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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 1008 



needs. They require an immediate supply to meet 

 an existing demand. They consider a state uni- 

 versity to be well fulfilling its function if it fur- 

 nishes such a supply. . . . But the wholesale 

 business of the state university limits if it does 

 not prohibit that attention to the exceptional stu- 

 dent which may result in training a leader of hia 

 generation, a seer who, divining the future needs 

 of the state, may begin to prepare to meet them, a 

 man who, profiting by the recorded experience of 

 the past, may mold as well as meet conditions. 



And what has been the result of the ma- 

 terial growth of our universities on the de- 

 velopment of physical science in this coun- 

 try? We have laboratories of marble and 

 cases filled with apparatus, and hordes of 

 students, and a wonderful machine-like 

 system to care for these students. But the 

 efforts and resources adapted to scholarly 

 purposes are not at all in proportion to 

 merit. Even now we are confronted with 

 a difficulty which shows us the need and 

 opportunity of concentrating our efforts 

 toward scholarship. Every year we have 

 young men of good promise who either can 

 not find positions at all in our universities, 

 or who are compelled to take positions with 

 such requirements and surroundings that 

 the development of the individual is prac- 

 tically impossible, and at the same time 

 every year the universities can not find 

 enough mediocre men at salaries ranging 

 from $600 to $1,000. The demand is for 

 men who will take care of these hordes of 

 students, men who will lead these students 

 by the hand and feed them with a spoon, 

 men who will set up elementary experiments, 

 grade notebooks and daily examination 

 papers; and correct English, and who 

 thereby make parents and patrons believe 

 that everything is moving along smoothly 

 and efficiently. For if the students do not 

 appear to be busy the institution will get a 

 bad name and the number of students will 

 not increase. And what can be worse than 

 an idle student body or a lack of increase 

 of students. It is no doubt true that in 



some instances scholarship is not developed 

 in physics because the members of the de- 

 partment staff are beyond hope of becom- 

 ing scholars and they either have no knowl- 

 edge of what tends to develop scholarship 

 or are afraid that some individual might 

 develop who would be a greater man than 

 those on the ground floor. But this latter 

 is pure hypothesis. 



What is needed is a higher light on Amer- 

 ican soil. Too many professors are satis- 

 fied to spend their time making out and 

 mimeographing notes and examinations, 

 and even making apparatus, or in confer- 

 ences with the laggard students, or per- 

 haps with unimportant committees. Some- 

 times they do not realize how poorly they 

 invest their time when they are merely 

 reading and becoming informed, as it were. 

 Frequently professors keep themselves so 

 busy with labors like the above and even 

 such cheap labor as dusting apparatus that 

 they do not have time and energy left for 

 the merest semblance of thought. Produc- 

 tive scholarship is the flower of our edu- 

 cational work and that individual who 

 shows tendencies to bloom should be al- 

 lowed the every ounce of his energy to 

 apply in this direction. 



I believe it is not fair to blame the ruling 

 bodies of our institutions too much, for they 

 are merely the creations of a complex set 

 of circumstances in our overemphasized 

 democracy. Men with ideals when in power 

 find themselves faced by situations which 

 seem to require a single line of procedure 

 in order to preserve any semblance of 

 power. The reader will please not under- 

 stand that our universities are devoid of 

 good administrators, or that scholars are 

 unknown. Moreover, there are evidences 

 of forces at work for the improvement of 

 our administrative methods in the univer- 

 sities, and there are urgent appeals for the 

 improvement of scholarship. But I be- 



