October 5, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



325 



scientific achievement, but a factor found 

 in a simple psycholo^cal analysis of our 

 industrial situation. Let our manufactur- 

 ers but awaken to the great significance, to 

 the full meaning of the simple old behest 

 that the laborer is worthy of his hire, and 

 they will be astounded at the results. 

 American manufacturers at present on the 

 whole do not treat their chemists, and es- 

 pecially their research and directing chem- 

 ists, fairly. The tendency is to exploit the 

 chemist as an employee, instead of treating 

 him as a partner, who brings scientific ex- 

 perience, skill and acumen to the aid of 

 capital and commercial experience and 

 standing. Manufacturers are willing to 

 cooperate essentially on the footing of part- 

 ners with great lawyers, who solve their 

 legal difficulties — usually a wholly sterile 

 performance as far as the welfare of the 

 nation as a whole is concerned — but they 

 have not yet learned to cooperate in the 

 same fashion with men of our profession, 

 who solve their technical difficulties to the 

 direct enhancement of the nation's wealth 

 and welfare ! Our chemists know and feel 

 that they are being exploited and in con- 

 scious or unconscious resentment, after one 

 bitter disappointment or the other in their 

 employers' fairness, they lose their fresh 

 enthusiasm and their capacity for the 

 whole-hearted, unstinting effort that goes 

 with the work in which the heart and soul 

 support the mind ! All this is wrong. Re- 

 search and managing chemists should be 

 sure that success means partnership in the 

 fruits of their success, that success will 

 yield immediately and not in some hazy 

 future of a soon-forgotten promise, an 

 equitable share in the actual benefits of the 

 work done. This is one of the real but un- 

 recognized sources of the unquestioned 

 leadership of Germany in fields chemical: 

 Dr. Bernthsen, director of the Badische 

 Anilin-Fabrik, probably the greatest of the 



many great German firms, told me some 

 fifteen years ago that from the lowliest 

 workman up to the highest chemist in his 

 employ, every individual is guaranteed by 

 contract a royalty, a definite share in the 

 money earned or saved by any suggestion 

 or discovery on the part of the individual. 

 Contrast this wise policy with what is com- 

 mon knowledge concerning the situation 

 in the great majority of American plants. 

 Any chemist can multiply indefinitely the 

 single specific illustration of this attitude 

 that I will give. One of our doctors of 

 philosophy of the University of Chicago, as 

 chief chemist for one of the very largest 

 manufacturing concerns in the country — 

 a unit in a " trust " — perfected a device, 

 simple in itself, that saved the corporation 

 perhaps $80,000 a year: his reward was a 

 princely increase of $200 or $300 a year in 

 salary! Incidentally, let me say that I 

 promptly took him away from this corpor- 

 ation — we can not afford to waste good men 

 in such places. In case after case that has 

 come to my notice from some of our lead- 

 ing men, chemists have been cuddled and 

 patronized until their improvements have 

 been completed and then recognition has 

 come munificently in the form of a few 

 hundred dollars a year and — oblivion. 

 These men, leading men, let me remind you, 

 have acknowledged to me that this treat- 

 ment killed outright all the fire of enthusi- 

 asm with which they had been wont to 

 work! There are a few noteworthy excep- 

 tions among corporations, but their 

 strength and prosperity confirm the validity 

 of the appeal I am making, for they have 

 recognized that in large measure their con- 

 tinued prosperity has been the result of the 

 brain-work of their chemists, cooperating 

 with the brain-work of their directors and 

 the capital of their corporations. There 

 are also prominent exceptions among in- 

 dividual chemists: we have men in our So- 



