JiTNE 3, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



847 



of affairs which seem truly an anachron- 

 ism. 



This must have impressed many of you 

 who have happened to visit factories or 

 mills where ignorance and greed seemed 

 the two dominant factors, where the class 

 of men and women employed, not to speak 

 of child labor, seemed to have undergone 

 the full curse of their sordid surround- 

 ings. Such places are to be found often 

 where the mental condition of the directors 

 does not enable them to go beyond the con- 

 ception of size and where the whole ten- 

 dency has been towards more, more, more, 

 instead of towards better, better, better. 



How different is this from; some of our 

 better engineering and chemical enter- 

 prises where everything bears the imprint 

 of a steady effort towards progress and 

 where employer and employed alike seem 

 to undergo the uplifting force of intellec- 

 tual aims. Such a happy condition of 

 affairs is most likely to be encountered 

 where the head is himself the scientific 

 pioneer who has built up the enterprise. 



Matters are not always so satisfactory 

 where large organizations have got into 

 the hand of a board of directors, who know 

 little else of the technical side of the busi- 

 ness than that it pays dividends, and for 

 whom the main interesting factor is the 

 value of the shares they own. 



Whenever undertakings are ruled by 

 such a class of men, we must not be aston- 

 ished if their corporation counsel is more 

 in evidence than their chemists or their 

 engineers. What do they care if certain 

 improvements in their processes might net 

 them five per cent, more or mean better 

 goods, if, on the other hand, they know 

 that by a clever trick of law they can ex- 

 tract from the consuming public many 

 times more; no wonder then if they have 

 less time and less mental fitness for a prin- 

 ciple of science or engineering involved in 



a new process, than for a conference with 

 "eminent law counsel." If they can not 

 alter nature's atomic weights, they may 

 find a way of improving their invoice 

 weights for the custom house to the detri- 

 ment of Uncle Sam. I might use for our 

 industries the forceful quotation of 

 Shakespeare in Hamlet about the state of 

 Denmark, as long as corporation lawyers 

 of reputation are paid incomparably better 

 and their services are sought for so much 

 more eagerly than the very best chemists 

 or the ablest engineers. 



This brings to my mind the case of a 

 company which held a charter to supply a 

 certain city with illuminating gas, and 

 which after enjoying a fortune-making 

 monopoly for many years, found one day 

 that special legislation had reduced the 

 selling price of their product. Certain 

 again of being able to upset this law, the 

 company entered in long litigation, but 

 finally, after repeated efforts, had to real- 

 ize that even its best lawyers could not 

 change matters. Prom that moment on, 

 they began to inquire actively about better 

 manufacturing processes. A friend of 

 mine, who was requested to give his sug- 

 gestion as to how they could improve their 

 methods, replied as follows: "Up till now 

 your company has been making law — now 

 make gas and everything will come out all 

 right. ' ' 



Then again we find that, resourceful as 

 the modern engineer or chemist is, his 

 power is often simply a tool in the hands 

 of ignorant but cunning men. In fact, our 

 modern laws and society insure better re- 

 ward for cunningness or slyness than for 

 true intellectuality. 



The very abundance of our natural re- 

 sources may be partly to blame for this 

 condition of affairs ; in other countries, like 

 Germany, with comparatively small nat- 

 ural means, competition shapes itself more 



