The Popular Science Monthly Volume LXXXVI July to September, 1915 The Scientific Monthly Volume I October to December, 1915

Part 4 out of 8

twentieth what they would be if they rested upon a rigid
substratum of uniform density, but other facts that lead to the
same conclusion are the apparent tendency of areas of
sedimentation to slowly settle under their load, the apparent
settling of the Great Lake region under a load of ice and
springing up again since the removal of the ice. But if the
theory of isostasy is true, one would at first say that there
could be no great accumulation through a geologic period of
stresses which would finally yield in the shape of folded
mountain ranges. It has, in fact, been suggested that mountain
ranges have been slowly folded and lifted as the stress which
produced them accumulated and this would seem to be true if one
considers only the outer crust, but on the other hand, as we
have pointed out, there are indications in the history of the
earth of periods of relative quiescence followed by periods of
relatively considerable disturbance.

How can these two theories be reconciled in accordance with
what we know of the laws of physics and chemistry and those of
the earth's interior? It seems to me they can by making
suppositions which are perfectly natural regarding the state of
the earth's interior.

We are at liberty to suppose if the facts point that way that
there are the following layers in the earth's masses:--First,
the external, rigid and brittle layer; second, a layer under
such temperature and pressure that it is above its plastic
yield point and may be considered as a viscous fluid. The
pressure must continue to increase toward the center. We do not
know what is the temperature, but it is perfectly possible that
at a greater depth the earth may become rigid once more if the
effect of pressure in promoting solidity and rigidity
continues, as Bridgman tells me he thinks probable. We do not
even have to assume a change in the chemical composition of the
earth's substance, though it is perfectly allowable. This,
then, will be a third layer, once more rigid, perhaps extending
to the center and of very considerable thickness and capable of
accumulating strain from long periods. Blanketed as it would be
by thousands of meters of the first two layers, any change must
be relatively slow.

Kelvin in his computation of the age of the earth from cooling
assumed for the interior of the earth constant conditions. It
is now generally accepted that this is not probable, and that
whether it cooled from a gas or coagulated from planetesimals,
it became solid first at the center which then would be
hottest, and both Becker[3] and A. Holmes[4] assume an initial
temperature gradient. If that gradient were greater than the
gradient of steady flow the conditions of steady flow would be
approached most rapidly at the exterior, the loss of heat and
energy would be altogether from within and it is easy to
arrange for conditions mathematically in which almost all the
loss of energy would come from the very interior, near the
center. What will be the effect? A paradoxical one, if the part
outside the center is rigid enough to be self-sustaining. The
central core will become a gas!

[3] Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 26, 1915, p. 197, etc.
[4] Geological Magazine, March and April, 1913.

This is so contrary to our ordinary experience and ideas, in
which loss of heat tends to change from gas to fluid and solid,
that we must look into it a little to make it sound reasonable.
The recent brilliant work of P. W. Bridgman (contrary to the
earlier speculations of Tammann) indicates that the effect of
increased pressure, at high temperature, makes a substance
solid and crystalline. Crowd any atoms close enough together,
and no matter how fast they expand or contract under the
influence of heat the crystalline atomic forces will get to
work when they are crowded within their range, and the closest
packing, hence that which will yield most to the pressure,
hence that which is likely to take place, is when they are all
regularly arranged facing the same way. Such an arrangement we
call crystalline. Just so when they want to pack the most
people into the car of an elevator they ask them to all face to
the front. Keep this metaphor a moment. Any one who should try
to penetrate such a crowd would find it a hard job. They would
offer a very effective rigidity. Now suppose them to sweat in
those confined quarters their fat away, their phlogiston, their
caloric. If the walls of the car remained rigid while the
individuals therein shrunk they might after a while be able to
turn around or even move around in a car. Such is then the
supposed condition of the atoms in the FOURTH, the central,
layer of the earth's crust. This assumes that the middle layer
is rigid and sustains itself, like the shell of a nut, as in
the figure, while within the atoms are in a less rigid
condition. That such a shell might be self-sustaining is
suggested by an experiment of Bridgman, who put a marble with a
gas bubble in it under a pressure of something like 150,000
pounds to the square inch without producing any perceptible
change.

As loss of energy from the earth's interior went on this
central core of gas would enlarge until the middle shell was
hardly self-supporting. Then, probably at some time of
astronomic strain when the earth's, orbit was extra elliptical,
it would collapse, in collapsing generate heat, and so stop the
process. The collapse would be transmitted to the viscous layer
which might be increased, motions set up in it, and so a
wrinkling of the outer thin crust on which we live.

Then there would be four layers to the earth like the butternut
of the figure. First, the inner kernel of gas; second, the hard
shell or endocarp; third, a viscous layer like the sarcocarp or
pulp, and outside of all the wrinkled crust of exocarp. If such
is the structure of the earth we may have in the very structure
of the earth itself a reason why from time to time there are
collapses of the middle layer leading to elevations of portions
of the outer rind, and marking off the chapters in geological
history, the lines between geological systems.

There are reasons in facts of observation for believing that
such is the structure of the earth, of which I have as yet said
nothing. We see the interior of a glass marble, I saw the
bubble in the interior of Bridgman's glass marble, how? By
waves, vibrations, which start from the sun or some other
source, and going through it reach my eye. Though the earth is
not penetrated by sunlight it is penetrated by the waves and
vibrations that start from that jar produced by a crack which
we call an earthquake. These vibrations can be received by that
eye of the geologist called a seismograph. The seismologist
tells us there are three kinds of waves sent out in an
earthquake. If you notice the explosion of a blast at a little
too close distance you will notice that you see it first, then
hear it, and then perhaps a little later a few chips of rock
may come flying past your ears. These three things correspond
somewhat to the three kinds of waves which spread forth from an
earthquake. But in the case of the explosion we see the blast
first, then hear later. The waves which produce the sensation
of sight are, we know, lateral disturbances, the waves which
produce the sensation of sound are waves of condensation, whose
motion is in the direction of their propagation and they come
later. In the case of the jars of earth, the reverse is true.
The first set of waves to arrive are the waves which are due to
compression--vibrations in the direction in which the waves are
produced--and correspond to sound waves. Later come waves which
are transverse sidewise disturbances of the solid mass of the
earth. As we can easily see, in an earthquake jar traveling
from the opposite end of the earth, there should be no
insurmountable difficulty in recognizing the jar, which is a
direct upthrow from one which would tilt it to the right or
left. Now there is a law of Laplace by which the velocity of
spread of sound waves through gas may be calculated. That this
law should hold at temperatures and pressures so high as those
that must exist in the middle of the earth is, of course, a
question, but it will be interesting to see how nearly the
actual velocity of about 10 kilometers a second compares with
the velocity which such waves should have in gas of a density
and under a pressure such as a gas near the center of the earth
must have. Using Oldham's figures (and they seem to be
confirmed by the recent investigations of E. Rudolph and S.
Szirtes[18]), we find that the time of transmission of these
first and fastest preliminary compression tremors is about
twice the velocity of such a jar according to Laplace's law in
as dense a mass of gas, provided the ratio of the specific heat
of a gas at constant pressure to that of a gas at constant
volume remains 1.4, which is for many substances. But as it is
1.6 for mercury the discrepancy is not more than I had
expected.

[5] Gerlands, "Beitrage zur Geophysik," XI., Band, 1 Heft,
1911, p. 132. "Das kolumbianische Erdbeben am 31 January,
1906."

The second preliminary tremors arriving later are due to the
lateral disturbance. Their propagation is much less rapid when
the point of origin is nearly opposite the point of receival.
In other words there is a core within the earth about 0.4 of
the radius in radius, in which according to Oldham, these
lateral waves have much less velocity. Now in a gas there is
less resistance to lateral displacement than in a solid, and
the less the resistance the less the velocity, so that this
fact fits in with the idea of a gaseous core perfectly. If
there is such n core, moreover, of less rigidity it would have
less refraction. Consequently waves not striking the border
above the angle of total reflection would be totally reflected,
and just as around a bubble there is a dark border where the
light does not get through so at a certain distance from the
source of an earthquake there would be a circle (it is really
about 140 degrees of arc away), where no second tremors would
be felt. Here again, though seismograph stations are as yet
few, fact and theory are apparently going to correspond.

The last type of earthquake waves follow around the outer layer
of the crust.

There is one farther line of verification to which I had
addressed myself. Is it likely that the loss of heat and energy
from the central nucleus, at the rate which we know at the
surface from a central nucleus of anything like 0.4 the radius
of the earth, would give a shrinkage of anything like the
amount indicated by the mountain ranges, in anything like the
time which we are led to assign on other grounds to the
geologic periods?

Rudski has also attempted to connect the shrinkage and age of
the earth. Both these methods depend on how fast the earth is
losing heat, that is on the geothermal gradient. Since at
present, owing to the apparently large but unknown contribution
of radioactivity to that gradient we know very little about
what the other portion is, it seems unwise to give any figures,
especially as almost all the numerical data are largely guess
work. It will, however, be fair to say that very long times for
the age of the earth seem to be indicated, nearer millions of
millions than millions unless the radius of the gaseous core
was mainly small or its rate of contraction with loss of
temperature high.

THE CASH VALUE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

BY PROFESSOR T. BRAILSFORD ROBERTSON

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

THERE can be no doubt that the average man and woman in Europe
and America to-day professes a more or less nebulous feeling of
respect and admiration for the scientific investigator. This
feeling is not logical, for very few have ever met or seen a
scientist, fewer still have ever seen the inside of a
scientific laboratory, and hardly any have ever seen scientific
research in the making.

