Apeil 2, 1909] 



SCIENCE' 



539 



times as many professors as they now have ; 

 Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and the other 

 state universities will almost surely have 

 four times as many. It is a modest hope 

 that salaries will increase fifty per cent. 

 The cost in a great university of a pension 

 system such as that of the Carnegie Foun- 

 dation, if all retire who are eligible, may 

 forty years hence be expected to be in the 

 neighborhood of one million dollars a year. 

 If at that time trust funds bring 3 per cent, 

 interest, it will require $30,000,000 to en- 

 dow a pension system for a single univer- 

 sity; and there will probably be not fewer 

 than twenty such with a hundred others 

 tending to become such. 



Forty years hence some two billion dol- 

 lars may be required to endow completely 

 a centralized pension scheme for North 

 America such as that of the Carnegie Foun- 

 dation. Nor is this too long to look ahead. 

 Young men of twenty-five, now entering 

 the academic career and accepting smaller 

 salaries in view of a pension at sixty-five, 

 will not be honorably treated should it be 

 withdrawn. Indeed they can possibly 

 recover the pension at law. 



The figures given here may seem some- 

 what appalling ; but they are really not so. 

 If pensions are only paid for disability at 

 any period in the lives of university teach- 

 ers and to their widows and minor orphans 

 —I believe that no other kinds of pensions 

 are desirable— the cost would be much less. 

 It would represent a capital far beyond 

 the possibility of private endowment, but 

 would be a sum not considerable in com- 

 parison with the wealth of the country. 

 Twenty times the amount eoiild to advan- 

 tage be saved each year by a reasonable 

 reduction in the expenditure for alcoholic 

 drinks. The economic gain to the nation 

 and to the world from the research work of 

 university professors far exceeds their sal- 

 aries and their pensions, even though no 

 account be taken of the value of their 



teaching or of their contribution to ideal 

 ends. The more scientific men the world 

 supports, the richer will it become, as well 

 as the better. But the nation, the states 

 and the cities must maintain their univer- 

 sities. 



J. McKeen Cattell 



RECENT STEPS IN THE CONSERVATION 

 MOVEMENT 



Soon after the assembling of the Sixty- 

 first Congress in extraordinary session, the 

 Senate created a committee on the conserva- 

 tion of our natural resources, comprising Sen- 

 ators Dixon (chairman), Clark, of Wyoming, 

 Beveridge, DoUiver, Dillingham, Heyburn, 

 Dick and Briggs, of the majority, with Sen- 

 ators Guggenheim, Jones, Newlands, Over- 

 man, Davis, Bankhead and Smith, of South 

 Carolina, of the minority. Of this committee, 

 Senators Dixon, Newlands, DoUiver, Bank- 

 head, Beveridge and Overman are members of 

 the National Conservation Commission. 



While the Eivers and Harbors Act passed 

 by the Sixtieth Congress made but limited 

 appropriations! chiefly for continuation of cur- 

 rent work, the provisions for surveys afiecting 

 new projects was exceptionally, indeed unpre- 

 cedentedly, liberal; and specific provision was 

 made for a legislative waterways commission, 

 empowered to carry forward the framing of 

 plans for waterway improvement, and for 

 requisite investigations in this and other coun- 

 tries. This commission has now been organ- 

 ized by the Sixty-first Congress; it comprises 

 Senators Burton (chairman), Gallinger (vice- 

 chairmam), Piles, Smith, of Michigan, Sim- 

 mons and! Clarke, of Arkansas, with Eepre- 

 sentatives Alexander, Lorimer, Stevens, Wan- 

 ger, Sparkman and Moon, of Tennessee. Sen- 

 ator Burton was for a number of years chair- 

 man of the Rivers and Harbors Committee, 

 and is chairman of the Section of Waters of 

 the National Conservation Commission, cor- 

 responding to the Inland Waterways Com- 

 mission. 



On March 24 the four national engineering 

 societies (American Society of Civil Engi- 

 neers, American Institute of Mining Engi- 



