698 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 409. 



cational career. This is doubly unfortu- 

 nate, as it has served to overvalue the par- 

 ticular grade of ability which such work 

 demands, and to undervalue the intrin- 

 sically superior capacity needed for emi- 

 nent success in the field of investigation. 



I have likewise omitted direct reference 

 to the question of a distinctive Carnegie 

 Institution at Washington. I have made it 

 clear that such an institution is indispen- 

 sable to the realization of the larger national 

 place for research which I have advocated. 

 It is because I feel that the immediate 

 danger is that the Carnegie Institution may 

 become a great subsidiary agency and 

 nothing more, that I have selected the 

 opposition to that plan for my major thesis. 



To bring my plea to a focus, let me at- 

 tempt to repeat briefly the points of empha- 

 sis: 



1. That the Carnegie funds shall be de- 

 voted primarily to the endowment of men; 

 without neglect of the fact that many 

 projects demanding cooperative* energy 

 and special equipment are worthy of en- 

 couragement. 



2. That the Carnegie Institution shall 

 distinctly supplement and in no way dimin- 

 ish or discourage or absorb the existing pro- 

 visions for research. 



3. That the path of endeavor and plans 

 for the inauguration of progressive meas- 

 ures be determined by an inquiry in regard 

 to the obstacles and difficulties that now 

 beset the career of the investigator and be 



* I have omitted for lack of space any concrete 

 illustrations of the cooperative or centralizing 

 functions which the Carnegie Institution might 

 serve. A good instance would be found . in the 

 establishment of a central instrument works. 

 Most professorial inventors carry their inventions 

 up to the just-workable and barely-presentable 

 stage. If at this point the apparatus could be 

 sent to a central bureavi where it would be tech- 

 nically perfected by mechanical specialists, repro- 

 duced and supplied to laboratories at cost of 

 production, a very great boon would be offered to 

 the devotees of almost all the sciences. 



directed to the removal of those difficul- 

 ties. 



4. That the Carnegie Institution adopt 

 as one of its peculiar missions the estab- 

 lishment both of general conditions and of 

 special attractive rewards for the success- 

 ful investigator and the encouragement 

 of the man of promise, and in this and 

 other ways place the career of the pro- 

 fessional investigator upon a more secure 

 and more honored footing than it now oc- 

 cupies. 



Joseph Jastrow. 



To THE Editor of Science: Referring 

 to your interesting article on the Carnegie 

 Institution, and responding to your re- 

 quest for suggestions as to how the fund 

 might be utilized, I would respectfully 

 submit that a portion of the income might 

 well be made available to enable members 

 of the faculties of the smaller, but poorly 

 endowed, colleges to enjoy the advantages 

 of a sabbatical year. Smaller colleges can- 

 not, as a rule, afford to give their faculties 

 this much-needed change, and the men 

 cannot afford to spend the year without 

 salary. In fact, they can hardly afford to 

 take even a vacation trip to the great edu- 

 cational centers. 



An arrangement might be feasible 

 whereby a college would guarantee, say, 

 one fourth of a man's salary, and the Car- 

 negie Institution might guarantee one half, 

 or better still, three fourths, on the condi- 

 tion that the year be spent in actual work 

 at one of the well-equipped universities or 

 in one of the government laboratories. If 

 the man went abroad the condition should 

 be made that his time should be spent in a 

 country the language of which he under- 

 stands. 



By this plan, not only would many an 

 underpaid and overworked college teacher, 

 now isolated from proper library facilities 

 and from contact with men in his own line 