The average man in the street or man of affairs has no very
clear conception of what manner of man a "scientist" may be. No
especial significance attaches in his mind to the term. No
picture of a personality or his work arises in the imagination
when the word "scientist" is pronounced. More or less
indefinitely, I suppose, it is conceded by all that a scientist
is a man of vast erudition (an impression by the way which is
often strikingly incorrect) who leads a dreary life with his
head buried in a book or his eye glued to telescope or
microscope, or perfumed with those disagreeable odors which, as
everybody knows, are inseparably associated with chemicals. The
purpose of this life is not very clear, but doubtless a vague
feeling exists in the minds of most of us that people who are
willing to pursue such an unattractive career must be worthy of
admiration, for despite all the triumphs of commercialism,
humanity still loves idealism, even idealism which seems
objectless because it is incomprehensible.

From time to time the existence of the scientific man is
recalled to the popular mind by some extravagant headlines in
the daily press, announcing some utterly impossible "discovery"
or some extravagantly nonsensical dictum made by an alleged
"scientist." The "discovery" was never made, the dictum never
uttered, but no matter; to-morrow its place will be taken by
the latest political or matrimonial scandal, and the public,
with excellent good sense, will forget all about it.

From time to time, also, there creeps gradually into the public
consciousness a sense that SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED. Brief
notices appear in the press, at first infrequently and then
more frequently, and an article or two in the popular
monthlies. The public becomes languidly interested in a new
possibility and even discusses it, sceptically. Then of a
sudden we are awakened to the realization of a new power in
being. The X-ray, wireless telegraphy or the aeroplane has
become the latest "marvel of science," only to develop in a
very brief period into a commonplace of existence.

Many indeed are aware that we owe these "marvels" to scientific
research, but very few indeed, to the shame of our schools be
it spoken, have attained to the faintest realization of the
indubitable fact that we owe almost the entirety of our
material environment, and no small proportion of our social and
spiritual environment, to the labors of scientists or of their
spiritual brethren.

Long ago, in ages so remote that no record of them survives
save our heritage of labor well achieved, some pastoral savage,
more reflective and less practical than his brethren, took to
star-gazing and noting in his memory certain strange
coincidences. Doubtless he was chidden by his tribal leaders
who were hard-headed men of affairs, skilled in the
questionable art of imposing conventional behavior upon unruly
tribesmen. But he was an inveterate dreamer, this prehistoric
Newton and the fascination of the thing had gripped his mind.
In due time he was gathered to his fathers, but not before he
had passed on to a few chosen ones the peculiar coincidences he
had observed. And thus, from age to age coincidence was added
to coincidence and the result of all this "unpractical" labor
was, at long last, a calendar. Let who will attempt to estimate
the cash value of this discovery; I will not attempt the
impossible. I will merely ask you to picture to yourselves
humanity in the condition of the Australian Aboriginal or of
the South African Bushman; devoid of any means of estimating
time or season save by the daily passage of the sun, and I ask
you, "supposing that through some vast calamity, a calamity
greater even than the present war, humanity could at a stroke
evolve a calendar, would it be worth while?" I for one think it
would.

The evolution of the calendar is not an inapt illustration of
the methods of science, and of the part which it has played in
shaping the destiny of man. Out of the unregarded labors of
thousands of forgotten men, and a few whom we now remember, has
sprung every detail of that vast complex of machinery, method
and measurement in which to-day we live and move and have our
being. In all ages scientific curiosity guided by the
scientific discipline of thought has forced man into new and
more complex paths of progress. Lacking the spirit of research,
a nation or community is merely parasitic, living upon the
vital achievements of others, as Rome based her civilization
upon the civilization of the Greeks. Only an indefinite and
sterile refinement of the existing environment is possible
under such circumstances, and humanity stays stationary or
sinks back into the semibarbarism of the middle ages.

The few scattered students of nature of that day picked up the
clue to her secrets exactly as it fell from the hands of the
Greeks a thousand years before. The foundations of mathematics
were so well laid by them that our children learn their
geometry from a book written for the schools of Alexandria two
thousand years ago. Modern astronomy is the natural
continuation and development of the work of Hipparchus and of
Ptolemy; modern physics of that of Democritus and of
Archimedes; it was long before biological science outgrew the
knowledge bequeathed to us by Aristotle, by Theophrastus and by
Galen.[1]

[1] T. H. Huxley, "Science and Culture."

If, therefore, we ask ourselves what has been the value of
science to man, the answer is that its value is practically the
value of the whole world in which we find ourselves to-day, or,
at any rate, the difference between the value of our world and
that of a world inhabited by Neolithic savages.

The sweeping nature of this deduction may from its very
comprehensiveness fail to carry conviction to the reader. But
concrete illustrations of the value which scientific research
may add to our environment are not far to seek. They are
afforded in abundance by the dramatic achievements of the past
century of human progress, in which science has begun painfully
and haltingly to creep into its true place and achieve its true
function.

In the year 1813 many important events occurred. The power of
Napoleon was crumbling in that year and countless historians
have written countless pages describing innumerable events,
great and small, which accompanied that colossal downfall. But
one event of that year, of which we do not read in our
historical memoirs and school books was the discovery by Sir
Humphry Davy, in the humble person of a bookbinder's
apprentice, of the man who will probably stand out forever in
the history of science as the ideal scientific man--Michael
Faraday. The manner of this discovery is revealed by the
following conversation between Sir Humphry Davy and his friend
Pepys. "Pepys, what am I to do, here is a letter from a young
man named Faraday; he has been attending my lectures, and wants
me to give him employment at the Royal Institution--what can I
do?" "Do?" replied Pepys, "put him to wash bottles; if he
refuses he is good for nothing." "No, no," replied Davy; "we
must try him with something better than that." The result was,
that Davy engaged him to assist in the laboratory at weekly
wages.[2]

[2] J. Tyndall, "Faraday as a Discoverer."

Davy made many important discoveries, but none of his
discoveries was more important than his discovery of Faraday,
and of all the events which occurred in the year 1813, the
entry of Faraday into the Royal Institution was not the least
significant for humanity.

On the morning of Christmas day, 1821, Faraday called his wife
into his laboratory to witness, for the first time in the
history of man, the revolution of a magnet around an electric
current. The foundations of electromagnetics were laid and the
edifice was built by Faraday upon this foundation in the
fourteen succeeding years. In those years and from those
labors, the electro-motor, the motor generator, the electrical
utilization of water power, the electric car, electric
lighting, the telephone and telegraph, in short all that is
comprised in modern electrical machinery came actually or
potentially into being. The little rotating magnet which
Faraday showed his wife was, in fact, the first electric motor.

What was the cash value to humanity of those fourteen years of
labor in a laboratory?

According to the thirteenth census of the United States, the
value of the electrical machinery, apparatus and supplies
produced in this country alone, in 1909 was $221,000,000. In
1907, the value of the electric light and power stations in the
United States was $1,097,000,000, of the telephones
$820,000,000, and the combined income from these two sources
was $360,000,000. Nor does this represent a tithe of the
values, as yet barely realized, which these researches placed
at our disposal. Thus in its waterfalls, the United States is
estimated to possess 150,000,000 available horse-power, which
can only be realized through the employment of Faraday's
electro-motor. This corresponds, at the conservative figure of
$20 per horse-power per annum to a yearly income of
$3,000,000,000, corresponding at 4 per cent. interest to a
capital value of $75,000,000,0000.[3]

[3] M. T. Bogert, "The Function of Chemistry in the
Conservation of our National Resources," Journal of the
American Chemical Society, February, 1909.

Such was the Christmas gift which Michael Faraday presented to
the world in 1821.

Faraday died a poor man in 1867, neither for lack of
opportunity nor for lack of ability to grasp his opportunities,
but because as his pupil Tyndall tells us, he found it
necessary to choose between the pursuit of wealth and the
pursuit of science, and he deliberately chose the latter. This
is not a bad thing. It is perhaps as it should be, and as it
has been in the vast majority of cases. But another fact which
can not be viewed with like equanimity is that of all the
inexhaustible wealth which Faraday poured into the lap of the
world, not one millionth, not a discernible fraction, has ever
been returned to science for the furtherance of its aims and
its achievements, for the continuance of research.

There is no regular machinery for securing the permanent
endowment of research, and it is always and everywhere a barely
tolerated intruder. In the universities it crouches under the
shadow of pedagogy, and snatches its time and its materials
from the fragments which are left over when the all-important
business of teaching the young what others have accomplished
has been done. In commercial institutions it occasionally
pursues a stunted career, subject to all the caprices of
momentary commercial advantage and the cramped outlook of the
"practical man." The investigator in the employ of a commercial
undertaking is encouraged to be original, it is true, but not
to be too original. He must never transcend the "practical,"
that is to say, the infinitesimal rearrangement of the
preexisting. The institutions existing in the world which are
devoted to research and, research alone can almost be counted
on the fingers. The Solvay Institute in Brussels, the Nobel
Institute in Stockholm, the Pasteur Institute in France, the
Institute for Experimental Therapy at Frankfort, The Kaiser
Wilhelm Institutes at Berlin, The Imperial Institute for
Medical Research at Petrograd, the Biologisches Versuchsanstalt
at Vienna, the Biological Station at Naples, the Royal
Institution in London, the Wellcome Laboratories in England and
at Khartoum, the Smithsonian, Wistar, Carnegie and Rockefeller
Institutes in the United States; the list of research
institutes of important dimensions (excluding astronomical
observatories) is, I believe, practically exhausted by the
above enumeration, and many of them are woefully undermanned
and underequipped. At least two of them, the Solvay Institute
wholly, and the Frankfort Institute for Experimental Therapy in
part, owe their existence and continuance to scientific men,
Solvay and Ehrlich, who have contrived to combine the pursuit
of wealth and of science, and have dedicated the wealth thus
procured to the science that gave it birth.

