294 PROCEEDINGS OF THE OHIO ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



ternal revenue laws shifted the respoiisibihty in an important case 

 to the National Academy of Sciences and adopted the recon> 

 mendations of its committee. 



During the past few years there has been much talk (and 

 not much besides talk) about the importance of conserving our 

 resources, state and national. I need hardly say that the mem- 

 bership of the academy includes men who have studied these re- 

 sources for many years; who are better informed regarding them 

 than any or all others. Whenever the state shall seriously under- 

 take legislation to secure their conservation it will be a reckless 

 administration that does not apply to them for advice and coun- 

 sel. 



At the risk of being charged with grossly exaggerating the 

 merits of my fellow academicians and others of their kind I 

 venture to refer to one other function of our complex social and 

 industrial life for which I have long thought to be especially 

 well fitted, those men who are thoroughly trained in scientific 

 methods and who have shown their capacity for the original in- 

 vestigation and solution of difficult scientific problems. I mean 

 for service as arbitrators, especially in those cases in which both 

 sides declare there is nothing to arbitrate, each believing, often 

 with perfect sincerity, that his own position is absolutely right 

 and the other absolutely wroiig. 



Arbitration, in theory the best method of settling disputes, 

 in practice has more often failed than not. It could hardly be 

 otherwise under the prevailing system. The ordinary procedure 

 is for each side to choose a representative, generally a lawyer, 

 who is pledged to do his best as an advocate, not as a judge. 

 These two after much difficulty, and sometimes by the tossing of 

 a coin, select a third who is often secretly known to favor one 

 side or the other and thus the case is won before it is begun. In 

 the more favorable case of the third arbitrator being open minded 

 and anxious for a correct decision, the points in dispute are con- 

 fused and obscured by the pleadings of his legal colleagues whose 

 trade is "to make the worse appear the better reason." 



In their place put men who have had much training and 

 long experience in discriminating between appearances and reali- 



