APRIL 12, 1901. ] 
great stimulus of the inventor and of the pro- 
moter of newimprovements is repressed. The 
conclusion of the writer of the paper referred 
to is: ‘‘The most effective method of afflicting 
any department of applied science with creep- 
ing paralysis is to constitute it a government 
monopoly.’’ 
While the State electricians would probably 
declare that they are ‘ever on the outlook for 
new things,’ the record is shown to invalidate 
that claim, at least to the extent of showing 
that the new things have come vastly more cer- 
tainly and promptly to the private manage- 
ment. Inventions have been extensively ex- 
ploited by private means and private companies 
far in advance of any governmental action, and 
the inventor proverbially dreads the necessity 
of going with his plans to a governmental de- 
partment in all countries and whatever his field 
of work. Even the inventor of the apparatus 
of war has his bitter experiences with the official, 
and the history of the work of Maxim and of 
Broadwell still earlier, among our own great in- 
ventors, may be added to the examples quoted 
by Fleming, of Morse, of Trowbridge, of Mar- 
coni and others. Government officials do 
not always cordially and sincerely strike hands 
with the inventor, even where competent to 
appreciate his work, and it is too often the fact 
that they prefer to hold him at arm’s length 
until one of their own caste or a partner in in- 
vention can find ways of evading his claims and 
of reaping the harvest he has sown. 
“The State officials guarda monopoly. Itis 
in their power to take or reject improvements. 
They set the pace in one large department of 
electrical invention and it cannot be forced.’’ 
As Mr. Edison said to Professor Fleming when 
the latter explained the nature of these govern- 
mental impediments of progress in electrical 
development: ‘Why! They’ve throttled it !’ 
In electric traction the same difficulties are 
interposed, in appropriate ways, by the official 
brakesmen. Great Britain has to-day about 
400 miles of track; the United States has 12,- 
0000r more. Inthat country any local govern- 
ment may take away the property of any tram- 
way within its limits, at the appraised value of 
its real property, after twenty years of service. 
This provision of law has crippled the enter- 
SCIENCE. 
595 
prise. ‘To tell an investor in tramway stocks 
that, after passing through a long -non divi- 
dend-paying period, he has then the prospect 
of having his property taken from him at a 
breaking-up price, and perhaps half his property 
confiscated,’ isto warn him not toinvest. Thus 
the business languishes and the builder of even 
the comparatively promising railways about 
London must come to the United States for all 
his material and machinery. 
Scientific education is looked upon as one 
element of the needed radical reform. But 
‘“¢ What is required is not abundant mediocrity, 
but a fully sufficient opportunity of training 
those who will be captains of industry. The 
persons who need technical education are the 
masters much more than the men.”’ 
Throughout the whole article, of which we 
have here presented so extended an abstract, 
the evidence is strong that the dangers of that 
amateurism and of that officialism which are now 
beginning to awaken intelligent men, and espe- 
cially men of science and men of applied science ~ 
in the United States, to serious apprehension 
relative to all public services involving scien- 
tific work or development, have secured a firm 
and dangerous hold in Great Britain and con- 
stitute undoubtedly one of the elements of that 
apparent relative retrogression in the industries 
which has of late attracted so much attention 
and awakened such earnest discussion in the 
scientific and technical journals, and even to 
some degree in the columns of the ‘ Thunderer’ 
itself. The republication, by the Harpers,* of 
letters to The Times from a British engineer 
visiting the United States, furnishes and pre- 
serves an interesting and instructive commen- 
tary upon these facts. 
R. H. THURSTON. 
MUSEUM METHODS ABROAD. 
THE appearance of the eleventh annual re- 
port of the Museums Association, of Great 
Britain, reminds one that it is as nearly as 
possible eleven years ago that the Association 
of American Naturalists decided that so far as 
museums were concerned nothing remained for 
* American Engineering Competition.’ New 
York and London, Harperand Brothers. 1901. 8vo. 
Pp. 139. 
