Decbmbee 20, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



853 



able indeed whether the citizens of a state 

 should be pauperized by being educated 

 without cost, unless we go to the extreme 

 of communism and leave the state to select 

 early in life the line of activity in which it 

 is to utilize the individual and prepare him 

 for his life work without cost, demanding 

 in return the exercise of the abilities which 

 have been fostered in him by the state. 

 This is a development in socialism to which 

 we shall probably not attain for many gen- 

 erations. In the meantime a middle course 

 may be selected whereby the individual will 

 be required to make personal sacrifice and 

 expend his own resources in fitting himself 

 for the walk of life selected by him, but for 

 which adequate training will be provided 

 at a financial loss by the university and, 

 according to the basis of our consideration 

 to-day, the state university. In this way, 

 care will be exercised by the individual in 

 the choice of his vocation, appreciation of 

 student opportunities will result, the risk 

 of pauperizing citizens and educating them 

 out of their sphere will be avoided and the 

 educational deficit will be met. This cer- 

 tainly is a good business venture for a 

 state. 



Every community is accustomed to grant 

 bonuses to infant industries for the en- 

 couragement of commercial interests and 

 to enable them to equip themselves thor- 

 oughly and introduce new lines of activity. 

 Most countries levy customs dues on certain 

 manufactured products and even on raw 

 materials so as to develop home production. 

 It is therefore no new point of view to 

 expect a state to provide adequate bonus 

 for a manufacturing plant intended to 

 train succeeding generations of its citizens 

 in a way which will render them capable of 

 taking their places in the world at large and 

 at the same time to develop local resources 

 so as to make their community as commer- 

 cially independent as possible. This is be- 

 ing done in certain instances. In Minne- 



sota, the experiments by the university 

 upon wheat-raising, whereby it is now pos- 

 sible to make two or even more stalks of 

 wheat grow where only one grew before, 

 need no comment, and its work on animal 

 husbandry is international in importance. 

 The state of Wisconsin, first by university 

 research and secondly by teaching the prin- 

 ciples thus worked out, to its large farm- 

 ing class, has succeeded in producing even 

 a greater revenue through its dairy prod- 

 ucts than is derived from wheat in its 

 neighboring state, Minnesota. Germany 

 affords perhaps the best example of sup- 

 port of educational institutions by the state, 

 although there is a great difference in the 

 method of working out the problem, as 

 compared with American institutions. The 

 work of von Hoffman on coal-tar products 

 at first seemed to be of mere academic or 

 educational interest, but there are now so 

 many practical applications in dyeing, fla- 

 voring extracts, drugs and other synthetic 

 compounds, that we scarcely realize what 

 we owe to a university professor. The 

 work of von Behring and of Koch, backed 

 by governmental university support, has 

 given us antitoxin, on the one hand, and 

 thorough knowledge of tuberculosis, chol- 

 era, typhoid fever, anthrax and many other 

 diseases, on the other. Is it not fair to 

 assume that the scientific and technical edu- 

 cation fostered by the state in the schools 

 of Germany is responsible largely for her 

 ability to manufacture raw materials into 

 finished products so cheaply as to compete 

 with all nations, even on their home 

 grounds, and in the mere matter of mines 

 to take material which has been thrown 

 away as worthless in the more "rough-and- 

 ready" American methods and from it 

 make a second vast fortune? In com- 

 paring Europe with America we have to 

 class ourselves as extremely wasteful, which 

 was not of so much import, except as it 

 affected habit, whilst the country was 



