632 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIII. No. 1114 



All economic labor aims at making external na- 

 ture contribute to the needs of man. It is as true 

 of the primitive gathering of roots and berries as 

 of the production of cyanamid or calcium nitrate. 

 The enormous progress of modern economic tech- 

 nique is due to the splendid development of the 

 natural sciences and the systematic application of 

 scientific knowledge to economic labor. Physics, 

 chemistry and electricity have outvied each other 

 in their influence upon economic technique. 



Speaking of the scientists, he says : 



Our hermit poets and thinkers converted them- 

 selves more and more during the past century into 

 practical creative workers, and an enormous ex- 

 pansion of activity has resulted from the prog- 

 ress of the pure and applied natural sciences. 



American chemists have had German 

 chemists pointed to as examples almost 

 long enough, but there is some value in 

 concrete examples, and I can not refrain 

 from comparing our own impoverished 

 condition in the matter of nitrogen to that 

 of Germany. 



Excepting one or two minor attempts, 

 we Americans have made almost no study 

 of the fixation of atmospheric nitrogen. I 

 want you to realize the varied and expen- 

 sive researches, mostly carried on abroad, 

 which were required to reach the present 

 position of the nitrogen question. There 

 were in Germany and, by German capital, 

 in Scandinavia, several direct oxidation 

 processes, carried through the experimental 

 to the practical commercial stage. The 

 Schoenherr process is one of these, the 

 Birkeland and Eyde process another. The 

 direct combination of nitrogen and hydro- 

 gen to form ammonia has been successfully 

 developed in the German Haber process, 

 and the cyanamid process, with aU its prod- 

 ucts from carbide to ammonium nitrate, 

 was developed in Germany. There they 

 used not only the peculiar reactions of cal- 

 cium carbide with nitrogen, but the produc- 

 tion of the nitrogen from liquid air, the 

 reaction between water and cyanamid to 



form ammonia, and then an oxidation proc- 

 ess for obtaining the nitric acid. The oxi- 

 dation of ammonia to nitric acid by such 

 methods as the Ostwald process has been 

 studied by many investigators since 1830, 

 and several different schemes are now in 

 use abroad. 



At the time most of this research work 

 was under way it was not at all clear what 

 use was to be made of it. Much of it was 

 purely academic research, but it was clear 

 that without the knowledge itself certainly 

 no use at all would be made of it. 



I do not want you to look at research as 

 an old, established utility. I want you to 

 see it as I do : a powerful factor proved in 

 the advance of the industrial welfare of the 

 foremost countries, and a world-experi- 

 ment of less than a century's trial, but 

 something still unappreciated in America. 

 It is true that the earliest man and many 

 of the lower animals accomplished ends by 

 research, but I refer now to research in the 

 natural sciences and to the research which 

 in our day is necessary to our desired activ- 

 ities. These sciences are already very 

 highly developed, and an equally advanced 

 education is demanded. For example, if 

 I wish to cure physical ills, I can not ex- 

 pect to do it by reciting ancient incanta- 

 tions, nor by using roots and herbs, as was 

 once customary. I must first familiarize 

 myself with an accumulation of previous 

 experience. I must study anatomy, physi- 

 ology, chemistry, bacteriology, etc. This 

 is a relatively recent world-condition. Con- 

 ditions are similar in all the applied sci- 

 ences. The accumulated knowledge in any 

 field is already very considerable, and to 

 get on to the firing-line of useful work one 

 must go up past the baggage-train of 

 knowledge and experience. There is some- 

 thing in the blood which makes an Ameri- 

 can naturally hate preliminaries. It will 

 be a great day when we see how impoi'tant 



