852 
found in laboratory experiments a range of 
difference of this magnitude. The able 
student can prepare a lesson or earn the 
doctor’s degree in about half the time re- 
quired by the poorer student. For the 
same kind of work and under similar con- 
ditions the value of the services of an in- 
dividual varies within somewhat the same 
limits. A good laboring man or a good 
elerk is worth as much as two who are 
mediocre. The value of genius to the 
world is of course inestimable. A great 
man of science may contribute more than 
even the most successful promoter—a 
Rockefeller, a Carnegie or a Morgan—gets. 
But such contributions are made possible 
by the organization of society as a whole, 
and should in large measure be distributed 
among its members, preferably in the di- 
rection of making further contributions 
possible. Scientific men should receive 
adequate rewards, and the surplus wealth 
which directly or indirectly they have pro- 
duced—it must be counted by the hun- 
dreds of thousands of millions of dollars— 
should, in so far as this can be done to 
advantage, be spent on further scientific 
research. 
The available wealth in the United States 
and Great Britain suffices to provide a 
home and the tools of production for each 
family and the productivity of labor to 
provide an annual income of about $1,000 
for each producer. If waste in production 
and expenditure were reduced, even to the 
extent that now obtains among teachers 
and scientific men as a group, there would 
probably be available $1,500 for each adult, 
including women engaged in the care of 
the home, or $3,000 for each family. If 
this were distributed on a range of two to 
one in accordance with ability, the more 
deserving teachers and scientific men with 
their wives would earn salaries of $4,000, 
in addition to owning their homes. An 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 909 
addition of from $250 to $1,000 should be 
allowed for each child requiring support 
and education, to be deducted in part from 
the incomes of those having no children, 
and allowance should be made for the vary- 
ing cost of living in the city or the country 
and the like. 
If the maximum income of a university 
professor or scientific man with a family 
should be from $5,000 to $10,000, no one 
should receive more, except to cover greater 
risks. There is no occupation requiring 
rarer ability or more prolonged prelim- 
imary training, and there is none whose 
services to society are greater. If there are 
to be money prizes—incomes of $20,000 or 
$100,000 or more—then they should be 
open to professors and investigators. Sci- 
entific ability is as rare as executive or 
legal ability, and is far more valuable to 
society. The lawyer who receives a fee of 
$800,000 for enabling a group of promoters 
to get ten times as much by evading the in- 
tent of the law, does not add to the wealth of 
society. The scientific man who increases 
the yield of the cereal crop by one per cent. 
adds $10,000,000 a year to the wealth of 
the country and five times as much to the 
wealth of the world. The scientific man 
who discovered and those who have devel- 
oped the Bessemer process of making steel 
have, according to the estimate of Abram 
S. Hewitt, added $2,000,000,000 yearly to 
the world’s wealth. There is no reason 
except the imperfect adjustments of society 
why the lawyer should receive large re- 
wards and the scientific man a secant salary. 
Those who render services to an individual 
or group are likely to be paid in accordance 
with the value of their services to the indi- 
vidual or group; in our competitive system 
those who render services to society as a 
whole are not paid at all, or only partially 
and indirectly. Of our thousand leading 
men of science, 738 are employed in uni- 
