May 31, 1912] 
There are advantages in a system of 
severe competition for large prizes under 
honorable conditions, as well as in perma- 
nent tenure of office with small salaries 
and a free life; but confusion and harm 
result from running with the hare and 
hunting with the hounds. If there is to be 
competition in order to retain university 
chairs, then the university must be pre- 
pared to forego able men or to compete 
with other professions in the rewards it 
gives. It must offer prizes commensurate 
with those of engineering, medicine and 
law, namely, salaries as large as from ten 
to a hundred thousand dollars a year. It 
is further true that under these circum- 
stances a man must be judged by his peers. 
A university which dismisses professors 
when the president thinks that they are 
inefficient or lacking in loyalty to him is 
parasitic on the great academic traditions 
of the past and of other nations. <A single 
university which acts in this way will in 
the end obtain a faculty consisting of a 
few adventurers, a few sycophants and a 
crowd of mediocrities. If all universities 
adopt such a policy, while retaining their 
present meager salaries and systems of au- 
toeratie control, then able men will not 
embark on such ill-starred ships. They 
will carry forward scientific work in con- 
nection with industry and will attract as 
apprentices those competent to learn the 
ways of research. 
Permanent tenure of office for the pro- 
fessor is not a unique state of privilege. 
A president’s wife has permanent tenure 
of office; he can not dismiss her because he 
regards her as inefficient or because he pre- 
fers another woman. Analogous social 
conditions make it undesirable that he 
should have power to dismiss a professor 
for similar reasons. In the army and navy, 
in the highest courts, to a certain extent in 
the civil service of every country, there is 
SCIENCE 
849 
permanence of office. Indeed it is nowhere 
completely disregarded; service is always a 
valid claim for continued employment. A 
wife may be divorced by the courts, an 
army officer may be court-martialed, a 
judge may be impeached; but such actions 
are taken only after definite charges and 
opportunity for defence. Permanent ten- 
ure of office is intended to improve the 
service, not to demoralize it. It is attached 
to honorable offices, where public spirit and 
self-sacrifice are demanded, and the wages 
do not measure the performance. In Ger- 
many, Hrance and Great Britain the per- 
manence of tenure has given dignity and 
honor to the university chair, attracting to 
it the ablest men and setting them free to 
do their work. 
Incitement to the best work of which a 
man is capable is not excluded from the 
university if the professorship itself is 
made a high reward, the essentials of which 
are permanence, freedom and honor. Men 
who have proved their ability for research 
need opportunity rather than extraneous 
stimulus. Still it is true that while the 
lack of prizes does not considerably 
dampen the spirit of research, it makes the 
academic career less attractive to those who 
should be drawn to it. Most of the grad- 
uate students in our universities are men 
of mediocre ability, drifting along with the 
aid of fellowships and underpaid assistant- 
ships to an inglorious Ph.D. and a profes- 
sion with meager rewards. Several of my 
correspondents write that if large income, 
power and honor were not attached to the 
presidency, there would be no prize to at- 
tract men to university work. From my 
point of view it is altogether demoralizing 
that the reward held before the investi- 
gator and teacher should be the position of 
an executive, politician and promoter, 
which takes him away from the higher 
work for which he is fit. It is a curious 
