JANITABT 22, 1915] 



SCIENCE 



139 



American Agricultural Colleges and Experi- 

 ment Stations we hear the insistent cry for 

 more research, for more men capable of the 

 scientific investigation of problems. 



Where are we to find men, how are we to 

 train men who have a natural aptitude for 

 research? Under all the conditions prevail- 

 ing in our state universities, their peculiar 

 type of organization and government, how are 

 we to create and to maintain an atmosphere 

 in which genuinely free minds of high en- 

 dowments and proven ability may work and 

 grow, following research problems through 

 years to their legitimate conclusions? In 

 short, how are we to bring the experiment 

 stations up to the level of the world's best 

 work and thought in science? 



The problem is a large one, it touches most 

 vitally and most fundamentally the whole 

 organization of the state university. It is a 

 problem to be studied with the utmost earnest- 

 ness: are there not ways in which the older 

 universities with established standing may 

 help the newer ones toward a solution? 



Few educated men are in any true sense 

 fitted for research and investigation. Much 

 depends upon the training of the man; far 

 more upon the natural gifts and endowments 

 of his mind. It is so easy to endow a college 

 with money: it is so hard to endow it with 

 brains! Men of intelligence, men of rare 

 natural gifts, may be attracted to an experi- 

 ment station if conditions in the state uni- 

 versity to which it is attached are favorable 

 to a man's best development of his best self. 



And what, then, are the favoring conditions 

 which make possible in a university a high 

 type of research? A careful canvass of the 

 faculty of one of the larger and older insti- 

 tutions brought out the following opinions. 



1. Non- interference with the time, the plans, 

 and the work of the research man. This is a 

 negative condition. Why should it be just the 

 one thought of first of all? I think it is be- 

 cause it is the one condition hardest of all to 

 obtain and hardest to maintain in the Ameri- 

 can state university. 



Changes in boards of control and in ad- 

 ministrative heads, changes in buildings and 



equipment brought about by rapid and poorly 

 coordinated growth, pressure for results from 

 researches which can bear fruit only after pro- 

 longed development and in the course of time, 

 a lack of popular appreciation of the out- 

 standing value of laborious, unselfish inves- 

 tigation, that itching for publicity which 

 afflicts many estimable colleges, combinations 

 of teaching or extension or other duties ill- 

 mated with research, vexatious and disturbing 

 financial systems — all these things and many 

 others break into the time and thought of men 

 engaged on research problems, oftentimes to 

 the ruin of weU-planned work. 



Under such conditions many a piece of re- 

 search, well-conceived and promising, has 

 dwindled like a tree planted in a cellar, until 

 it has died at last and borne no fruit. 



Sometimes, too, the pressure for immediate 

 results has led to shallow, popular work, or to 

 a jumping at conclusions akin to quackery. 

 Sometimes legislatures have been led to make 

 great appropriations to such work because of 

 its popular and flashy character; and their 

 money has been wasted, their confidence im- 

 paired. Even in hurried America there is no 

 way in which we can force the tree of knowl- 

 edge to bear fruit before its season. 



2. Another important set of conditions 

 allied to the first is that supplied by the type 

 of supervision and direction in vogue. In 

 any research institution the only form of ad- 

 ministration or direction which can be suc- 

 cessful is the type implied in the word leader- 

 ship. Above all other things, research, scien- 

 tific investigation, is a product of the indi- 

 vidual mind, or of a group of minds working 

 on related aspects of the same subject. Re- 

 search is original, original in method and 

 means and in the end sought. If it is not 

 original, then it is not research, l^o man can 

 tell in advance what are to be his methods and 

 what his results. If he can tell, then his work 

 is not investigation at all; but demonstration, 

 a retracing of the path found by other minds. 



The whole trend of thought in college and 

 station work in America indicates that the 

 greatest responsibility of the leaders in ad- 

 ministration, their duty and their pleasure. 



