rEBBU^iKY 16, 1917] 



SCIENCE 



155 



ahead of itself and grind out what might be 

 called inevitable results. 



This process is intended as a standardiz- 

 ing procedure, and if results are not soon 

 forthcoming, reports of progress are due 

 from time to time as a kind of perpetual 

 guarantee, on the installment plan, that the 

 thing was worth doing and that the special- 

 ist is still "on the job" and not loafing or 

 skylarking off into the wilderness fishing 

 and hunting as scientists are prone to do ! 



Before anything can actually be done, 

 however, this project, in many branches of 

 the public service at least, must be sub- 

 mitted to administrative review, in order 

 to learn whether the work, however valu- 

 able, can be legally performed. I confess 

 to extreme difficulty in treating this por- 

 tion of my theme with such moderation of 

 language and statement as are appropriate 

 to the dignity of the occasion, and when I 

 fail let the exigency of a just cause be my 

 excuse. 



A mass of hirelings called clerks now 

 pounce upon the project, one after the 

 other, each intent, not upon helping for- 

 ward a valuable piece of public service, but 

 upon seeing if perchance he can not find 

 some statute law, court decision or office 

 ruling that makes the thing illegal and 

 therefore impossible. 



In this enterprise the hireling will take 

 no chances. He is not there to promote the 

 public service, but to regulate it, and to see 

 that everything is done decently and in 

 order. If service is prevented altogether, 

 that is no business of his. Everybody must 

 justify his job, and the more things get 

 stopped the more importance is attached to 

 restrictive methods. If everything goes 

 through, many clerkships would be abol- 

 ished. 



Nor should this hireling be condemned 

 when he reports adversely upon a perfectly 

 good thing because it perchance runs coun- 

 ter to the ruling of a public official, even 



though made many years before in another 

 department under conditions quite dissimi- 

 lar and by a man of questionable ability, 

 long since dead and practically, if not en- 

 tirely, forgotten. This clerk was put there 

 to find objections, and it is little wonder 

 that he discovers among the accumulation 

 of laws, decisions and rulings reason 

 enough for stopping many of the things 

 that come his way. After this arbitrary 

 fashion is progress made unduly difficult. 



When this project returns to the special- 

 ist, battered and beaten, he sets about to 

 reconstruct the plan, using so much of the 

 original as may have passed the various 

 censors, introducing new material to fill 

 the gaps, and sends it out again to run the 

 gauntlet. After repeated journeys and 

 final approval, the real worker at last sets 

 about the task of endeavoring to accomplish 

 something. 



But the troubles of the investigator have 

 only begun when the project is finally ap- 

 proved. He needs some new and special 

 equipment and makes out a requisition in 

 quintuplicate and three colors, praying His 

 Majesty the Purchasing Agent to provide 

 the materials for his work — of course out of 

 funds already set aside for his department. 



At the best, he must satisfy the business 

 office that no other equipment will answer 

 his purpose and that no other can be bought 

 so cheaply. At the worst he may fijid that 

 his specifications have partially or entirely 

 been ignored and material ordered which 

 he can not use, and often, through unfa- 

 miliarity of "the office" with the tricks of 

 the trade, he is actually mulcted in the 

 purchase. 



But this poor project is not through with 

 its troubles. The would-be investigator 

 learns that the purchasing agent is not, 

 after all, a free moral agent, but is himself 

 an hireling. He learns that even the board 

 of trustees, which was elected by the people 

 to operate the university, are not free to use 



