July 27, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



107 



to the institute of educating the 1,095 stu- 

 dents who graduated has been $1,037,834, 

 and there has been received from these 

 students in the form of tuition fees the 

 sum of $273,483. In other words the cost 

 of education of the graduates has exceeded 

 by $764,351 the amount received from 

 them. In this computation no account is 

 taken of the investment in plant and equip- 

 ment which would increase the amount by 

 about $400,000. In good time, I doubt not, 

 the alumni who are able to do so will be 

 glad to treat this as an obligation which 

 they will take pleasure in discharging, 

 though the facts are not mentioned here 

 for the purpose of unduly emphasizing 

 what might perhaps be regarded as a dis- 

 quieting suggestion. 



The application of science to the useful 

 arts has had a controlling influence upon 

 the political as well as the economic history 

 of the world. 



In 1814 Mr. Calhoun favored double 

 duties as a protective measure. Mr. Web- 

 ster, then senator from Massachusetts, op- 

 posed this policy. How strange his words 

 sound to-day: 



I am not in haste to see Sheffields and Birming- 

 hama in America. I am not anxious to accelerate 

 the approach of the period when the great mass 

 of American labor shall not find its employment 

 in the field. 



In 1828, when a large investment had 

 been made in manufacturing industries in 

 Massachusetts, Mr. Webster had changed 

 his position and favored the tariff. But 

 the tariff was resisted by South Carolina, 

 and the legislature of that state put forth 

 the famous 'exposition and protest' con- 

 taining Mr. Calhoun's doctrine of nullifi- 

 cation. Thus was the position of these 

 great men entirely reversed upon the ques- 

 tion of the tariff. The explanation is very 

 simple. 



In 1791 our cotton was all imported, and 

 the south wanted a duty to encourage its 



domestic production. The invention of the 

 cotton gin by Eli Whitney, in 1793, a Wor- 

 cester County boy, already referred to, 

 which made it easy to separate the green 

 cotton seed from the staple, revolutionized 

 the cotton industry and made the south in- 

 dependent of the tariff. The invention of 

 the cotton gin compelled the enunciation of 

 the doctrine of nullification. The doctrine 

 of nullification compelled the civil war. 



Knowledge of engineering makes possible 

 such great works as the building of the 

 Suez Canal, which has revolutionized the 

 trade relations between Europe and the 

 east; the building of the great dam at 

 Assouan to store the surplus water of the 

 Nile; the construction now fairly begin- 

 ning of the Panama Canal. 



Another striking illustration is found in 

 the policy adopted by the national govern- 

 ment in the act of Congress of June 17, 

 1902, appropriating the receipts from the 

 sale and disposal of public lands in certain 

 states and territories to the construction 

 of irrigation works for the reclamation of 

 arid lands which cover about two fifths of 

 the area of the United States. This fund 

 now amounts to about $30,000,000, and 

 projects under consideration in fourteen 

 states contemplate the irrigation of 1,441,- 

 000 acres of land at an average cost of $25 

 per acre. A single example may be found 

 in the work now under way in Wyoming 

 in the portion of the Big Horn basin on 

 the north side of the Shoshone River 

 seventy-five miles east of Yellowstone Park. 



This involves the construction of a dam 

 seventy-five feet wide at the bottom of the 

 channel and 200 feet wide at an elevation 

 of 240 feet, the proposed height of the dam 

 above the river bed, and the building of a 

 spill- way connecting with a tunnel through 

 the solid granite of the mountain. The 

 canyon is so narrow that it is regarded as 

 feasible to enclose the entire area covered 