In 1900 the value of the manufacturing industries in the United
States which had been developed from patented scientific
inventions was no less than $395,663,958 per annum,[4]
corresponding to a capital value of about $10,000,000,000. It
is impossible to arrive at any accurate estimate of the
proportion of this wealth which finds its way back to science
to provide equipment and subsistence for the investigator, who
is creating the wealth of the future. But the capital endowment
of the Rockefeller and Carnegie Institutes, the two wealthiest
institutes of research in the world is, according to the 1914
issue of Minerva, only $29,000,000. The total income (exclusive
of additions to endowments) of all the higher institutions of
learning in the United States in 1913, was only $90,000,000, of
which a minute percentage was expended in research.

[4] 12th census, Vol. 10, Part 4.

If science produces so much wealth, is there no contrivance
whereby we can cause a small fraction of this wealth to return
automatically to science and to furnish munitions of war for
fresh conquests of nature? A very small investment in research
often produces colossal returns. In 1911 the income of the
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry was only
$21,000. In 1913 the income of the Institute for Experimental
Therapy at Frankfort, where "606" was discovered, was only
$20,000; that of the Imperial Institute for Medical Research at
Petrograd was $95,000, and that of the National Physical
Laboratory in England (not exclusively devoted to research) was
$40,000. Yet these are among the most famous research
institutions in the world and have achieved results of
world-wide fame and inestimable value both from a financial
standpoint and from the standpoint of the physical, moral and
spiritual welfare of mankind.

In 1856, Perkin, an English chemist, discovered the coal-tar
(anilin) dyes. The cost of this investigation, which was
carried out in an improvised, private laboratory was
negligible. Yet, in 1905, the United States imported $5,635,164
worth of these dyes from Europe, and Germany exported
$24,065,500 worth to all parts of the world.[5] To-day we read
that great industries in this country are paralyzed because
these dyes temporarily can not be imported from Germany. All of
these vast results sprang from a modest little laboratory, a
meager equipment and the genius and patience of one man.

[5] U. S. Census Bureau Bull. 92.

W. R. Whitney, director of the research laboratory of the
General Electric Company, points out that the collective
improvements in the manufacture of filaments for electric
lamps, from 1901 to 1911, have saved the consumer and producer
no less than $240,000,000 annually. He adds with apparently
unconscious naivete that the expenses of the research
laboratory in his charge aggregate more than $100,000
annually![6] A handsome investment, this, which brings in some
two hundred million for an outlay of one hundred thousand.

[6] "Technology and Industrial Efficiency," McGraw-Hill Book
Co., 1911.

According to Huxley the discovery by Pasteur of the means of
preventing or curing anthrax, silkworm disease and chicken
cholera, a fraction of that great man's life work, added
annually to the wealth of France a sum equivalent to the entire
indemnity paid by France to Germany after the war of 1870.

Humanity has not finished its conquest of nature; on the
contrary, it has barely begun. The discipline of thought which
has carried humanity so far is destined to carry it further
yet. Business enterprise and politics, the all-absorbing
interests of the majority of mankind, work in an endless
circle. Scientific research communicates a thrust to this
rotation which converts the circle into a spiral; the apex of
that spiral lies far beyond our vision. We have, not decades,
not centuries, not thousands of years before us; but, as
astronomy assures us, in all probability, humanity has millions
of years of earthly destiny to realize. Barely three thousand
years of PURPOSEFUL scientific research have brought the
uttermost ends of the earth to our doors; have made
civilization and excluded much of the most brutal and
brutalizing in life. Not more than two hundred years of
research have made us masters where we were slaves; masters of
distance, of the air, of the water, of the bowels of the earth,
of many of the most dreaded aspects of disease and suffering.
Only for forty years have we practiced antisepsis; only for
sixty years have we had anesthetics; yet life to-day is
well-nigh inconceivable without them. And all of this has been
accomplished without any forethought on the part of the
acknowledged rulers and leaders of mankind or any save the most
trumpery and uncertain provision for research. What will the
millions of years which stretch in front of us bring of power
to mankind? We can barely foreshadow things too vast to grasp;
things that will make the imaginings of Jules Verne and H. G.
Wells seem puny by comparison. The future, with the uncanny
control which it will bring over things that seem to us almost
sacred--over life and death and development and thought
itself--might well seem to us a terrifying prospect were it not
for one great saving clause. Through all that may happen to
man, of this we may be sure, that he will remain human; and
because of that we can face the future unafraid and confident
that because it will be greater, it will also be better than
the present.

What can we do to accelerate the coming of this future? Not
very much, it is true, but we can surely do something. We can
not create geniuses, often we can not discern them, but having
discerned, surely we can use them to the best advantage. It is
true that all scientific research has depended and will depend
upon individuals; Simon Newcomb expresses the matter thus:

'It is impressive to think how few men we should have to remove
from the earth during the past three centuries to have stopped
the advance of our civilization. In the seventeenth century
there would only have been Galileo, Newton and a few other
contemporaries, in the eighteenth they could almost have been
counted on the fingers, and they have not crowded the
nineteenth.'[7]

[7] "Inventors at Work," Iles, Doubleday Page, 1906.

The first thing we have to do is to discover such men, to learn
to know them or suspect them when we meet them or their works.
The next is to give them moral and financial recognition, and
the means of doing their work. Our procedure in the past has
been the reverse of this. I quote from a letter of Kepler to
his friend Moestlen:

'I supplicate you, if there is a situation vacant at Tubingen,
do what you can to obtain it for me, and let me know the prices
of bread, wine and other necessaries of life, for my wife is
not accustomed to live on beans.'

The founder of comparative psychology, J. H. Fabre, that
"incomparable observer" as Darwin characterized him, is now
over ninety years of age, and until very recently was actually
suffering from poverty. All his life his work was stunted and
crippled by poverty, and countless researches which he was the
one human being qualified by genius and experience to
undertake, remain to this day unperformed because he never
could command the meager necessary equipment of apparatus.

Once again, what can we do?

No small proportion of the population of a modern community are
alumni of some institution of higher learning, and one thing
that these can do is to see to it by every means in their power
that some measure of the spirit of academic freedom is
preserved in their alma mater. That the spirit of inquiry and
research is not merely tolerated therein but fostered and
substantially supported, morally and financially.

As members of the body politic, we can assist the development
of science in two ways. Firstly, by doing each our individual
part towards ensuring that endowment for the university must
provide not only for "teaching adolescents the rudiments of
Greek and Latin" and erecting imposing buildings, but also for
the furtherance of scientific research. The public readily
appreciates a great educational mill for the manufacture of
mediocre learning, and it always appreciates a showy building,
but it is slow to realize that that which urgently and at all
times needs endowment is experimental research.

Secondly, it is vital that public sentiment should be educated
to the point of providing the legal machinery whereby some
proportion, no matter how small, of the wealth which science
pours into the lap of the community, shall return automatically
to the support and expansion of scientific research. The
collection of a tax upon the profits accruing from inventions
(which are all ultimately if indirectly results of scientific
advances) and the devotion of the proceeds from this tax to the
furtherance of research would not only be a policy of wisdom in
the most material sense, but it would also be a policy of bare
justice.

THE PHYSICAL MICHELANGELO

BY JAMES FREDERICK ROGERS, M.D.

NEW HAVEN, CONN.

You will say that I am old and mad, but I answer that there is
no better way of keeping sane and free from anxiety than by
being mad.

HAD Michelangelo been less poetic and more explicit in his
language, he might have said there is nothing so conducive to
mental and physical wholeness as saturation of body and mind
with work. The great artist was so prone to over-anxiety and
met (whether needlessly or not) with so many rebuffs and
disappointments, that only constant absorption in manual labor
prevented spirit from fretting itself free from flesh. He
toiled "furiously" in all his mighty undertakings and body and
mind remained one and in superior harmony--in abundant
health--for nearly four score and ten years.

This Titan got his start in life in the rugged country three
miles outside Florence: a place of quarries, where stone
cutters and sculptors lived and worked. His mother's health was
failing and it was to the wife of one of these artisans that
her baby was given to nurse. Half in jest, half in earnest,
Michelangelo said one day to Vasari:

'If I have anything good in me, that comes from my birth in the
pure air of your country of Arezzo, and perhaps also from the
feet that with the milk of my nurse, I sucked in the chisels
and hammers wherewith I make my figures.'

He began his serious study of art (and with it his course in
"physical training") at fourteen, when he became apprenticed to
a painter. He was not vigorous as a child, but his bodily
powers unfolded and were intensified through their active
expression of his imagination.

