Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/316

310 solution. The same training has devised inoculation for nitrogen-impoverished soils; and now the public regards Moore as a distinguished example of a scientific man who began to amount to something as soon as he abandoned pure science! The illustration is probably the more striking since the investigator himself applied his pure science; but it illustrates the fact that such practical results are reached most surely and most quickly from the vantage ground of pure science.

What the public needs to know is that an effective and economic applied science must root itself in pure science, just as a tree must root itself in the soil. It was with this in view that I laid emphasis upon the general bearing of an investigation as the important feature of its public report. It need not be a practical bearing, to use 'practical' in its conventional sense; for in many important investigations such a bearing is either lacking or trivial; but simply the real bearing, which, if it does not appeal to the current desire for immediate practical application, does appeal to that better desire for information about important things, to that delight in feeling that the great things are being sought after. The public must be taught that even research that merely means increased knowledge is immensely practical, for it means an attitude of mind, a method, a body of knowledge that must be available for every important problem, whether it happens to be one of economic interest or not.

Such education, as all education, will be slow, but the increasing number of investigators who are being drawn from pure science to applied science will give increasing illustrations of the necessary training for results.

2. It will secure endowment for research.—To show to an intelligent public that the investigations in pure science are the only kind that are fundamentally practical would not be worth while if it did not result in a better support of research.

It is clear that the question of adequate support for research is the most serious one that confronts American science to-day. Teaching and administration tax the time and energy of established investigators; the expense of investigation is becoming greater; the opportunities for it in the way of position and equipment are so few that there is no inducement for young men to become investigators. Not equipped for the men we have, the very desirable multiplication of men is impossible. And yet, such equipment as we have is dependent in certain measure upon our output of men. In spite of these conditions, the volume of research is increasing yearly, and young men are still found who will not sell their birthright for a mess of pottage. These conditions will continue to become harder unless some relief is found.

The Carnegie Institution was intended to furnish some relief.