May 31, 1912] 
in the neighborhood, with $300 to $600 subsidy 
for each of his children between the ages of 10 
and 21. Advances in salary dependent on the 
favor of the authorities appear to be undesirable. 
If salaries must vary from $3,000 to $5,000, a man 
should be appointed at such salary as may he 
necessary, but should thereafter receive automatic 
increases, say of $500 after each five years of 
service. Then there should be a few research 
chairs in each university, promotion to which would 
be a mark of distinction, and occupancy of which 
would dispense from all routine work and carry a 
salary equal to that of the presidency. 
It is awkward to urge a reform, such as 
an increase in the salaries of professors or 
the advance of a few salaries to that of the 
presidency, when this would become super- 
fluous or undesirable, if society as a whole 
could be reorganized on a just economic 
basis. Elsewhere’*® I have discussed the 
question as follows: 
The best reward for scholarly work is adequate 
recognition of the work as preparation for a 
career in life. At Columbia University a man 
takes his doctor’s degree at the average age of 
27 years. He is fortunate if he receives imme- 
diately an instructorship at $1,000 a year; the 
increments of salary are $100 a year for ten years, 
so that at the age of 37 he receives a salary of 
$2,000. In a commercial community the imagina- 
tion is not stirred by such figures. The university 
is a parasite on the scholarly impulse instead of 
a stimulus to it. 
The first need of our universities and colleges is 
great men for teachers. In order that the best 
men may be drawn to the academic career, it must 
be attractive and honorable. The professorship 
was inherited by us as a high office which is now 
being lowered. Professors and scholars are not 
sufficiently free or sufficiently well paid, so there 
is a lack of men- who deserve to be highly re- 
warded, and we are in danger of sliding down the 
lines of a vicious spiral, until we reach the stage 
where the professor and his scholarship are not 
respected because they are not respectable. 
I should myself prefer to see the salaries, earn- 
ings and conveyings of others cut down rather 
than to have the salaries of professors greatly 
«<The Case of Harvard College,’’ an address 
before the Harvard Teachers’ Association, The 
Popular Science Monthly, June, 1910. 
SCIENCE 
851 
increased. When a criminal lawyer—to use the 
more inclusive term for corporation lawyer—re- 
ceives a single fee of $800,000, our civilization is 
obviously complicated. Every professor who is 
as able as this lawyer and who does work more 
important for society can not be paid a million 
dollars a year. But neither is it necessary to pay 
him so little that he can not do his work or educate 
his children. I recently excused myself somewhat 
awkwardly for not greeting promptly the wife of 
a colleague by saying that men could not be ex- 
pected to recognize women because they changed 
their frocks. She replied: ‘‘The wives of pro- 
fessors don’t.’’ It is better to have wit than 
frocks; but in the long run they are likely to be 
found together. 
The first step of a really great university presi- 
dent would be to refuse to accept a larger salary 
than is paid to the professors. The second step 
would be to make himself responsible to the fac- 
ulty instead of holding each professor responsible 
to him. The bureaucratic or department-store 
system of university control is the disease which is 
now serious and may become fatal. This subjec- 
tion of the individual to the machinery of admin- 
istration and to the rack wage is but an invasion 
of the university by methods in business and in 
politics from which the whole country suffers. 
We may hope that it is only a temporary incident 
in the growth of material complexity beyond the 
powers of moral and intellectual control, and that 
man may soon regain his seat in the saddle. 
I myself accept the social ideal: From 
each according to his ability, to each ac- 
cording to his needs; and I believe that, 
thanks to the applications of science, the 
resources of society are sufficient to provide 
adequately for all. But the first step to 
take in our present competitive system is 
to make rewards commensurate with ef- 
fective ability and a compromise between 
services and needs. I have pointed out 
that, apart from exceptional cases, the 
range of individual differences in many 
traits is about as two to one. Thus in 
accuracy of perception and movement, in 
quickness of recognition and reaction, in 
rate of learning and retentiveness of mem- 
ory, in time and variety of the association 
of ideas, in validity of judgments, I have 