His life was devoted with passion to art. He had from the start
no time for frivolity. Art became his religion--and required of
him the sacrifice of all that might keep him below his highest
level of power for work. His father early warned him to have a
care for his health, "for," said he, "in your profession, if
once you were to fall ill you would be a ruined man." To one so
intent on perfection and so keenly alive to imperfection such
advice must have been nearly superfluous, for the artist could
not but observe the effect upon his work of any depression of
his bodily well-being. He was, besides, too thrifty in all
respects to think of lapsing into bodily neglect or abuse. He
was severely temperate, but not ascetic, save in those times
when devotion to work caused him to sleep with his clothes on,
that he might not lose time in seizing the chisel when he
awoke. He ate to live and to labor, and was pleased with a
present of "fifteen marzolino cheeses and fourteen pounds of
sausage--the latter very welcome, as was also the cheese." Over
a gift of choice wines he is not so enthusiastic and the
bottles found their way mostly to the tables of his friends and
patrons. When intent on some work he usually "confined his diet
to a piece of bread which he ate in the middle of his labors."
Few hours (we have no accurate statement in the matter) were
devoted to sleep. He ate comparatively little because he worked
better: he slept less than many men because he worked better in
consequence. Partly for protection against cold, partly perhaps
for economy of time, he sometimes left his high dog-skin boots
on for so long that when he removed them the scarf skin came
away like the skin of a moulting serpent.

He dressed for comfort and not to mortify the flesh. Upon the
receipt of a present of some shirts from his nephew he writes:

'I am very much surprised ye should have sent them to me, for
they are so coarse that there is not a farm laborer here who
would not be ashamed to wear them.'

He is much pleased with a finer lot selected later by his
nephew's new wife. Perhaps he did not come up to modern notions
of cleanliness (he was early advised by his father never to
bathe but to have his body rubbed instead) but he was clean
inside, which can not be said of all who make much of a
well-washed skin.

His intensity of purpose and fiery energy expressed themselves
in his features and form. "His face was round, his brow square,
ample," and deeply furrowed: "the temples projected much beyond
the ears"; his eyes were "small rather than large," of a dark
(some said horn) color and peered, piercingly, from under heavy
brows. The flattened nose was the result of a blow from a rival
apprentice. He evidently looked the part, though for such
mental powers one of his colossal statues would seem a more
fitting mold.

Michelangelo experienced some illnesses, all but two of them of
minor moment. In 1531 he "became alarmingly ill, and the Pope
ordered him to quit most of his work and to take better care of
his health." That the illness was a storm merely of the surface
is evidenced sufficiently in that his fresco of the "Last
Judgment," probably the most famous single picture in the
world, was begun years later and completed in his sixty-sixth
year. In the work of this epoch there is more than ever the
evidence of a pouring forth of energy amounting almost to what
the critics call violence--to terribleness of action. It was
not until the age of seventy that an illness which seemed to
mark any weakening of his bodily powers came upon him. At
seventy-five, symptoms of calculus (a disease common in that
day at fifty) appeared, but, though naturally pessimistic, he
writes, "In all other respects I am pretty much as I was at
thirty years." He improved under careful medical treatment, but
the illness and his age were sufficient to cause him to "think
of putting his spiritual and temporal affairs in better order
than he had hitherto done."

He wielded the brush and the chisel with consummate skill in
his seventy-fifth year. With the later loss of cunning his
energy found vent more in the planning and supervising of
architectural works, culminating in the building of St.
Peter's, but even in these later years he took up the chisel as
an outlet for superfluous energy and to induce sleep. Though
the product of his hand was not good, his health was the better
for this mutual exercise of mind and body. In his eighty-sixth
year he is said to have sat drawing for three consecutive hours
until pains and cramps in his limbs warned him that he had not
the endurance of youth. For exercise, when manual labor proved
a disappointment, he often took horseback rides. There was no
invalidism about this great spirit, and it was not until the
day before his death that he would consent to go to bed.

In a poem of his last years he burlesques his infirmities in
his usual vigorous manner.

'I live alone and wretched, confined like the pith within the
bark of the tree.... My voice is like a wasp imprisoned within
a sack of skin and bone. ... My teeth rattle like the keys of
an old musical instrument.... My face is a scarecrow.... There
is a ceaseless buzzing in my ears--in one a spider spins his
web, in the other a cricket chirps all night.... My catarrh,
which causes a rattle in my throat, will not allow me to
sleep.--Fatigue has quite broken me, and the hostlery which
awaits me is Death.'

Few men at his age have had less reason to find in themselves
other than the changes to be expected with the passing of years
and in prose he acknowledged that he had no more affections of
the flesh than were to be expected at his age. Codiva pictures
him in his last years as "of good complexion; more muscular and
bony than fat or fleshy in his person: healthy above all
things, as well by reason of his natural constitution as of the
exercise he takes, and habitual continence in food and sexual
indulgence." His temperance and manual industry and his
"extraordinary blamelessness in life and in every action" had
been his source of preservation. He was miserly, suspicious,
quarrelsome and pessimistic, but the effects of these faults
were balanced by his better habits of thought and action. That
he, like most great men, felt keenly the value of health, is
evidenced not only by his own practice, but by his oft repeated
warnings to his nephew when choosing a wife to see that
whatever other qualities she might have she be healthy. The
blemish of nearsight he considered a no small defect and
sufficient to render a young woman unworthy of entry into the
proud family of the Buonarroti. To his own father he wrote:
"Look to your life and health, for a man does not come back
again to patch up things ill done."

One of those who look beneath unusual human phenomena for signs
of the pathologic finds Michelangelo "affected by a degree of
neuropathy bordering closely upon hysterical disease." What a
pity that more of us do not suffer from such degrees of
neuropathy--and how much better for most of us if we had such
enthusiasm for perfection, and such mania for work, at least of
that health-bringing sort in which there is absorbing colabor
of brain and hand. True it is that "there is no better way of
keeping sane and free from anxiety than by being mad."

THE CONSERVATION OF TALENT THROUGH UTILIZATION

BY PROFESSOR JOHN M. GILLETTE

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH DAKOTA

TO raise the question of how to conserve talent is not an idle
inquiry. We are in no immediate danger of famine. Yet there is
an enormous interest being devoted to what is known as the
conservation of soil. Our forests contain an abundance of
timber for near purposes, and when they are gone we shall
probably find a better substitute in the direction of concrete.
Still agitation and discussion proceed relative to the
conservation of our timber supply. We hear of conservation of
childhood, of conservation of health, of conservation of
natural scenery. It is a period of agitation for conservation
of resources all along the line. This is all good. Real
intelligent foresight is manifesting itself. Civilized man
demonstrates his superiority over uncivilized man most in the
exercise of anticipation and prescience.

As compared with other natural resources, genius and talent are
relatively scarce articles. This is at least the popular
impression as to their quantity. Even scientific men, for the
most part, incline to this opinion. Unless we are able to
demonstrate that they are quite abundant this opinion must be
accepted. I shall seek to show that the estimate of the amount
of talent in existence which is usually accepted is too small.
However, we are in no peril of so inflating the potential
supply of talent and genius in the course of our remarks that
they may be regarded as universal. Nor are we likely to
discover such a rich lode of this commodity that the world may
run riot in its consumption of the visible supply. Talent
promises to remain so scarce that, granting for the moment that
it is a useful agent, its supply must be conserved.

I shall use the term talent so as to include genius. Both
talent and genius are of the same kind. Their essential
difference consists in degree. Increase what is commonly called
talent in the direction of its manifestation and it would
develop into genius. Genius is commonly thought of as something
abnormal, in the sense that it is essentially eccentric. A
genius is generally spoken of as an eccentric, erratic,
unbalanced, person. The eccentricity is then taken as
constituting the substance of the quality of genius. This is
undoubtedly a mistake. Because some geniuses have been erratic,
the popular imagination has formed its picture of all genius as
unbalanced. The majority of the world's men of genius have been
as balanced and normal in their judgments as the average man.
We may think of a genius as like the ordinary man in his
constitution. He has the same mental faculties, the same
emotions, the same kind of determinizing ability. What makes
him a genius is his power of concentration in his given field
of work. The moral quality, or zeal to accomplish, or energy
directed toward intellectual operations stands enormously above
that of the average individual. If we could confer this quality
of moral will on the common normal man possibly we would raise
him to that degree which we term genius.

In order to determine the worth of conserving talent we must
estimate its value as a commodity, as a world asset. I shall,
therefore, turn my attention first to discovering a method of
reckoning the value of eminent men.

One method open to us is what may be called the individualistic
test. Under this method we think of the individual as
individual or of his work as a concrete case of production. One
phase of this is the individual's estimate of his own powers.
We may inquire what is the man's appreciation of his own worth.
This is precarious because of two difficulties. There is an
egotistical element in individuals. It is inherent as a
historical agent of self-preservation. Most of us are like
primitive groups. The ethnologist expects to find every tribe
or horde of savages claiming to be THE PEOPLE. They ascribe
superior qualities to their group. In their names for their
group they call themselves the people, the men, and so on,
indicating their point of view.

Again, an individual, however honestly he might try, could not
estimate his own worth accurately. Let any of us attempt to see
ourselves as others see us and we shall discover the difficulty
of the undertaking. We are not able to get the perspective
because our personal feelings, our necessary selfish
self-appreciation, puts our judgments awry. Others close to us
may do little better. They are likely to either underrate us or
to exaggerate our qualities and powers. In the United States we
are called on to evaluate Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt. Is either
of them a great man? Has either of them been a great president?
Opinions differ. We are too close to them. We do not know. We
give them credit, perhaps, for doing things which the age would
have worked out in spite of them. Or we think things would have
come inevitably which their personal efforts, it will be found,
were responsible for establishing. We have not yet been able to
determine accurately just how great Abraham Lincoln was. It is
almost half a century since he did his work. But we live in the
presence of the personal relative to him yet. Sentiment enters
in and obfuscates judgment.

