Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/518

514 excess of any one sum ever before in the history of the world by a single legislative enactment. This was in Lorimer's state and in Lorimer's time, strange as it might seem.

According to Dr. W. E. Whitney, in charge of the General Electric Company research laboratories, the advances in incandescent lighting alone in this country in the last ten years represent a saving of $240,000,000 a year or nearly a million dollars a day. He also calls attention to the fact that as a result of investigations with the mercury arc, his company has already had a sale of over a million dollars extra. There are a great many concerns in this country spending over a hundred thousand dollars annually on research. And why do they do it? Because it pays the company. Dr. Whitney believes that the advances of Germany over the other countries is largely traceable to their apparent overproduction of research men by well-fitted universities and technical schools. My argument is very simple. If an electrical concern that must at all odds pay dividends to the present generation, can afford to pay over a hundred thousand dollars annually for research, how much can the state afford to pay for research in pure science, in physics, in mathematics and chemistry, which will be absolutely essential to radical progress a century hence. The law governing the relation between visible radiation and temperature has been the guiding principle to most of the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by present day commercial firms for more efficient lighting. New laws by the physicists of to-day will set new guiding principles for the millions of the future. The laws of induction as discovered in pure physics had to precede the most wonderful development in electrical engineering that this age or any age has witnessed in any line. My whole argument can be summed up here briefly as follows. Knowledge is the source of all power. If the state would get more power it must gain more knowledge. No wonder President E. J. James has been led to exclaim,

Perhaps the moral status of the state is as important as food and shelter. I believe that the moral condition can be improved only by a further acquisition of the facts as to what promotes and what hinders well-being. Thus all knowledge improves moral conditions. The intelligent investigation of the results of alcoholic drinks is doing more toward driving out the drink habit than all the hatchets. The intelligent and unbiased investigation of the moral status of small towns