Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/755

Rh To the greater number of those who have become teachers of science in our colleges, the chief attraction has been the promise of leisure for study. But in the greater number of our institutions, that leisure has practically disappeared and young men recognize the fact. On the other hand, the applications of pure science have been multiplied; the chemist, physicist, geologist and biologist have become, each of them, the mainstay of industries not only requiring many millions of capital, but also contributing in equal proportion to the welfare of mankind. In each of these industries competition is so earnest that incessant investigation along lines of pure science is essential. There is here promised a greater reward of fame than the college instructor can hope for, while in addition there is a prospect of pecuniary reward for the wise and industrious man, compared with which the maximum college salary is a pittance. It is quite in accord with human nature that young men after completing graduate study, costly both in time and money, should think applied science, which promises both fame and money, preferable to college teaching, which promises in our day not very much of either.

It has been said that a change has passed over the minds of American college professors, that, whereas formerly they regarded investigation as the all-important and teaching as the unimportant part of their duties, they now regard themselves as chosen especially to teach. This is a somewhat belated discovery, for the American college professor has always been preeminently a teacher, to whom investigation has always been, as it were, a side-issue. But for a generation, owing to rapid expansion of curricula without corresponding increase in number of teachers, there has been an increasing neglect of investigation. For the most part, small colleges to-day are as well off for men and equipment as not a few of our larger institutions were fifty years ago, but their contributions to the sum of human knowledge, at least on the scientific side, are in no sense comparable with those made by college men of the earlier period. This reacts on the college, for men who are not investigators by nature and to some extent, at least, in practise can never be genuine teachers. They may be good disciplinarians, masters in the art of hearing recitations, adepts in compelling students to learn lessons, but as retailers of merely second-hand information they never can be makers of men.

Beyond all doubt there will always be an ample supply of candidates, whatever the salary may be, but ambitious young men will not take up a profession which threatens to dwarf them intellectually and socially; rather will they turn aside to business or to other professions in which great prizes await diligence and common sense. The sentimental grounds on which many chose college work no longer exist, since opportunities for service to others abound everywhere even for the busiest