If we turn to the product itself as mere product we are at a
loss. Unless we ask what is the import of the work we confess
we do not know. A man in Connecticut has made a manikin. It
walks, talks, does many of the things which human beings do.
But it is not alive, it is not serviceable, it can accomplish
nothing. Suppose the maker passes his life in making probably
the most intricate and perfect mechanism which has been made.
Is he a genius? We may admit that the products manifest great
ingenuity on the part of their creator, yet we feel repelled
when we think of calling the maker a genius.

The community method of rating talent is far more satisfactory.
The inventor is related to his time or to human society by
means of the usefulness of his invention. The statesman is
rated by means of the deep-seated influence for improvement he
has had on his age. The educator finds his evaluation in the
constructive spirit and method he displays in bringing useful
spirit and methods to light. The scientist is measured by the
uplift his discovery gives to the sum and substance of human
welfare. If a product which some individual creates can not be
utilized by society, its creator is not regarded as having made
a contribution to human progress. As a consequence he does not
get a rating as genius. To get the appraisal of mankind the
product of the man of talent must get generally accepted, must
fill the want of society generally or of some clientele. If a
man produces something merely ingenious, something which does
not serve a considerable portion of humanity in the way of
satisfying a want, if his creation does not pass into use, he
does not step into the current of the world's history as a
fruitful factor, he fails to attain to the rank of talent.

This objective measure of the value of the producer puts talent
into direct relation to the concept of social evolution and
progress. Society has been an evolution. Collective humanity
has gone through distinctive metamorphoses. Distinct strides in
advance have been made, tendencies have manifested themselves,
conditions have changed so that larger satisfactions have
ensued, democracy in the essential wants of mankind has been
wrought out. Society is more complex in its quantitative
aspect. It is more serviceable by reason of its greater
specialization. Since progress stands for improvement it has
come to be regarded as a desirable thing.

In the sociological conception of things the genius possesses a
specific social function. He is not a passing curiosity. He is
not produced for amusement. He does not stand unrelated. He is
the product of his age, is articulated with its life, performs
an office which is of consequence to it. He is the connecting
link between the past and the future. He takes what was and so
combines it anew as to produce what is to be. He is the
innovator, the initiator, the agent of transformation, the
creator of a new order. Hence he is the exceptional man. The
masses of men are imitators. They make nothing new, add nothing
to the mechanism of social structure, introduce no new
functions, produce no achievements, do nothing which changes
the order of things. The common people are quite as important
for the purposes of society as are the talented. Society must
be conserved most of the time or we should all float down the
stream of change too rapidly for comfort. Hence the function of
the great mass of individuals is to seize and use the
achievements which the creators, the talented have brought into
existence. We may conclude, therefore, that if society is to be
improved and if the lives of the great body of human beings are
to be endowed with more and more blessings, material and
spiritual, we must look to the men of talent, the men of
achievement, and to them 'alone, for the initiation of these
results.

We may say, then, that we have discovered not only the method
of estimating the value of talent, but also in what its value
consists. If progress is desirable, talent by means of which
that progress is secured is likewise valuable. And, like other
things, its value is measured by its scarcity. It is now
incumbent on us to attempt to discover the extent of the supply
of this commodity, both actual and possible.

I shall refer to two estimates of the amount of talent in
existence which have been made because they differ so much in
their conclusions as to the extent of talent, and because they
exhibit quite different view-points and methods.

The great English scientist and benefactor of the race, Sir
Francis Galton, in his work entitled "Hereditary Genius" made a
computation of the number of men of eminence in the British
Isles. This estimate was made nearly a half-century ago and has
generally been accepted as representing actual conditions. One
means of discovering the number was by taking a catalogue of
"Men of The Times" which contained about 2,500 names, one half
of which were Americans and Europeans. He found that most of
the men were past fifty years of age. Relative to this he
states:

'It appears that in the cases of high (but by no means in that
of the highest) merit, a man must outlive the age of fifty to
be sure of being widely appreciated. It takes time for an able
man, born in the humbler ranks of life, to emerge from them and
to take his natural position.'[1]

[1] Cattell's investigations of American men of science
disproves this statement for Americans. He finds that only a
few men enter the ranks of that class of men after the age of
fifty, and that none of that age reach the highest place. The
fecund age is from 35 to 45; ("American Men of Science," p.
575.)

After eliminating the non-British individuals he compared the
number of celebrities above fifty with males of the same age
for the whole British population. He found about 850 who were
above fifty. Of this age there were about 2,000,000 males in
the British Isles. Hence the meritorious were as 425 to
1,000,000, and the more select were as 250 to 1,000,000. He
stated what he considered the qualifications of the more select
as follows:

'The qualifications for belonging to what I call the more
select part are, in my mind, that a man should have
distinguished himself pretty frequently either by purely
original work, or as a leader of opinion. I wholly exclude
notoriety obtained by a single act. This is a fairly well
defined line, because there is not room for many men to become
eminent.'

Mr. Galton made another estimate by studying an obituary list
published in The Times in 1868. This contained 50 men of the
select class. He considered it broader than his former estimate
because it excluded men dying before they attained their
broadest reputation, and more rigorous because it excluded old
men who had previously attained a reputation which they were
not able to sustain. He consequently lowered the age to 45. In
Great Britain there were 210,000 males who died yearly of that
age. This gave a result of 50 men of exceptional merit to
210,000 of the population, or 238 to the million.

His third estimate was made by the study of obituaries of many
years back. This led to similar conclusions, namely, that about
250 to the million is an ample estimate of the number of
eminent men. He says:

'When I speak of an eminent man, I mean one who has achieved a
position that is attained by only 250 persons in each million
of men, or by one person in each 4,000.'

The other estimate of the amount of talent in existence has
been made by one of our most eminent American sociologists, the
late Lester F. Ward. The elaborate treatment of this matter is
found in his "Applied Sociology," and offers an illustration of
a most rigorous and thorough application of the scientific
method to the subject in question. The essential facts for the
study were furnished by Odin in his work on the genesis of the
literary men of France, although Candole, Jacoby and others are
laid under contribution for data. Maps, tables and diagrams are
used whenever they can be made to secure results. Odin's study
covered the period of over five hundred years of France and
French regions, or from 1300 to 1825. Out of over thirteen
thousand literary names he chose some 6,200 as representing men
of genius, talent or merit, the former constituting much the
smaller and the latter much the larger of the total number.

The object of Ward's investigation is to discover the factor or
factors in the situation which are responsible for the
production of genius. In the course of examination it was seen
that certain communities were very much more prolific than
others in producing talent. Paris, for instance, produced 123
per 100,000; Geneva, Switzerland, 196; certain chateaux as many
as 200, and some communities none at all or very few. After
considering the various factors which account for the high rate
in certain localities and the low rate or absence of merit in
others the conclusion is reached that we should expect the
presence of the meritorious class generally in even greater
numbers than it has existed in the most fruitful regions of the
French people.

Mr. Ward's studies have led him to conclude that talent is
latent in society, that it exists in greater abundance than we
have ever dared to expect, that all classes possess it equally
and would manifest it equally if obstacles were removed or
opportunities offered for its development. Education is the key
to the situation in his estimation. It affords the opportunity
which latent talent requires for its promotion, and if this
were intelligently applied to all classes and to both sexes
alike instead of securing one man of talent for each 4,000
persons as Mr. Galton held, we would be able to mature one for
every 500 of our population. This would represent an
eight-hundred-per-cent. increase of the talented class, an
eight-fold multiplication. It is an estimate of not the number
of the talented who are known to be such, but of society's
potential or latent talent.[2]

[2] Investigations made on school children by the Binet test
indicate Ward's estimate is conservative. It has been found
that from two to three out of every hundred children are of
exceptional ability, thus belonging to the talented, or at
least merit class.

Because these estimates are so divergent, it may be worth while
to consider the reason for the difference. And in taking this
up we come to the fundamentally distinct point of view of the
two investigators. Mr. Galton's work is an illustration of the
view which regards talent as a product of the hereditary
factors. Mr. Galton believed that heredity accounts for talent
and that it is so dominant in the lives of the talented that it
is bound to express itself as talent. In his estimation there
is no such thing as latent genius, because it is in the nature
of genius that it surmounts all obstacles. He says:

'By natural ability, I mean those qualities of intellect and
disposition, which urge and qualify a man to perform acts which
lead to reputation. I do not mean capacity without zeal, nor
zeal without capacity, nor even a combination of both of them,
without an adequate power of doing a great deal of very
laborious work. But I mean a nature which, when left to itself,
will, urged by an inherent stimulus, climb the path that leads
to eminence, and has strength to reach the summit--one which,
if hindered or thwarted, will fret and strive until the
hindrance is overcome, and it is again free to follow its
labor-saving instinct.'[2]

[3] "Hereditary Genius," pp. 37-8.

