Mat 30, 1919] 



SCIENCE 



507 



applies to all the assistants in the stock 

 system. 



The man who handles the chemicals must 

 have a steady working force, determined by 

 the demands of the department. He is held 

 responsible for the care and storage of all 

 chemicals, and must notify the office of any 

 needs. His main duty is, however, the bot- 

 tling of liquid and solid reagents for student 

 kits in ample time to have them ready at the 

 beginning of each term. In a chemical de- 

 partment of 700 students this is an enormous 

 task, when one course may require 140 differ- 

 ent bottles per man. But with a good man 

 in charge of several boys, and in rush times, 

 extra student help, those chemicals can be 

 put up, gathered together, in sets, and got 

 ready for the student rush on the first day of 

 the term. The man in charge need not re- 

 ceive over from $90 to $125 per month, and 

 the boys over $10 a week. Student help may 

 be used at an hourly remuneration, differing 

 with the locality and the school. 



The cost of this entire work is very small, 

 when compared with the expense when this 

 same work is done in the old way by a $3,000 

 a year man. The apparatus can be well 

 handled by any capable woman with one or 

 more assistants. 



On checking out day the instructor assigns 

 a student to a laboratory bench. The stu- 

 dents take that slip to the office to see that all 

 fees have been paid, and deposit for excess 

 chemicals and breakage have been made. At 

 the supply window he now receives and signs 

 for his entire kit of chemicals and apparatus 

 for one term. That material he arranges in 

 his desk according to a plan which is given 

 him. He locks his desk with his own padlock, 

 which he can get from the stock-room if he 

 wishes to do so, for a small sum. He now has 

 his own chemicals and apparatus in his ovra 

 individual locker, protected by his own pad- 

 lock, to which he only has the key. The 

 student is now solely responsible for breakage 

 and loss, and his excess chemicals and break- 

 ago deposit protects the department against 

 loss either from accident or by the student 

 leaving the institution. Should he need extra 



chemicals or supplies, he can easily obtain 

 these at the supply window by signing for the 

 same. At Columbia the student receives as 

 free allowance, the average chemicals needed 

 for his particular course, and pays for excess 

 chemicals, as being a loss due to his careless- 

 ness. 



Many benefits arise from this arrangement, 

 viz., individual responsibility for care of ap- 

 paratus and chemicals; a much reduced con- 

 sumption of chemicals, because the amount 

 given is just sufficient for the experiment, 

 plus a slight margin for unavoidable waste; 

 all unnecessary movement is eliminated, as 

 the student seldom has to leave his own bench, 

 providing the laboratory is modem, and has 

 at the benches individual student hoods; a 

 doubling of the assigned amoimt of laboratory 

 work, in the same time, due to a reduction of 

 lost motion, and moving about the room, as 

 exists under the old fashioned side reagent 

 scheme, and finally, a relieving of the in- 

 structor of every duty, but that of teaching, 

 which is probably the most important of all. 

 A set of weights and a rough hand balance 

 as a part of the kit avoids having common 

 weights and balances, and the necessary walk- 

 ing and waiting one's turn to weigh under the 

 old plan. The laboratory has no common 

 property of any kind where theft, contamina- 

 tion, or injury is possible. The only excep- 

 tion is in the balance room, where two or 

 more men are assigned to a quantitative bal- 

 ance, which is locked, and only assigned men 

 have keys. Here responsibility can easily be 

 fixed among a very few students. 



Such a plan can only be possible when the 

 curator of supplies has the sympathetic co- 

 operation and support of the administrative 

 head of the department. Many well meaning 

 administrators of the old school pay little 

 attention to the application of modem busi- 

 ness methods to nmning a laboratory. Effi- 

 ciency and expert ideas, when applied to that 

 job are frowned on. It is the author's opinion 

 that these men can not be regarded as pro- 

 gressive administrators, and it is his con- 

 viction that the department will go on in the 

 same old way as back numbers, till some one 



