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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIII. No. 846 



attainment is still but dimly recognized by 

 the industrial world; chemists are em- 

 ployed like clerks, without graduate train- 

 ing, and work like day-laborers, but for 

 less pay, at routine analysis, with neither 

 the training nor the opportunity to attack 

 the larger problems in a fundamental sci- 

 entific way. Such chemists are not on the 

 same plane as the higher chemists in the 

 German manufacturing industries, who 

 have supervision of the works as well as 

 the laboratories. One result of this primi- 

 tive lack of demand for highly trained men 

 is the small number pursuing research in 

 our universities, so that even our best 

 qualified professors have a mere handful 

 of research students, and many of these 

 can be induced to continue their higher 

 education only by fellowships sufficient to 

 pay their living expenses; if such aids 

 were discontinued the numbers of our 

 graduate students would be even less fa- 

 vorably impressive than at present, though 

 in time the larger investment of those 

 remaining would show in the larger sal- 

 aries that would have to be paid to the 

 men more diificult to find. Leading Ger- 

 man professors attract large numbers of 

 well-trained students, making possible their 

 remarkable productiveness. 



The keener competition in all walks of 

 life in Europe has some advantages — only 

 the thoroughly trained can hope for suc- 

 cess, hence their desire for the most com- 

 plete preparation. We consider ourselves 

 fortunate in being protected against for- 

 eign competition, and in being able in con- 

 sequence to make an equally good living 

 with less effort; but are we really to be 

 congratulated on our lower intellectual 

 standard of living and on our dependence 

 upon imported thought and intellectual 

 products ? 



Another result of the limited scale on 

 which scientific investigation is being con- 



ducted, and our "high standard of living," 

 is that it is not worth while for manufac- 

 turers here to supply refined or unusual 

 scientific material; if an American investi- 

 gator needs, for instance, a special chem- 

 ical, he must wait two or three months for 

 its importation, while his European col- 

 league could obtain the same in as many 

 days or even hours, or, if manufactured 

 here, two or three times the foreign price 

 must be paid. The American artisan is 

 more highly paid than his European 

 brother, but not so the more eminent intel- 

 lectual worker. Does this mean that we 

 are not civilized enough to appreciate any 

 but material products? 



Naturally the realization of the value of 

 intellectual things is found first among 

 those engaged in the work of education, 

 and our larger and better endowed colleges 

 have within the last half century shown 

 their appreciation of productive scholar- 

 ship and developed graduate schools to 

 compare more favorably with the Euro- 

 pean universities, so that it is no longer 

 necessary for our students to go abroad 

 for the inspiration of working with men 

 who are extending the boundaries of hu- 

 man knowledge. Once started, the fasci- 

 nation of research insures its continuance 

 as long as a favorable environment exists. 



The institutions that have been able by 

 their large means to adequately maintain 

 graduate departments have been so amply 

 rewarded by their enhanced prestige, that 

 many others, without sufficient means, have 

 attempted to do the same thing; the result 

 has been impaired undergraduate instruc- 

 tion with a more or less successful imita- 

 tion of graduate work. 



A graduate school should recognize as 

 its most important possession the produc- 

 tive scholarship of its faculty, making the 

 institution a center of new knowledge, and 

 all other matters should be arranged with 



