May 5, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



681 



must be entirely changed. It must realize 

 that steam and electricity have brought 

 about a complete revolution, that the appli- 

 cation of scientific principles and methods 

 is becoming so universal elsewhere that all 

 here who wish to succeed must adopt them. 



So long as motors burn out, so long as 

 subways are tied up by defective apparatus, 

 so long as electric motors run too hot, so 

 long as street cars can catch fire from so- 

 called explosions of the current, so long as 

 the traffic of a whole city can be stopped by 

 a defective insulation or a ten cent motor 

 brush, there will probably be the equivalent 

 of research laboratories somewhere con- 

 nected with the electrical industries, where 

 attempts will be continually made to im- 

 prove. 



Willis R. Whitney 



General Electkic Compant, 

 Schenectady, N. T. 



BECLAMATION OF TEE ABID WEST^ 



The benefits derived by applying science 

 to industry and the still greater benefits 

 that may be expected when all great prob- 

 lems are attacked in the scientific spirit 

 and on the scientific methods are to a cer- 

 tain extent exemplified by the opportuni- 

 ties afforded and results now accom- 

 plished in the conservation of the natural 

 resources of the nation. 



The reclamation of the arid west is 

 simply one of a number of items of na- 

 tional importance upon whose correct so- 

 lution by true scientific methods rests 

 largely, not merely the material prosperity 

 of the nation, but, more than this, the per- 

 petuation of free government, and of high 

 standards of individual liberty. 



The stability of a republic or demoe- 



' Presented before the Congress of Technology 

 at the fiftieth anniversary of the granting of the 

 charter of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- 

 nology. 



racy, whichever we may term it, rests not 

 upon its wealth, but upon the character of 

 the individual citizen and voter. The 

 greatest commonwealths are not necessar- 

 ily those having the greatest natural re- 

 sources, but rather those in which the 

 human units are strong. The strength of 

 the unit, the family or the voter, is not de- 

 rived from material wealth, but from 

 ability to act and think independently and 

 to exercise that intelligent self-interest 

 which binds him to the great mass of his 

 fellow men. If, for example, he is work- 

 ing in a factory or on a railroad line, he is, 

 of course, interested in keeping his job. 

 Beyond this, he has little concern with the 

 condition of municipal, state or federal 

 affairs. These are entirely too remote to 

 touch him, and if he lives in a tenement, he 

 has no concern beyond paying his rent and 

 getting the most he can for it. 



But take this man, indifferent to forms 

 or details of government, and put him 

 upon a 40-acre farm. Assuming that he 

 has reasonable industry and intelUgenee, 

 his whole view-point of life changes. He 

 is transformed from being more or less of 

 a nomad, shifting from flat to flat, or from 

 town to town, and indifferent to the gen- 

 eral welfare. He now becomes a land- 

 owning citizen and voter, interested in 

 every public movement for better roads, 

 better schools, better local government and 

 everything which leads up to the stability 

 of the institutions of the state as upon 

 these rest the value and comfort of his 

 home. 



This thought has been most pithily em- 

 bodied in a statement attributed to Ed- 

 ward Everett Hale where he asks "Who- 

 ever heard of a man shouldering his 

 musket to fight for his boarding house?" 



The problem of the reclamation of the 

 arid west is being attacked primarily for 

 the purpose, not of making men rich, but 



