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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVI. No. 938 



tained 14,000 items, each of whicli involved 

 patterns, jigs, templates, storage, book- 

 keeping records and correspondence. Prob- 

 ably half of these items were either obso- 

 lete or in very small demand, and another 

 large fraction were unprofitable to handle. 

 Another $10,000 might have been properly 

 spent in making a selection of which of the 

 14,000 items should be abandoned and in 

 printing a new catalogue. 



In regard to the boilers, the president told 

 me I could get all information available from 

 two men, the superintendent of the factory 

 and the chief engineer, who were at logger- 

 heads. One had told the president one 

 story about the boilers, and the other an op- 

 posite story, and he did not know which one 

 to believe. He called the superintendent 

 into the office to tell me his story and, dis- 

 missing him, called in the engineer, who 

 told me the other story. I then had the 

 engineer take me through the whole fac- 

 tory, including the power plant. On my 

 return to the office I told the president that 

 the engineer had told the facts, and that 

 the superintendent had not because he was 

 ignorant; he knew nothing about a power 

 plant and never would know, for his bump 

 of conceit was too great to permit of his 

 learning. I reported further that the 

 trouble from lack of steam was not the fault 

 of the boilers — there were about 25 of them, 

 crowding the boiler house to its capacity, 

 and there was no available land for an ad- 

 dition to it — they were making as much 

 steam as they should be called on to make 

 with due regards to economy of fuel; but 

 the trouble was entirely owing to the great 

 waste of steam throughout the factory in 

 winter time. Live steam was used for 

 heating, and numerous traps were wasting 

 both steam and hot water. As a result of 

 my investigation an exhaust-steam heating 

 system was installed, and that stopped all 

 complaints of the insufficient supply of 

 steam. 



This long story about a factory may 

 seem to have nothing to do with academic 

 efficiency, but there are several points of 

 resemblance between its condition and that 

 of some educational establishments. They, 

 like it, are suffering from inefficient man- 

 agement continued through a long period 

 of years ; they have too many items in their 

 catalogue ; heads of departments at logger- 

 heads ; a board of directors who are capital- 

 ists, but who know nothing of the details 

 of the business they are supposed to di- 

 rect; a president and general manager who 

 is well versed in the advertising part of the 

 business, but knows nothing of the best 

 ways of producing its product. The fac- 

 tory, however, has two points of difference 

 from and advantage over the college. (1) 

 The competition of its rivals forces it to im- 

 prove its methods, while the college has no 

 such stimulus to improvement. (2) The 

 manager of the factory referred to knows 

 that he knows nothing about the best way 

 of running a factory and therefore calls in 

 outside expert assistance, the manager of 

 the college thinks he knows it all, and 

 therefore has no need of advice. 



I said some educational establishments, 

 not all. There are others, and this brings 

 me to another story. It is about a univer- 

 sity. 



A certain large university more than 

 twenty-five years ago had an engineering 

 college that was already suffering from dry 

 rot although it was only about ten years 

 old. It had a good location, excellent 

 buildings and equipment, and ample funds, 

 yet the college had lost prestige, and the 

 number of students was decreasing. The 

 president of the university knew nothing 

 about engineering education, but he was 

 wise enough not to pretend to know any- 

 thing about it. He asked half a dozen or 

 more consulting engineers and engineering 

 professors to visit the college and inde- 

 pendently to give him written reports as to 



