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SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 4U9. 



position makes proper. To accomplish this, 

 an undue amount of care and effort is 

 now expended; many a professor would 

 have pursued a career of research had the 

 necessity not been presented to him of in- 

 creasing his income, owing to the insuffi- 

 ciency of his salary. With a larger salary, 

 he would have felt free to engage such 

 clerical assistance as was needed to release 

 his own time, he would have refused offers 

 of publishers to write text-books, of editors 

 to prepare articles, would have provided 

 himself liberally with books and the tools 

 of his trade, and lived a life of greater ap- 

 proximation to his ideals than proved to 

 be possible. Considered merely from a 

 practical point of view, I have no doubt 

 that the employment of a secretary in one 

 case, of a laboratory assistant in another, 

 of an increase in salary for household ex- 

 penses in a third case, would really prove 

 to be the most efficient, though indirect, aid 

 to research. For when reduced to the low- 

 est terms, the factors of which successful 

 research is a function are these : the capac- 

 ity for it, the material equipment, the time 

 and energy. Assuming the first, and rec- 

 ognizing the various efforts which our edu- 

 cational institutions are putting forth to 

 develop it, we have acknowledged the de- 

 cided aid that comes from the provision of 

 the second, and yet place the greater em- 

 phasis upon those measures which, with dis- 

 cernment and adaptation to actual condi- 

 tions, make possible the enthusiastic devo- 

 tion of time and energy to the field of re- 

 search. As a fourth factor should be added 

 the honors and attractions of the investi- 

 gator's career, and the consequent induce- 

 ment for the ablest young men to follow 

 such a career. That the Carnegie Institu- 

 tion has the possibility of doing much in 

 this last direction I have already main- 

 tained. 



In other words, it is my conviction that 

 the most serious obstacle to the proper 



development of original research in 

 America lies in the circumstance that those 

 with greatest capacity for it do not make 

 strenuous efforts to secure the material 

 equipment they require (in so far as they 

 do require it), because of the fundamental 

 difficulty that the time and energy they 

 have to give to the work are inadequate. 

 The primary remedial measure must ac- 

 cordingly be the readjustment of their 

 personal status, which shall make it un- 

 necessary for them for the sake of in- 

 come to devote their energies to other pur- 

 suits. In so far as such other pursuits are 

 directly helpful to the intellectual career 

 of the investigator, they shoi;ld unques- 

 tionably be maintained; in so far as they 

 contribute little or nothing to his investiga- 

 ting efficiency, they should be transferred to 

 others, who, though occupying an equally 

 important position in the educational world, 

 find their greatest sphere of usefulness in 

 another field. There is no implied dis- 

 paragement of the professor's career as a 

 teacher ; that phase of his activity is for the 

 present not under discussion. We are dis- 

 cussing the career of the investigator, and 

 believe that the university furnishes an 

 admirably suitable atmosphere for his de- 

 velopment ; and that it is very fortunate for 

 the university to have among its members 

 a considerable group who are primarily in- 

 vestigators. One of the principles of mod- 

 ern organization by which the services of 

 individuals of decided ability are distrib- 

 uted as comprehensively as possible is that 

 the director shall not do that which any of 

 his assistants can do as well. This is the 

 true economy of time and energy. My plea 

 is for the more adequate extension of the 

 same principle to the academic life; it is 

 on account of the lack of proper assistants, 

 and of a lack of a proper income to em- 

 ploy them, that the energies of some of our 

 ablest men in the higher educational in- 

 stitutions are not utilized to the best ad- 



