478 
In the report of last year I sought to call 
the attention of the trustees and of teachers 
in colleges and universities to the specific 
things that a retiring allowance system 
could do, and also to the limitations of 
such a system. The experience of the past 
year prompts me to refer again to these 
limitations, and to the extreme difficulty of 
making exceptions to the rules framed for: 
administering the income of the founda- 
tion. 
The specific things that the system of 
retiring allowances maintained by the 
foundation offers to the college teacher are 
three in number: (1) a fair retiring allow- 
ance after sixty-five years of age; (2) a 
disability allowance after twenty-five years 
of service as a professor, in case of a fail- 
ure in health so complete as to unfit him 
for his work as a teacher; (3) the payment 
to the widow of a professor who has had 
twenty-five years of service, of a pension 
equal to one half of the allowance he would 
have been entitled to at sixty-five. I am 
inclined to think that the protection of the 
wife and family thus provided is the most 
valuable and, in many cases, the most 
highly appreciated service that the system 
of retiring allowances can render. These 
benefits accrue to the teacher under specific 
rules, according to which he himself and 
_ the officers of his college may know, quite 
as well as the officers of the foundation, 
whether he has had a service which makes 
him or his widow eligible under these rules. 
The executive committee of the founda- 
tion has spent much time over cases which, 
falling outside of these specific provisions, 
are urged upon their attention by college 
authorities, by friends of those desiring 
relief and by the applicants themselves. 
These requests are justified in part by the 
action of the trustees in giving to the ex- 
ecutive committee permission to extend the 
benefits of the retiring allowance to certain 
exceptional cases—notably to men who de- 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Von. XXXV. No. 900 
sire to devote themselves to research, and 
to college executives who have rendered 
noteworthy service. As a matter of fact, 
the executive committee has never made 
use of this authority granted by the trus- 
tees, and I am convinced that the difficul- 
ties of making such exceptions are so great 
that the committee will find it necessary to 
abide wholly by the fixed rules. 
The idea of giving, by the granting of a 
pension, opportunity to men of proved 
ability to devote their whole time to re- 
search was a very attractive one to the 
trustees and officers of the foundation at 
its inception. It was felt that a by-product 
of the retiring allowance system which 
would be of great value might here be 
obtained. 
Unfortunately, experience has not justi- 
fied this hope. This is due to a number of 
causes: partly to the fact that there are yet 
few men in the colleges and universities 
engaged in advanced research; partly to 
the tendencies of the colleges themselves 
and to the qualities inherent in human 
nature. Experience shows that under the 
encouragement offered by this action of the 
trustees, a considerable number of teachers 
who had done nothing in research hitherto 
suddenly discovered that they had a mis- 
sion in that direction. Further, the college 
authorities were ready in many eases to 
recommend as qualified for research pro- 
fessors whom they had found ineffective as 
teachers. Finally, in the cases of men 
genuinely interested in research and pre- 
pared to undertake it effectively, there is 
some question whether such provision by 
the foundation would not weaken the sense 
of responsibility among the colleges toward 
research and those undertaking it. 
The experience of the foundation in con- 
sidering special cases among ‘‘those whose 
twenty-five years of service include note- 
worthy presidential or other administrative 
work in a college or university’’ has 