This in reality amounts to saying that the genius is
omnipotent. Nothing can prevent the development of the genius.
He is master of all difficulties by the very fact that he is a
genius. It is also equivalent, by implication, to saying that
obstacles can have no qualifying effect on the course of such
an individual. A great difficulty is no more to him than a
small one. Hence no matter in what circumstances he lives he is
always bound to gain the maximum of his development. He could
not be either greater or less than he is, notwithstanding the
force of circumstances, whether obstructive or propitious. The
energy of a genius is thus differentiated from all other forms
of energy. Other forms of energy are modified in their course
and effects by preventing obstacles. Add to or subtract from
the impediments and the effect of the energy is changed by the
amount of the impediments. But this doctrine completely
emancipates human energy, when manifested in the form of
genius, from the working of the law of cause and effect.

It is especially noteworthy that it is not what we should
expect in view of the place and function of the environment in
the course of evolution. To say the least environment enjoys a
very respectable influence in selecting and directing the
forces of development. Some men have gone so far as to make the
external factors account for everything in society. Discounting
this claim, the minimum biological statement is that the
environment exercises a selective function relative to organic
forms and variations. It opposes itself to the transmission
strain, and if unfavorable to it, may eliminate it entirely. To
be able to accomplish this it must be regarded as having an
influence on all forms. And as there are all grades of
environment from the most unfavorable to the most propitious,
similarly constituted organisms living in those various
environments must perforce fare differently, some being
hindered others being promoted in varying degrees. That is,
should the most able by birth appear in the most unfavorable
environment they could not be expected to make the same gains
in life as similar congenitally able who appear in the most
favorable conditions.

Mr. Ward, on the contrary, holds that genius, like all other
forms of human ability, is the product of circumstances. It is
determined in its raw form by heredity, to be sure. In similar
circumstances it will affect more than the average man. But
like all other forms of energy it is subject to the law of
causality. It is not omnipotent so that it is able to set at
naught the effects of opposing forces. Nor can it develop in
the absence of nourishing circumstances. Deprive it of cultural
opportunities and it is like the sprout of the majestic tree
which is deprived of moisture, or the great river cut off from
the supply of snow and rain. In other words, it is a product of
all the factors at work in its being and environment, and the
internal can not manifest itself or its powers without the
presence of the external. Modify the external factors to a
perceptible degree and the individual is modified to the same
degree.

In seeking to find the factors which are accountable for the
development of talent Mr. Ward takes into consideration those
of the physical environment, the ethnological, the religious,
the local, the economic, the social, and the educational. Each
one of these items is given a searching examination as to its
force. I shall briefly deal with each of these in turn, giving
the import of the findings in each case and as many of the
basic facts as possible in a small space.

By a consideration of French regions by departments, provinces,
and principal sections, as to their yield of talent, the
physical environment was found to have had no perceptible
influence. The mountain-situated Geneva and the lowland Paris
produced alike prolifically talented men. The valley of the
Seine and that of the Loire competed for hegemony in fecundity.
The facts contradicted the highland theory, the lowland theory,
the coast theory, and every other theory of the dominance of
physical environment.

To get at the influence of the ethnological factor the Gaulic,
Cimbrian, Iberian, Ligurian and Belgic elements of the
population were examined as to their fecundity in talent. Odin
confesses to being unable to discover "the least connection
between races and fecundity in men of letters." Attention was
paid likewise to races speaking other than French language.
Again there was a conflict of facts. Inside of France
ethnological elements exerted "no appreciable influence upon
literary productivity." In Belgium and Lorraine, where the
German language dominated, it was found that French literature
mastered the situation, thus indicating that a common language
does not necessitate a common literature. The conclusion
ethnologically is that races possess an equality in yielding
talent.

The religious factor was found to have been more influential
formerly in bringing to light talent than at the close of the
five-hundred-year period. From 1300 to 1700 the church
furnished on the average 37.8 per cent. of all literary talent.
Its fecundity dropped to 29 in the period from 1700 to 1750.
Between 1750 and 1825 it produced but 6.5 of the talent. As
Galton has shown, eminent men were killed or driven out during
the period of religious persecution in Spain, France and Italy.
The celibacy of the clergy which gave undisturbed leisure may
have been an element in making the church productive in the
earlier years. On the other hand, the quieting effect of family
life of the protestant ministry seems to have had a propitious
influence in later times, as there appeared a relative increase
among protestant clergy of talent, while the output among the
catholic clergy continued to decline.

In this investigation the local environment appeared to have
the most influence in the production of talent. Odin gave
witness to having a suspicion that somewhere there was a
neglected factor. The facts connected talent with the cities in
an overwhelming manner. The statement that genius is the
product of the rural regions seems to have had no legs to stand
on. The majority of the talented were born in the cities and
practically all of them were connected with city life.

In proportion to population the cities produced 12.77, almost
thirteen times as many men of talent as rural regions. The
whole of France produced 6,382, the number selected by Odin as
the more meritorious of the men of letters. If all France had
been as productive as Paris it would have yielded 53,640; if as
fecund as the other chief cities, it would have produced
22,060; but if only as fertile as the country the number would
have fallen to 1,522.

It would seem that the matter of population has something to do
with the production of talent. Aggregations of population offer
frequent contact of persons, division of labor, competition
between individuals, a better coordination of society for
cooperative results, neutralization of physical qualities, and
the ascendancy of innovation over the conservative attitude. It
is not the mere density of population which is the effective
element. It is rather the dynamic density which is productive,
that is, the manifestation of the common life and spirit. City
life is specialized in structure and function, rendering men
more interdependent and cooperative. Specialization means moral
coalescence

The chateaux of France are very prolific in producing talent.
They yielded 2 per cent. of all the talent of the period,
seemingly out of proportion to their importance.

Why are certain of the cities and the chateaux more fertile
than most cities and the country in producing the talented? We
have a general reply in the statement as to the dynamic density
of cities. A further analysis finds those communities are
possessed of elements which the country does not have. Odin
calls them "properties." They are the location of the
political, administrative and judicial agencies of society;
they are in possession of great wealth and talent; they are
depositories of learning and the tools of information. The
avenues which open upon talent and the tools and agencies by
means of which the passage to it is to be made segregate
themselves in cities and towns

As the result of his investigation into the distribution of men
of science in the United States, Professor Cattell arrives at
nearly the same conclusion. He writes:

'The main factors in producing scientific and other forms of
intellectual performance seem to be density of population,
institutions and social traditions and ideals. All these may be
ultimately due to race, but, given the existing race, the
scientific productivity of the nation can be increased in
quantity, though not in quality, almost to the extent that we
wish to increase it.'[4]

[4] "American Men of Science," Second edition, p. 654.

It is interesting to note that nearly all of the women of
talent have been born in cities and chateaux. This means that
women had to be born where the means of development were to be
had, as they were not free to move about in society, as were
men.

Periods Rich Poor
1300-1500 24 1
1500-1550 39 4
1551-1600 42 --
1601-1650 84 5
1651-1700 73 4
1701-1725 36 3
1726-1750 53 7
1751-1775 86 8
1776-1800 52 12
1801-1825 73 11
---- ----
Total 562 57, or 9 per cent.

The economic factor has been an important one in offering the
leisure which is necessary for the development of talent. Men
who have to use their time and energy wholly in the support of
themselves and families are deprived of the leisure which
productivity and creativeness in work demands. Of the French
men of letters 35 per cent. belonged to the wealthy or noble
class, 42 per cent. to the middle class, and 23 per cent. to
the working class. Odin was able to discover the economic
environment of 619 men of talent. They were distributed by
periods between the rich and poor as shown in the table on page
169.

Of one hundred foreign associates of the French Academy the
membership of the wealthy, middle and working classes were 41,
52 and 7. A combination of two other of Candole's tables yields
for those classes in per cents 35, 42 and 23. In ancient and
medieval times practically all of the talented came from the
wealthy class. On the whole, but about one eleventh of the men
of talent had to fight with economic adversity. But when we
remember that the wealthy class formed but a small portion of
the population in each period, probably not more than one
fourth, this means that as compared with members of the working
class individuals of the wealthy class had forty or fifty times
as good a chance of rising to a position of eminence. The
contrast is so sharp that Odin is led to exclaim, "Genius is in
things, not in man."

The social and the economic factors are so closely intertwined
that the influence of the social environment is already seen in
treating the economic. The social deals with matter of classes
and callings. The upper classes are of course the wealthier
classes so that the social and economic measures largely agree.
In Mr. Galton's inquiry into the callings of English men of
science which he made in 1873, it appears that out of 96
investigated 9 were noblemen or gentlemen, 18 government
officials, 34 professional men, 43 business men, 2 farmers and
1 other. Unless the one other was a working man the workers
produced none of these 96 men of science. Odin's classification
of the French men of letters gives to the nobility 25.5 per
cent., to government officials 20.0, liberal professions 23.0,
bourgeoise 11.6, manual laborers 9.8. Only a little over one
fifth of the talented were produced by the two lower classes.
Yet in numerical weight those classes constituted 90 per cent.
of the population. Data from four other European countries show
very much the same results, except that the workers and
bourgeoise classes make a better showing. It is unquestionable,
therefore, that the opportunities for developing talent or
genius are largely withheld from the working class and bestowed
on the upper classes.

We have yet one other factor to treat in the production of
talent, namely, the educational. The facts relative to the
education of the talented contradicts the assumption usually
made that genius depends on education and opportunity for none
of its success, but rises to its heights in spite of or without
them.

