554 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX. No. 1276 



preach its true goal until conditions are so 

 changed that the very social organization shall 

 itself encourage the spirit of altruistic serv- 

 ice. Our soldiers, as they went over the top, 

 ■were very conscious of ravished Belgium, and 

 even their meaner tasks were dignified by a 

 realization of the importance and necessity of 

 the great job of which these tasks were a part. 

 Putting the job through for the sake of the 

 country and of all the world, that should be 

 the general spirit. The socialistic scheme of 

 eliminating private profit from industry would 

 put industry on a patriotic basis and the spirit 

 with which our soldiers fought and our people 

 labored and saved might well be paralleled by 

 the spirit in industry. Let our progressive 

 reorganization of society keep in line with 

 this goal, each step bringing us a bit nearer 

 to its realization. The problem, however, is 

 .no simple one, for there must be no discour- 

 agement to individual initiative. 



A far less fundamental, yet a huge eco- 

 nomic blunder is seen in the adoption of fire 

 insurance as a substitute for fire prevention. 

 I have no quarrel with fire insurance as such, 

 but we are strangely blind when we let the 

 partial protection of the individual through 

 fire insurance cause us to feel such security 

 that we continue to allow the commonwealth 

 to suffer its huge fire loss which in America 

 amounts annually to about two thirds the cost 

 of building the Panama Canal. In all the 

 nations of the world combined there has never 

 been spent all told a hundred million dollars, 

 or anything near that sum, in the study of 

 the problem of fire prevention, though in the 

 United States of America alone the annual 

 loss by fire is from two and one half to three 

 times that amount. Of course with sufficient 

 expert study it would be easy to devise simple 

 and inexpensive methods of protecting all 

 buildings against fire. Wooden buildings, or 

 even those with paper partitions, as in the 

 city of Tokyo, could readily be so protected 

 that a fire should not pass beyond the room 

 in which it originated. Porest and prairie 

 fires might be somewhat more difficult to 

 prevent. 



Little that is really worth notice is now 



being done toward remedying this great eco- 

 nomic blimder and no one is interested in any 

 sufficiently broad way in its discussion. A 

 government bureau, with many millions at its 

 disposal, should be studying the problem. 

 But scientific study is one of the most diffi- 

 cult things to secure. It is comparatively 

 easy to persuade men to act, however ignorant 

 they may be of the data involved in their field 

 of .action, but to get men to consent to large 

 expenditure for study of a problem is a matter 

 of the greatest difficulty. The scientific ideal 

 of search for data before acting does not suffi- 

 ciently appeal to the average man. 



Again we can instance as unwarranted the 

 allowing of private rivalries in a matter so 

 vital as transportation, whether of persons, 

 goods or messages. Society is so dependent 

 upon transportation that its interest are para- 

 mount. In contrast, however, we have most 

 of us known of railways which inconvenience 

 public business to injure their rivals or to 

 promote their own interests. 



In our country we have a conspicuous in- 

 stance of economic absiu-dity in our system of 

 TAXATION. In ancient days it was customary 

 in many countries to " farm out " the taxes to 

 private collectors, making them pay a given 

 sum into the treasury and permitting them to 

 keep for themselves whatever amount beyond 

 this they could succeed in raising. But to 

 America alone, among modern occidental na- 

 tions, belongs the distinction of continuing 

 this ancient system to the present day. Our 

 national government exposes the American 

 citizen, without protection, to the brigandage 

 of forty-eight separate states, each seeking to 

 fill its own coffers from his pocket, and ob- 

 livious of the extent to which other states 

 may already have plundered him. Our pres- 

 ent system puts really irresistible pressure 

 upon each state to offer inducements to in- 

 vestment of the capital of its citizens at home 

 and to penalize by taxation its investment out- 

 side the borders of the state. I used to have 

 stock in an Illinois corporation which owned 

 the control of a business in Wisconsin, of 

 another in Ohio and of stiU another in Ten- 

 nessee, and each of these subsidiary com- 



