CHEMISTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. 
191 
colleges is due. The initiative was taken by the scientific 
schools, but the colleges were compelled to follow, and today 
even the high schools, the feeders of the colleges, have their 
chemical laboratories, in which elementary practice and 
qualitative analysis are taught. Chemistry is now seen to 
be one of the best disciplinary studies, and it fails in educa¬ 
tional value only when the teaching of it is entrusted to im¬ 
properly trained pedagogues of the obsolete text-book school. 
The teacher who is a slave of text-books is as bad as no teacher 
at all. To teach chemistry one must think chemistry; a 
mere memory of facts is not a sufficient qualification. 
Leaving out of consideration the names of many American 
chemists who published important researches during this 
period of our history, for personal details would not be in 
place here, we come down to the date of the civil war, which 
marks an epoch in more senses than one. In science as 
well as in politics, the war divides American history into two 
periods—the one a period of preparation and slow growth, 
the other a period of swift advances and fruition. Through 
the war the nation had received a sharp stimulus, and the 
reestablishment of peace was followed by wonderful progress 
in many directions. Population and wealth increased with 
great rapidity, and in due time that wealth began to flow 
into educational channels. The nation itself embarked in 
many new enterprises; these demanded the aid of science, 
and so the latter received encouragements which its students 
had hardly dreamed of before. Even during the war the 
land-grant college bill was passed by Congress, and soon 
every State was provided with new facilities for scientific in¬ 
struction, and the demand for trained teachers was greatly 
increased. The foundation of Cornell University, which 
opened its doors to students in 1868, was one of the conse¬ 
quences of this bill. In 1864 the School of Mines of Colum¬ 
bia College began its work; in 1865 the Massachusetts In¬ 
stitute of Technology was started; and these were followed 
by the Polytechnic School at Worcester in 1868, and the 
Stevens Institute at Hoboken in 1870. Even the older 
27 -Bull. Phil. Soc. Wash., Vol. 13. 
