April 2, 1909] 



SCIENCE 



535 



to an academic career. It will frighten 

 able men from it at the outset, and tempt 

 them to desert it when they can. 



It may give a sense of security to be 

 assured of a pension in old age; but when 

 the time comes the reduced salary will 

 cause difficulty to those not having inde- 

 pendent means. There will be a tendency 

 for the professor to engage in some form 

 of money-making and to begin early in his 

 career. An eminent man of science has 

 written to me that since he had been re- 

 tired on a Carnegie pension he could no 

 longer contribute to a scientific journal, as 

 he had to earn a living for his family by 

 writing fiction. The community and the 

 world are largely dependent on the uni- 

 versity professor for the advancement of 

 science and scholarship and for the main- 

 tenance of the best ideals, and those great 

 services are not paid for directly. They 

 can only be assured by attracting the best 

 men to university chairs and then setting 

 them free to do their work with no inter- 

 ference and no fear of dismissal even on 

 half salary. 



In my opinion the Carnegie Foundation 

 would have been most wisely administered 

 if it had agreed to give to every institution 

 that had adopted or would adopt a half- 

 salary pension after the age of sixty or 

 sixty-five an endowment sufficient to defray 

 the remaining half of the salary, so that the 

 professor would be paid his regular salary 

 for life. He could then retire from the 

 teaching for which he was not fit. but could 

 continue to give his services to his institu- 

 tion and to his science. Or if the allow- 

 ance had been paid by the foundation 

 directly to the professor without regard to 

 whether or not he continued his teaching, 

 then he could give to his institution so 

 much service as he might render to ad- 

 vantage and in turn receive so much sal- 

 ary as he might earn. 



But the trustees of the Carnegie Foun- 



dation are presidents, not professors, 

 and the money is to be divided in the 

 main so as to relieve the financial straits 

 of the institutions, not to improve the 

 status of the professors. The profes- 

 sors in those institutions which already 

 had a pension system do not gain finan- 

 cially as far as the old-age scheme is con- 

 cerned and lose in certain ways; whereas 

 the institution gains the amount it had 

 contracted to pay in pensions. The pro- 

 fessor as weU as the president is pleased 

 that the university has added resources; 

 but they do not difi:er from any other un- 

 restricted endowment. 



The conditions are different in the ease 

 of institutions which did not have a pension 

 system. Here too it is chiefly the institu- 

 tion which gains, for it was bound in honor 

 to provide for its disabled professors, and 

 it will hereafter pay smaller or less in- 

 creased salaries in vieAv of the pensions.^ 

 But the presidents and professors have an 

 assurance that they did not have and will 

 have annuities that they did not earn or 

 only partly earned. The advisability of 

 having made the pensions retroactive in this 

 way is questionable. Gifts may be at the 

 same time acceptable and demoralizing. 

 When Tulane University raises nominally 

 its entrance requirements beyond what can 

 be met by the high schools of Louisiana in 

 order that it may be accepted by the foun- 



' It is not admitted by the oflBcers of the founda- 

 tion that pensions will tend to prevent increase of 

 salaries; but this appears to be an inevitable 

 result of economic law. In seeking recruits for 

 the army and navy the government states that the 

 small wages are compensated for by the pensions, 

 and one of the state universities has urged that 

 if the legislature does not accept the pensions 

 from the foundation, it will be necessary to pay 

 higher salaries in order to retain its professors. 

 A pension system may or may not improve educa- 

 tional eiEoienoy, and it may or may not improve 

 the general conditions of the academic caireer; it 

 will not improve permanently the financial status 

 of the professor. 



