2M 



SCIENCE 



[N. 8. Vol. XXXIX. No. 



dicating the way the wind has blown in 

 recent years at Washington. And I have 

 ventured to forecast a change of weather 

 which must sooner or later affect our na- 

 tional education. Sooner rather than later, 

 I think, but I am not a prophet, to foretell 

 the day and the hour. Now, in the space 

 which I may still use, I should like to offer 

 a few brief suggestions regarding the form 

 which our new national education may be 

 expected to take. 



The question is much larger than that as 

 to the future of the Bureau of Education. 

 Its principal elements are those relating to 

 a national university, to federal aid for ele- 

 mentary schools, to the promotion of agri- 

 cultural and other technical education in 

 secondary and higher institutions; and 

 finally those relating to the Bureau of Edu- 

 cation, which must, after all, have an im- 

 portant place of its own in the general 

 scheme. We pass over the military and 

 naval academies, the schools for Indians, 

 and other special educational undertakings 

 in which our government is engaged; and 

 this paper must be limited to the problem, 

 as old as our federal government itself, of 

 a national university. Here we shall try 

 only to get some glimpse of the bare frame- 

 work of a vast design. 



There is one side of our whole national 

 life and national government which is 

 neither economic nor political but scientific, 

 and must be scientifically discerned. The 

 problem of a national university is the 

 problem of the organization of this scien- 

 tific side. In some few of the states it has 

 been measurably recognized and organized 

 in state universities. In our federal system 

 it has been recognized fragmentarily, and 

 as a result various special commissions and 

 scientific bureaus have come into existence. 

 What is lacking is a unitary organization. 

 And that unitary organization is requisite 

 in order that every piece of scientific work 



done for the government may have back of 

 it the whole force of established scientific 

 method, standards, and processes, of sci- 

 entific atmosphere and the ethics of science, 

 which is realized only where many scientific 

 departments work together long and con- 

 tinuously. 



A special tariff commission or any other 

 sudden and temporary scientific commis- 

 sion is a makeshift at the best. It will be 

 found at length that what is needed, in 

 place of these, is a continuous and many- 

 sided study of wages, industrial conditions, 

 and cost of production, the world over, 

 carried on under conditions favorable to 

 scientific progress, and in close connection 

 with countless other inquiries with which 

 these are interwoven. 



We shall find, indeed, that a scientific 

 branch of government, complete in itself, 

 with its own traditions and its own meth- 

 ods, is as essential to the health of a modern 

 nation as is a judicial branch, complete and 

 sufficient in itself, and with its own jurid- 

 ical forms and procedure. It is necessary 

 that this scientific side of our federal life 

 be made a national entity, and given a fair 

 opportunity of acquiring impressiveness 

 and influence suited to its nature ; and that 

 is an opportunity of becoming a really com- 

 manding force in our national affairs in 

 proportion to the service it is capable of 

 rendering. 



In concrete terms, this would involve a 

 separation of those existing offices of the 

 government which are chiefly investiga- 

 tional in their character from those which 

 are chiefly administrative; the grouping 

 together of those of the former class, under 

 some convenient working system; and the 

 organization of new divisions, somewhat 

 similar in character to the scientific bureaus 

 already in existence, in order to deal with 

 new needs as these shall become apparent 

 and urgent. The process may very likely 



