 

 fact that nothing is done to develop those 

 having qualifications for this work. Musi- 

 cians are not developed in a technical school, 

 nor artists in a college of law. 



Presumably research is conducted primarily 

 for the results it may yield, but what we 

 usually consider as the results of university 

 research is in reality but a by-product; the 

 real results are the investigators it develops. 

 There has never been a time when the col- 

 leges were so imable to meet the demand for 



men to fill research positions. Under these 

 conditions should the Carnegie Foimdation 

 attempt to discourage research in the univer- 

 sities, or should it use its great resources and 

 power to strengthen the weak places it has 

 found? 



l. a. eogers 

 Washington, D. C. 



radicalism and research in america 



In a communication by Neil E. Stevens 

 having the title " Eadicalism and Eesearch in 

 A m erica " printed in the last issue of Science, 

 both the title and the purport of the article 

 seem to challenge comment as a form of 

 veiled propaganda such as is all too common 

 at the present time. When radicalism is now 

 pretty clearly identified with bolshevism, 

 I.W.W.ism and other similar yearnings after 

 dictation by the proletariat styled pure democ- 

 racy, and when these eruptions within the 

 body politic are threatening to overthrow our 

 established system of representative (not 

 democratic) government, the claim is set up 

 through insinuations rather than by direct 

 assertions that the fathers of our government, 

 Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and 

 Madison, were all radicals identified with such 

 tearing-down movements. It seems further to 

 be implied that because they encouraged sci- 

 ence, therefore scientific men need have no 

 fear that such overturns as our radical now 

 propose will be other than advantageous to 

 them. 



If I have misinterpreted the purport of the 

 article I trust that Mr. Stevens will explain 

 just what radicalism connotes in his com- 

 munication. 



William Herbert Hobbs 



Ann Arbor, Michigan, 

 July 10, 1920 



[Dr. Stevens writes that he does not wish 

 to reply to Professor Hobbs, but that he has 

 no objection to a quotation from a personal 

 letter to the editor in which he says : " I used 

 the word 'radicalism' in what I believed to 

 be its correct sense as established by good 

 usage, as Dr. True uses it in the opening 

 paragraph of his article ' Thomas Jefferson 



