644 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 984 



have served its purpose if it leads to a con- 

 sideration of the facts which prove the 

 thesis. 



The country of Franklin, Morse and 

 Eumford; of McCormick, Howe and Whit- 

 ney; of Edison, Thonason, Westinghouse 

 and Bell; and of Wilbur and Orville 

 Wright, is obviously a country not wholly 

 hostile to industrial research or unable to 

 apply it to good purpose. It is, however, 

 not surprising that with vast areas of vir- 

 gin soil of which a share might be had for 

 the asking; with interminable stretches of 

 stately forest ; with coal and oil and gas, the 

 ores of metals and countless other gifts of 

 nature scattered broadcast by her lavish 

 hand, our people entered upon this rich 

 inheritance with the spirit of the spend- 

 thrift, and gave little heed to refinements in 

 methods of production and less to minimiz- 

 ing waste. That day and generation is 

 gone. To-day, their children, partly 

 through better recognition of potential 

 values, but mainly by the pressure of a 

 greatly increased population and the stress 

 of competition among themselves and in the 

 markets of the world, are rapidly acquiring 

 the knowledge that efficiency of production 

 is a sounder basis for prosperity than mere 

 volume of product, however great. Many 

 of them have already learned that the most 

 profitable output of their plant is that re- 

 sulting from the catalysis of raw materials 

 by brains. A far larger number are still 

 ignorant of ^ese fundamental truths, and 

 so it happens that most of our industrial 

 effort still proceeds under the guidance of 

 empiricism with a happy disregard of basic 

 principles. A native ingenuity often brings 

 it to a surprising success and seems to sup- 

 port the aphorism "Where ignorance is 

 profitable, 'tis folly to be wise. ' ' Whatever 

 may be said, therefore, of industrial re- 

 search in America at this time is said of a 

 babe still in the cradle but which has never- 



theless, like the infant Hercules, already 

 destroyed its serpents and given promise of 

 its performance at man's estate. 



The long-continued and highly organized 

 research which resulted in the development 

 of American agricultural machinery has led 

 to the general introduction of machines 

 which reduce the labor cost of seven crops 

 $681,000,000 as measured by the methods 

 of only fifty years ago. 



The superhuman dexterity and precision 

 of American shoe machinery, which has 

 revolutionized a basic industry and reduced 

 competition to the status of an academic 

 question, present American industrial re- 

 search at its best. They are not the result 

 of the individual inspiration of a few 

 inventors as is commonly supposed. They 

 represent years of coordinated effort by 

 many minds directed and sustained by con- 

 stant and refined experimental research. 



You need not be reminded that the ubi- 

 quitous telephone is wholly a product of 

 American research. Munchausen 's story of 

 the frozen conversation which afterward 

 thawed out is a clumsy fable. Think of the 

 Niagaras of speech pouring silently through 

 the New York telephone exchanges where 

 they are sorted out, given a new direction 

 and delivered audibly perhaps a thousand 

 miles away. New York has 450,000 instru- 

 ments — twice the number of those in Lon- 

 don. Los Angeles has a telephone to every 

 four inhabitants. Why should one care to 

 project one's astral body when he can call 

 up from the club in fifteen seconds? Our 

 whole social structure has been reorganized, 

 we have been brought together in a single 

 parlor for conversation and to conduct 

 affairs because the American Telephone and 

 Telegraph Company spends annually for 

 research, the results of which are all about 

 us, a sum greater than the total income of 

 many universities. 



The name of Edison is a household word 



