June 5, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



877 



of all kinds where large amounts of iron 

 are used. 



What has happened in the iron industry- 

 has happened also in a great variety of 

 other industries. To speak of the dif- 

 ferent lines in which chemists are to-day 

 employed would be almost to give a list 

 of the important industries of the country. 

 There is in these and in chemical work in 

 general a rapidly increasing diversity. 

 During the past year the American Chem- 

 ical Society has established an abstract 

 Journal which intends to give an account 

 of all new work in chemistry which is 

 published in the world. The abstracts in 

 this journal are classified in thirty divi- 

 sions, and this illustrates the great variety 

 of industries and directions in which 

 chemists are interested. 



The amount of knowledge which has 

 been accumulated in chemical science is so 

 great that I feel safe in saying that the 

 detailed knowledge in this science is 

 greater in amount than the whole mass of 

 scientific knowledge in all sciences fifty 

 years ago. I do not, of course, mean that 

 the value of this chemical knowledge is 

 greater than the value of the scientific 

 knowledge fifty years ago, but merely that 

 its amount is greater, and I say this for 

 the purpose of emphasizing the diversity 

 of interests among chemists. 



It is estimated that there are about eight 

 thousand chemists employed in the United 

 States at the present time. One of the 

 previous speakers has referred to an esti- 

 mate that there are only five thousand 

 scientific men in the United States. While 

 I do not suppose that all of the eight thou- 

 sand chemists can be properly classed as 

 scientific men in the sense in which the 

 term was used by the former speaker, I 

 am inclined to think that this number in- 

 dicates that there are many more scientific 

 men in the United States than would cor- 

 respond to that estimate. The increase in 



the number of chemists during the past 

 twenty-five years has been very largely 

 occasioned by the employment of chemists 

 in the industries. A quarter of a century 

 ago, nearly all of the chemists in the 

 United States were engaged in teaching, 

 while to-day the majority are undoubtedly 

 working in industrial lines. 



But it is not merely in the industries 

 that the number of chemists has greatly in- 

 creased during this period. Thirty years 

 ago, very few educational institutions 

 could have been found which had more 

 than three or four chemists on their staff. 

 In the institution with which I am con- 

 nected, the staff includes more than thirty 

 chemists who are engaged in teaching or 

 research, and I do not think that the in- 

 stitution is unusual in this regard. 



Very large numbers of chemists have 

 also been required in recent years by agri- 

 cultural experiment stations and by gov- 

 ernment bureaus. Since the enactment of 

 the pure-food law especially, the demand 

 for chemists to fill positions in connection 

 with the bureau of chemistry has largely 

 exceeded the supply of suitable men, and 

 during the past summer many of those 

 who have been called upon to answer in- 

 quiries for chemists to fill positions have 

 been compelled to reply that they had no 

 suitable candidate to recommend. 



W. A. Notes 



Univeesitt of Illinois 



OUTLOOK FOB TOVNQ MEN IN GEOLOGr 

 Probably our academy can do no one 

 thing more useful than to encourage the 

 young men and women of talent who are 

 looking forward to a career in science. 

 By this is not meant a deliberate effort to 

 divert men and women from other work to 

 ours, but rather the holding out of a help- 

 ing hand to those whose inclinations are 

 toward a scientific career, but who hesitate 