Of 827 men of talent (not merit class) Odin was able to
investigate as to their education he found that only 1.8 per
cent. had no education or a poor education, while 98.2 per
cent. had a good education. This number investigated was 73 per
cent. of all men of that class, and it is fair to assume that
about the same proportion of educated existed in the other 27
per cent. whose education was not known. Of the 16 of poor or
no education 13 were born in Paris, other large cities, or
chateaux, and three in other localities. Thus they had the
opportunities presented by the cities. Facts as to talented men
in Spain, Italy, England and Germany indicate that anywhere
from 92 to 98 per cent. have been highly educated, and probably
the latter per cent. is correct.

These figures can have but one meaning. They indicate that
talent and genius are dependent on educational and conventional
agencies of the cultural kind, as are other human beings for
their evolution. Otherwise we should expect the figures to be
reversed. If education and cultural opportunities count for
naught, then we should expect that, at a time when education
was by no means universal, the 90 or 98 per cent. Of genius
would mount on their eagle wings and soar to the summits of
eminence, clearing completely the conventional educational
devices which society had established.

Our conclusion, therefore, is that social and economic
opportunities afford the leisure as well as cultural advantages
for the improvement of talent; that the local environment is of
vital importance, offering as it does the cultural advantages
of cities of certain kinds and of chateaux, and that of the
local environment the educational facilities are of the
supremest importance. Consequently, it appears that Mr. Ward's
estimate of one person of talent to the 500 instead of Mr.
Galton's estimate of one to the 4,000 does not seem strained.
Produce in society generally the opportunities and advantages
which Geneva, Paris and the chateaux possessed and which gave
them their great fecundity in talent, and all regions and
places will yield up their potential or latent genius to
development and the ratio will be obtained.

This position is likely to be criticized, unless it is
remembered that we admit that there is a hereditary difference
at birth, and that all we seek to establish is that, given
these differences, what conditions are likely to mature and
develop the men of born talent. Thus after the appearance of my
"Vocational Education" I received a letter from Professor
Eugene Davenport in which he makes this statement:

'Ward's arguments as here employed seem to show that
environment is a powerful factor in bringing out talent even to
the exclusion of heredity. I doubt if you would care to be
understood to this limit, and yet where you enumerate on page
61 the reasons why certain cities are fecund in respective
talents, you seem to have overlooked the fact that if these
cities have been for many generations centers of talent to such
an extent as to provide exceptional environmental influences,
the same conditions would also provide exceptional parentage,
so that the birthrate of talent would be much higher in such a
region than the normal. In other words, the very same
conditions which would provide exceptional opportunities for
development also and at the same time provide an exceptional
birth condition. This is the rock on which very many arguments
tending to compare heredity and environment wreck
themselves.'[5]

[5] This is a criticism that needs to be met. Mr. George R.
Davies of this institution has submitted facts in a paper which
appeared in the March number of the Quarterly Journal of the
University of North Dakota, which fills in the gap. He shows
relative to American cities that there has been little or no
segregation of talented parentage.

We have arrived at a point where we are able to consider the
question of the conservation of talent. A position of advantage
has been gained from which to view this question. For we have
seen that talent has a decidedly important and indispensable
social function to perform. It is the creative and contributive
agency, the cause of achievement, and a vital factor in
progress. Its conservation is consequently devoutly to be
desired. We have also discovered the fact that, while a rare
commodity, it is present in society in a larger measure than we
have commonly believed. If progress is desirable in a measure
it is likely to be desirable in a large measure. If talent is
able to carry us forward at a certain rate with the development
of a minimum of the quantity that is in existence we should be
able to greatly accelerate our progress if all that is latent
could be developed and put into active operation. Further, we
have obtained some insight into the conditions which favor the
development of talent and likewise some of the obstacles to its
manifestation. If it abounds where certain conditions are
present in the situation and fails to appear where those
conditions are absent, we have a fertile suggestion as to the
method of social control and direction which will bring the
latent talent to fertility.

We must undoubtedly hold that if a larger supply of talent
exists than is discovered, developed and put to use that,
since, as we have seen, it is so valuable when estimated in
terms of social progress, we are dealing wastefully with
talent. We are allowing great ability to go to waste since we
are leaving it lie in its undeveloped form. Therefore one of
the problems of the proper conservation of talent consists in
finding a method of discovering and releasing this valuable
form of social energy.

When we come to inquire how this may be done, how this
discovery is to take place, we must take for our guide the
facts which were found to bear on the maturing of talent in the
above studies. We discovered that the local environment seemed
to contain the influential element in bringing forth talent.
When that local environment was analyzed it turned out that the
items of opportunity for leisure and the facilities for
education were the most fruitful factors. Leisure is absolutely
essential to afford that opportunity for self-development which
is required even of the most talented. This can only be had
when the income of the individual is sufficient to give him a
considerable part of his active time for carrying out his
intellectual aspirations. We have great numbers of people whom
we have reason to believe are as able on the average, have as
large a proportion of talent as the well-to-do, whose poverty
is so crushing and whose days of toil are so long and so
consuming of energy that the element of leisure is lacking. It
is only an occasional individual of this class of people who is
able to secure the wealth which means a measure of leisure by
which he is able to mount out of obscurity. An improvement in
the physical conditions of life of these people, together with
an increase in their economic possibilities is a necessary
means to the proper conservation of the talent of this group.

The cultural factor is one which must be made more omnipresent
than it is now before we shall be able to awake the latent
talent of the masses of people. There are certain sections of
all nations, and more especially of such nations as the United
States, where the population is widely scattered over vast
areas of farming regions in which the opportunities for
education and stimulative enterprises and institutions are
lacking or meager. The same is true of very large sections of
the populations of the cities. In both cases large
neighborhoods exist in which the lives of the people move in a
humdrum rut, never disturbed by matters which arouse the
creative element in human nature. Especially is this important
in the early years of life where the outlook for the whole
future of the individual is so strongly stamped. To come into
contact with no stimulus and arousing agent in the home, or the
neighborhood in the earliest years is to become settled into a
life-long habit of inert dullness.

When we revert to the schools which so generally abound, we
fail to find the stimulating element in them which might be
regarded as the necessary opportunity to develop talent. The
vast majority of elementary teachers are persons whose
intellectual natures have never been aroused. Their imaginative
and sympathetic capacities lie undeveloped. Their work in the
school is conducted on the basis of memory. It is parrot work
and ends in making parrots of the pupils. The rational and
causal as agencies in education are hardly ever appealed to.
Until our teaching force is itself developed in the directions
and capacities which alone characterize the intellectual we can
not hope for much in the way of recovering the rich field of
latent talent from its infertility.

Something remains to be said about the proper utilization of
talent which has been developed. Did all genius depend on the
hereditary factor and consequently we had developed all
individuals possessing exceptional ability into contributors
and creators, the question of their complete utilization by
society remains. That all able men and women are working at the
exact thing and in the exact place and under the exact methods
which will yield the greatest and most fruitful results for
society only the superficial could believe. Herbert Spencer
used up a very large part of his superb ability during the
larger portion of his life in the drudgery of making a living.
The work of the national eugenics laboratory of England is
carried on by a man of great talent, Professor Carl Pearson, in
cramped quarters and with insufficient equipment and support.
The enterprise is as important as any in England, that of
discovering the conditions and means of improving the human
race. The laboratory was built up in the first instance by the
sacrifice of Sir Francis Galton, and it is maintained by means
of the bequest of his personal fortune.

These are but instances of the many which exist where talented
individuals are working under great handicaps which neither
promote their talent nor secure fecundity of results to
collective man. In nearly every line of human endeavor gifted
individuals are consuming in an unnecessarily wasteful manner,
from the point of view of social improvement, their splendid
abilities. In educational institutions trained experts and
specialists are doing the work which very ordinary ability of a
merely clerical kind could conduct, sacrificing the higher and
more fruitful attainments thereby. I have known a faculty of
some forty members who were compelled to register the term
standings by sitting in a circle and calling off the grades of
several hundred students student by student and class by class
for each student as it came their turn, while a clerk recorded
the grades. The process consumed about ten hours per member
each term, or something over a thousand hours a year for the
whole faculty. Both economically and socially it was expensive
and wasteful because a cheap clerk could have done the whole
far better and have released the talent for productive
purposes.

We shall be wise when we realize the worth of our workable
talent and so establish its working conditions that it may
secure the full measure of its productiveness. If scientific
management for the mass of laborers of a nation is worth while
how much more serviceable would it be to extend its fructifying
influence to the most able members of the community.

But how to proceed in order to make the discovery of the latent
talent is the pressing problem. For a long time our methods
promise to be as empirical as are those we employ for the
advancement of science. Relative to the latter, after
enumerating a large list of conditions for promoting science of
which we are ignorant, Professor Cattell says:

'In the face of endless problems of this character we are as
empirical in our methods as the doctor of physic a hundred
years ago or the agricultural laborer to-day. It is surely time
for scientific men to apply scientific methods to determine the
circumstances that promote or hinder the advancement of
science.'[6]

[6] "American Men of Science," p. 565.

Since the discovery and utilization of genius and talent in
general are so closely related to the problem of the promotion
of science, his statement may be adopted to express the demand
existing in those directions.

WAR, BUSINESS AND INSURANCE[1]

[1] Chairman's address on Peace Day of the Insurance Congress,
Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, October
11, 1915.

