August 18, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



213 



since. had no financial interest in the business. 

 The inventor has been quite successful. Many 

 millions of the labels are used by the govern- 

 ment. At present he is at the head of a busi- 

 ness capitalized at $500,000. Having elicited 

 these facts. Secretary Wilson was inclined to 

 discontinue the investigation of this case, but 

 at the direction of the President further in- 

 quiries are to be made. It appears that Dr. 

 Moore (who recently resigned) could have 

 made himself rich by a commercial use of his 

 discovery of a bacterial culture for the inocula- 

 tion of soil. He took out patents, but gave the 

 free use of the discovery to the people of the 

 United States. Some say that he could have 

 become a millionaire by the sale of it here and 

 abroad. His resignation was due to public 

 criticism of his conditional negotiations, termi- 

 nated some time ago, with a company engaged 

 in the manufacture of the bacterial culture 

 which he invented. The Weather Bureau has 

 been attacked by persons who asserted that 

 $60,000 was spent in erecting in the mountains 

 of Virginia buildings which served as a kind 

 of summer resort for the ofiicers. Investiga- 

 tion, so far as it has proceeded, indicates that 

 there was no just warrant for such a charge. 

 Independent slaughterers and beef packers have 

 complained that they suffered in competiti- 

 with the trust because they could obtain no 

 government inspection of their products. Dr. 

 Salmon's answer to this is that the export 

 trade, which is controlled by the trust, must be 

 subjected to inspection; that the appropria- 

 tions are not sufficient to provide for the in- 

 spection of meats for domestic consumption, 

 and that the house committee on agriculture 

 has warned the department not to extend its 

 inspection to the concerns engaged exclusively 

 in the domestic trade. — The Independent. 



THE PROPOSED ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE 

 MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECH- 

 NOLOGY AND HARVARD UNIVERSITY.' 



The corporation naturally reserved to itself 

 the right to pass upon the financial aspects of 

 the proposed arrangement. For giving a de- 



^ Concluding part of an editorial in The Tech- 

 nology Review. ' ' 



cision on this point the members are fitted by 

 training and occupation, as a recital of the 

 positions held by them would show. Since, 

 however, they are almost all unfamiliar with 

 educational problems, and since they regarded 

 the alliance with Harvard as fundamentally an 

 educational measure, as the testimony just 

 quoted plainly shows, they very properly re- 

 ferred this ' proposed agreement ' to their own 

 body of educational experts, the faculty, and 

 to those other parties in interest, the alumni, 

 who, while not expert in matters of education, 

 are, nevertheless, familiar with the institute 

 system of education, and by their professional 

 experience have given it the only conclusive 

 test. 



Upon receiving this invitation of the corpo- 

 ration, the faculty, who, at the request of the 

 president, had studiously refrained from 

 taking any earlier action upon the question, 

 seriously discussed and considered the problem, 

 upon its educational side, in a protracted series 

 of meetings, and presented their collective 

 opinion (there being but seven dissenting 

 voices, including that of the president, in a 

 membership of sixty-five) in a temperate and 

 reasoned report. The executive committee of 

 the alumni association, also made every exer- 

 tion to have both sides of the question pre- 

 sented fully and fairly to the alumni, which 

 body deliberately expressed itself as opposed to 

 the proposed agreement. In view of the cor- 

 poration's subsequent vote and the failure of 

 that body to attempt to conciliate the opposing 

 views by suggesting any modification of the 

 proposed agreement or even by stating its rea- 

 sons for disagreeing with those views, the 

 alumni may properly inquire why they should 

 have been encouraged to believe their opinion 

 to be really wanted. The faculty may well ask 

 why they should have been put to so much 

 trouble if their judgment, as experienced 

 teachers, upon a question declared to be fun- 

 damentally educational, was, after all, to re- 

 ceive so little respect. The faculty had every 

 moral right, they had every right in equity, 

 not only to be heard, but to be heeded. More- 

 over, if, as the president declares, ' the fame 

 of the institute rests upon the work and repu- 

 tation of the alumni,' those alumni should cer- 



