656 



SCIENCE 



[N". S. Vol. XXXI. No. 890 



including, primarily, vast areas of rich 

 virgin soil; and, secondarily, immense 

 supplies of timber, coal, and iron. 



American prosperity has done more than 

 educate Americans; it has educated west- 

 em Europe, first of all by relieving the 

 over-crowded condition of those impover- 

 ished lands, and subsequently by making 

 large direct contributions to European 

 prosperity, in supplying cheap food and 

 fertilizer and a good market for European 

 products, manufactured in large part from 

 the low-priced raw materials secured from 

 this and other new countries. 



Applied science has already made some 

 contributions to American education and 

 civilization, and so far as its use in the 

 schoolroom is concerned, applied science, 

 as an educative agency, is not exceeded in 

 value by any other instrumentality. Its 

 very general acceptance by teachers and 

 students in our leading educational institu- 

 tions does not prove its value, but does 

 prove that its value is being appreciated; 

 and I need not remind you that pure sci- 

 ence is the foundation of applied science. 



While education has not been in any 

 sense the prime cause of our national pros- 

 perity, the future prosperity of America 

 depends absolutely upon the application of 

 science and education to industry. For 

 three full centuries America has lived upon 

 the spoils of conquest and inherited 

 wealth and resources, and for three full 

 centuries America has wasted her sub- 

 stance or scattered it abroad. But even 

 among nations there is a limit to inherited 

 wealth. The land which flowed with milk 

 and honey is now almost a barren waste, 

 supporting only wandering bands of 

 marauding Arabs and villages of beggars. 



Truly the two most characteristic attri- 

 butes of rich young America are wasteful- 

 ness and bigotry. Other nations have 

 risen to positions of world power and in- 



fluence and fallen again to poverty, igno- 

 rance and insignificance. Thus far Amer- 

 ican history has been in large part a 

 repetition of the history of nations long 

 since gone to decay. 



Following the rise and fall of the great 

 empires of Babylon, of Carthaginia and of 

 Greece, the Roman Empire also rose and 

 fell. From what cause % Some tell us that 

 the fall of those great empires was due to 

 the development of pride and immorality 

 among their peoples, forgetting the fact 

 that civilization tends rather toward peace 

 and security, and that universal education 

 depends and must depend upon material 

 prosperity. Poverty is at once helpless 

 and soon ignorant. 



History tells us that Roman agriculture 

 declined until a bushel of seed brought only 

 four bushels in the harvest— declined until 

 the high civilization of the Mediterranean 

 countries passed into the dark ages which 

 covered the face of the earth for a thou- 

 sand years, until the discovery of a new 

 world brought new supplies of food, re- 

 newed prosperity, and new life and light 

 to western Europe; but the dark ages still 

 exist for most of our own Aryan race in 

 Russia and in India, where, as an average, 

 day by day, and year by year, more people 

 are hungry than live in the United States, 

 where the average wage of a man is fifty 

 cents a month, where famine rages always, 

 and where the price of wheat sometimes 

 rises to a point where six months' wages of 

 a working man are required to buy one 

 bushel. This is the condition where the 

 absolute needs of the population exceed the 

 food supply ; and just so sure as the intelli- 

 gent and influential men and women of 

 America continue to ignore the material 

 foundation upon which national prosper- 

 ity depends, just so sure will future dark 

 ages blot out American civilization. 



That vast areas of land that were once 



