January 9, 1920] 



SCIENCE 



37 



And yet, as I have tried to make clear, 

 reason-able cooperation and coordination in re- 

 search offer possibilities for greatly increasing 

 the rate of scientific progress. Individualism 

 and cooperation must not be antagonists but 

 yokefellows in the chariot of science. What 

 then shall be the binding force which shall 

 fuse these two ideas ? Precisely the same that 

 held together the various groups of scientific 

 men during the war, viz. ; the tie of a common 

 interest and a common purpose. I have com- 

 pared the great body of investigators to jour- 

 neymen but this does not mean that they 

 are merely " hands." They are self-directed 

 workers and therefore any organization of 

 them must be democratic. They are all 

 partners in the enterprise and sharers in its 

 profits. The men who worked together almost 

 night and day to devise eiScient gas masks 

 or means of submarine detection or methods 

 of sound ranging were not workmen under the 

 orders of a superior, but free associations of 

 scientists with training in common or related 

 fields of research and under the inspiration of 

 a common patriotism. Precisely this is what 

 is needed to achieve the victories of peace. 

 Effective cooperation can not be imposed from 

 above by administrative authority but can 

 only come by free democratic action of in- 

 vestigators themselves. In saying this I am 

 not charging administrators with either in- 

 difference or incompetency. The difficulty lies 

 in the nature of things. There must be the 

 will to cooperate. 



We may, I think, distinguish two distinct 

 forms of cooperative organization which we 

 may call for convenience institutional organi- 

 zation and subject-matter organization. 



In the agricultural field, at least, much em- 

 phasis has been laid in the past upon insti- 

 tutional cooperation as between different ex- 

 periment stations, between the stations and 

 the U. S. Department of Agriculture, and to 

 some extent at least between some of the 

 bureaus of the latter department. Much 

 anxiety has been expressed over the real or 

 supposed duplication of work by the state 

 stations and Section 3 of the Hatch Act seems 

 to contemplate more or less coordination of 

 experiments. It is within the memory of 



some present, too, that the first conception of 

 the Office of Experiment Stations was that of 

 a central directing agency. While this idea 

 was early abandoned, numerous voluntary 

 efforts toward the coordination of projects 

 have been attempted through committees of 

 the Association of Colleges and Experiment 

 Stations, one recent suggestion, that of a sort 

 of Agricultural Research Council, constitu- 

 ting more or less of a reversion to the early 

 conception of the Office of Experiment 

 Stations. 



On the whole, however, it may be doubted 

 whether the results reached in this way have 

 been commensurate with the conscientious 

 and praiseworthy efforts put forth by the ex- 

 periment stations and the Department of 

 Agriculture. These institutions and to a 

 large degree the individual bureaus largely go 

 their own way, with the exception in the case 

 of the stations of the restrictions involved in 

 the approval of projects by the Office of Ex- 

 periment Stations, and this condition seems 

 likely to continue. 



Meantime the various forms of war work 

 have afforded striking illustrations of the 

 success of the second type of cooperative 

 effort, viz., cooperation by subject-matter. 

 The significant lesson of war-time organiza- 

 tion is the efficiency with which scientific men 

 in the same field have got together, largely 

 independent of institutional or administrative 

 subdivisions. I believe that this same prin- 

 ciple can be applied to the more fundamental 

 research problems — that scientific men may to 

 advantage organize in this way, forming 

 group or regional conferences which might 

 be especially profitable for those living in 

 somewhat isolated localities and not in such 

 ready contact with their fellows as is the case 

 with those situated on the Atlantic seaboard. 

 Such free conferences, formulating the com- 

 mon judgment of workers in identical or re- 

 lated fields can scarcely fail to furnish both 

 guidance and inspiration for the progress of 

 research. In brief, I believe we can very 

 effectively promote research by consultation 

 and conference of those interested in partic- 

 ular subjects or groups of subjects. We 

 should thus have a loose organization at right 



