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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 



more weighty business. Nevertheless, it 

 is inevitable that if its work be well done 

 it will eventually become the foremost fac- 

 tor in determining the standard and the 

 standing of American scholarship and 

 American degrees before the nations of 

 the world, and consequently before our own 

 people here at home. 



The investigation of a network of prob- 

 lems of labor, the costs of production, cus- 

 toms duties, commercial relations, and the 

 regulation of corporations, will be one of 

 the earliest undertakings which a national 

 university may be expected to place upon a 

 scientific basis. Its studies in this field will 

 of necessity extend over decades and even 

 generations. But within a few years there 

 should be assembled and made available 

 for use a greater body of digested informa- 

 tion on these subjects than any Congress or 

 administration in this country or any par- 

 liament or ministry abroad has ever had, 

 on which to base its industrial legislation. 



To amass information, however, is not of 

 itself scientific. What is to be chiefly hoped 

 is that from such researches, in which 

 closely related sciences shall be cultivated 

 together and all upon the largest scale, 

 there shall emerge new and enlightening 

 theories, embodied in new and well- 

 grounded principles of social development. 



Finally, if I have spoken thus far of the 

 sciences only, it is not meant to the exclu- 

 sion of the arts. Quite the contrary. In a 

 more profound sense than is commonly be- 

 lieved, the arts are bound up with the 

 sciences in the making of our civilization. 

 Music, sculpture, and painting are, gener- 

 ally speaking, mere hangers-on in our 

 scheme of higher education to-day. This 

 is one of the defects in our university life 

 which the nineteenth century has handed 

 on to the twentieth. It is one of the defects 

 which a national university should help us 

 to correct. If we are to have anything like 



national standards in our drama, in our 

 fiction and our verse, in the aggregate 

 architecture of our cities, in the fine arts 

 generally — still more, if we are to make a 

 disciplined sense of beauty sustain, cor- 

 rect, and supplement the scientific trend of 

 our life — our national university must help 

 us in this great work. At best, it is a slow 

 work and a mighty. We shall do well if 

 another century shall find us far advanced 

 upon it. 



What has been offered here is only the 

 barest outline of a great hope and dream 

 for our national life. It wiU seem far re- 

 moved from those briefly jotted experi- 

 ences with which this article began. It is 

 a hope and dream which those experiences, 

 however petty by comparison, did not in 

 any measure dampen or abate. Indeed, 

 while I had at Washington a keen sense of 

 the disproportion between the work in 

 which I was engaged and the work of that 

 kind which this country imperatively 

 needs, I went on in that work with a grow- 

 ing conviction that no greater or lesser 

 perfomance of my own or of any other 

 commissioner, no favoring or adverse atti- 

 tude of successive secretaries, congresses, or 

 presidents, can in the long run prevent this 

 country from erecting its great national 

 institution of education, science, and the 

 arts, at least coordinate with the tradi- 

 tional branches of government, in which all 

 systems and institutions of science, art, 

 and education throughout the land shall be 

 participants, and shall find therein a new 

 realization of their best ideals. 



Elmee Ellsworth Brown 



New York Univeesitt 



LOCAL BBANCSES OF TBE AMERICAN 

 ASSOCIATION FOB THE ADVANCE- 

 MENT OF SCIENCE 

 At the Atlanta meeting of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science 

 the following resolutions were unanimously 

 adopted : 



