July 12, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



45 



which are not justified. It is obvious, as I 

 have already said, that the regents cannot 

 follow any set rule of thumb in this their 

 most important sphere of decisions. They 

 may upon occasion err disastrously in 

 either direction. What we hope from the 

 regents is that they shall at all times stand 

 resolutely for the maintenance of quality, 

 and that they shall refuse to permit any 

 student-catching or appropriation-catch- 

 ing expansion which can not justify itself 

 in terms of fundamental social serv- 

 ice. If the regents go astray at this point, 

 whether through bad counsel or from their 

 own initiative, nothing can save the uni- 

 versity under their control from grave de- 

 terioration. 



This paper should not conclude without 

 reference to that university which in its 

 early history went to the extreme in the 

 concentration of its resources. I refer, of 

 course, to Clark University. The trustees 

 of that institution believed that they were 

 not justified in founding one more New 

 England college. They had not enough 

 money to found a university where the 

 usual round of departments should be ade- 

 quately represented. Under the advice of 

 G. Stanley Hall, they resolved upon the un- 

 precedented plan of beginning a univer- 

 sity with five departments. The result of 

 this course was that in each one of those 

 departments they secured a group of schol- 

 ars unsurpassed in the country, if anywhere 

 in the world. They had Whitman, Loeb, 

 Michelson, Nef, Boas, Mall, Story, Bolza, 

 Donaldson, and many otlfer men who then 

 had, or since have, won international 

 standing. They had the only American 

 scholar who has won the Nobel prize. The 

 group of scholars at Clark and the work 

 done there were at once recognized by the 

 university world as of first-rate impor- 

 tance. A change of mind on the part of 

 the founder and other conditions have 



modified the later history of Clark. Its ex- 

 ample is one which no other university, cer- 

 tainly no state university, can follow in the 

 extreme. But the history of Clark proves 

 one thing of the utmost importance — that 

 a university of relatively limited means 

 may go into the front rank by sagacious 

 concentration of its resources. 



The members of this association realize 

 well the difficulty of securing money for 

 the university. But, in truth, it is not so 

 difficult to get money as it is to spend it so 

 as to have a minimum of waste and a maxi- 

 mum of efficiency. Our task is to discover 

 and create the university for our century. 

 The discovery demands statesmanlike dis- 

 crimination between what is essential and 

 what should be pruned away. The crea- 

 tion demands something still more difficult, 

 for it demands a thousand decisions which 

 cut across private interests. The institu- 

 tion which we actually create will depend 

 upon the self-denial, the integrity and the 

 courage with which members of the uni- 

 versity day by day make these decisions. 



William Lowe Bkyan 



Indiana University 



LECTUBES ON THE SMOKE PROBLEM 

 In the fall of 1911 the Department of Lidus- 

 trial Research of the University of Pittsburgh 

 was provided by a Pittsburgh business man 

 with funds for a thorough investigation of the 

 smoke nuisance. At the present time the in- 

 vestigation is being conducted by a staff of 

 twenty-five specialists, of whom seven are giv- 

 ing their entire attention to this task. Some 

 of these men are studying the effect of smoke 

 and soot on the atmosphere, on the weather, 

 on plant life, on buildings, on the public 

 health; some are investigating the economic 

 damage done by smoke and soot; others are 

 making a detailed study of the mechanical de- 

 vices for preventing or abating smoke; and 

 still others are inquiring into the chemistry 

 and physics of smoke and soot, into the laws 