BY CHANCELLOR DAVID STARR JORDAN

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

THE complications behind the war in Europe are very many,
ruthless exploitation, heartless and brainless diplomacy,
futile dreams of national expansion (the "Mirage of the Map"),
of national enrichment through the use of force (the "Great
Illusion"), and withal a widespread vulgar belief in
indemnities or highway robberies as a means of enriching a
nation.

All these would represent only the unavoidable collision,
unrest and ambition of human nature, were it not that every
element involved in it was armed to the teeth. "When blood is
their argument" in matters of business or politics, all
rational interests are imperilled. The gray old strategists to
whom the control of armament was assigned saw the nations
moving towards peaceful solution of their real and imaginary
difficulties. The young men of Europe had visions of a broader
world, one cleared of lies and hate and the poison of an
ingrowing patriotism. After a generation of doubt and pessimism
in which world progress seemed to end in a blind sack, there
was rising a vision of continental cooperation, a glimpse of
the time when science, always international, should also
internationalize the art of living.

Clearly the close season for war was near at hand. The old men
found means to bring it on and in so doing to exploit the
patriotism, enthusiasm, devotion and love of adventure of the
young men of the whole world.

The use of fear and force as an argument in politics or in
business--this is war. It is a futile argument because of
itself it settles nothing. Its conclusion bears no certain
relation to its initial aim. It must end where it should begin,
with an agreement among the parties concerned. War is only the
blind negation, the denial of all law, and only the recognition
of the supremacy of some law can bring war to an end. In time
of war all laws are silent as are all efforts for progress, for
justice, for the betterment of human kind. If history were
written truthfully every page in the story of war would be left
blank, or printed black, with only fine white letters in the
darkness to mark the efforts for humanity, which war can never
wholly suppress.

In this paper I propose to consider only economic effects of
this war and with special reference to the great industry which
brings most of this audience together, the business of
insurance.

The great war debts of the nations of Europe began with
representative government. Kings borrowed money when they
could, bankrupting themselves at intervals and sometimes
wrecking their nations. Kings have always been uncertain pay.
Not many loaned money to them willingly and only in small
amounts and at usurious rates of interest. To float a
"patriotic loan," it was often necessary to make use of the
prison or the rack. With the advent of parliaments and chambers
of deputies, the credit of nations improved and it became easy
to borrow money. There was developed a special class of
financiers, the Rothschilds at their head, pawnbrokers rather
than bankers, men able and willing to take a whole nation into
pawn. And with the advent of great loans, as Goldwin Smith
wisely observed, "there was removed the last check on war."

With better social and business adjustments, and especially
with the progress of railways and steam navigation with other
applications of science to personal and national interests, the
process of borrowing became easier, as also the payment of
interest on which borrowing depends. Hence more borrowing,
always the easiest solution of any financial complication or
embarrassment. Through the substitution of regular methods of
taxation for the collection of tribute, the nations became
solidified. Only a solidified nation can borrow money. The
loose and lawless regions called Kingdoms and Empires under
feudalism were not nations at all. A nation is a region in
which the people are normally at peace among themselves. In
civil war, a nation's existence may be dissolved.

In all the ages war costs all that it can. All that can be
extorted or borrowed is cast into the melting pot, for the sake
of self-preservation or for the sake of victory. If the nations
had any more to give war would demand it. The king could
extort, but there are limits to extortion. The nation could
borrow, and to borrowing there is but one limit, that of actual
exhaustion.

Mr. H. Bell, cashier of Lloyd's Bank in London, said in 1913:

'The London bankers are not lending on the continent any more.
We can see already the handwriting on the wall and that spells
REPUDIATION. The people of Europe will say: "We know that we
have had all this money and that we ought to pay interest on
it. But we must live; and we can not live and pay."'

The chief motive for borrowing on the part of every nation has
been war or preparation for war. If it were not for war no
nation on earth need ever have borrowed a dollar. If provinces
and municipalities could use all the taxes their people pay,
for purposes of peace, they could pay off all their debts and
start free. In Europe, for the last hundred years, in time of
so-called peace, nations have paid more for war than for
anything else. It is not strange therefore that this armed
peace has "found its verification in war." It has been the "Dry
War," the "Race for the Abyss," which the gray old strategists
of the general staff have brought to final culmination.

The debt of Great Britain began with the revolution of 1869,
with about $1,250,000. This unpopular move, known as Dutch
finance, was the work of William of Orange. Other loans
followed, based on customs duties with "taxes on bachelors,
widows, marriages and funerals," and the profits on lotteries.
At the end of the war of the revolution the debt reached
$1,250,000,000, and with the gigantic borrowings of Pitt, in
the interest of the overthrow of Napoleon, the debt reached its
highest point, $4,430,000,000. The savings of peace duly
reduced this debt, but the Boer war, for which about
$800,000,000 was borrowed, swept these savings away. When the
present war began the national debt had been reduced to a
little less than $400,000,000 which sum a year of world war has
brought up to $10,000,000,000.

The debt of France dates from the French Revolution. Through
reckless management it soon rose to $700,000,000, which sum was
cut by paper money, confiscation and other repudiations to
$160,000,000. This process of easing the government at the
expense of the people spread consternation and bankruptcy far
and wide. A great program of public expenditure following the
costly war and its soon repaid indemnity raised the debt of
France to over $6,000,000,000. The interest alone amounted to
nearly $1,000,000,000. A year of the present war has brought
this debt to the unheard of figure of about $11,000,000,000.
Thus nearly two million bondholders and their families in and
out of France have become annual pensioners on the public
purse, in addition to all the pensioners produced by war.

Germany is still a very young nation and as an empire more
thrifty than her largest state. The imperial debt was in 1908 a
little over $1,000,000,000. The total debt of the empire and
the states combined was about $4,000,000,000 at the outbreak of
the war. It is now stated at about $9,000,000,000, a large part
of the increase being in the form of "patriotic" loans from
helpless corporations.

The small debt of the United States rose after the Civil War to
$2,773,000,000. It has been reduced to about $915,000,000,
proportionately less than in any other civilized nation. The
local debts of states and municipalities in this and other
countries are, however, very large and are steadily rising. As
Mr. E. S. Martin observes,

'We have long since passed the simple stage of living beyond
our incomes. We are engaged in living beyond the incomes of
generations to come.'

Let me illustrate by a supposititious example. A nation has an
expenditure of $100,000,000 a year. It raises the sum by
taxation of some sort and thus lives within its means. But
$100,000,000 is the interest on a much larger sum, let us say
$2,500,000,000. If instead of paying out a hundred million year
by year for expenses, we capitalize it, we may have immediately
at hand a sum twenty-five times as great. The interest on this
sum is the same as the annual expense account. Let us then
borrow $2,500,000,000 on which the interest charges are
$100,000,000 a year. But while paying these charges the nation
has the principal to live on for a generation. Half of it will
meet current expenses for a dozen years, and the other half is
at once available for public purposes, for dockyards, for
wharves, for fortresses, for public buildings and, above all,
for the ever-growing demands of military conscription and of
naval power. Meanwhile the nation is not standing still. In
these twelve years the progress of invention and of commerce
may have doubled the national income. There is then still
another $100,000,000 yearly to be added to the sum available
for running expenses. This again can be capitalized, another
$2,500,000,000 can be borrowed, not all at once perhaps, but
with due regard to the exigencies of banking and the temper of
the people. With repeated borrowings the rate of taxation
rises. Living on the principal sets a new fashion in
expenditure. The same fashion extends throughout the body
politic. Individuals, corporations, municipalities all live on
their principal.

The purchase of railways and other public utilities by the
government tends further to complicate the problems of national
debt. It is clear that this system of buying without paying can
not go on forever. The growth of wealth and population can not
keep step with borrowing, even though all funds were expended
for the actual needs of society. Of late years, war preparation
has come to take the lion's share of all funds, however
gathered, "consuming the fruits of progress." What the end
shall be, and by what forces it will be brought about, no one
can now say. This is still a very rich world, even though
insolvent and under control of its creditors. There is a
growing unrest among taxpayers. There would be a still greater
unrest if posterity could be heard from, for it can only save
itself by new inventions and new exploitations or by frugality
of administration of which no nation gives an example to-day.

Nevertheless, this burden of past debt, with all its many
ramifications and its interest charges, is not the heaviest the
nations have placed on themselves. The annual cost of army and
navy in the world before the war was about double the sum of
interest paid on the bonded debt. This annual sum represented
preparation for future war, because in the intricacies of
modern warfare "hostilities must be begun" long before the
materialization of any enemy. In estimating the annual cost of
war, to the original interest of upwards of $1,500,000,000 we
must add yearly about $2,500,000,000 of actual expenditure for
fighters, guns and ships. We must further consider the generous
allowance some nations make for pensions. A large and
unestimated sum may also be added to the account from loss of
military conscription, again not counting the losses to society
through those forms of poverty which have their primal cause in
war. For in the words of Bastiat, "War is an ogre that devours
as much when he sleeps as when he is awake." It was Gambetta
who foretold that the final end of armament rivalry must be "a
beggar crouching by a barrack door."

When the great war began, the nations of Europe were thus waist
deep in debt, the total amount of national bonded indebtedness
being about $30,000,000,000, or nearly three times the total
sum of actual gold and silver, coined or not in all the world.
A year of war at the rate of $50,000,000 to $70,000,000 per day
has increased this indebtedness to nearly $50,000,000,000, the
bonds themselves rated at half or less their normal value,
while the actual financial loss through destruction of life and
property has been estimated at upwards of $40,000,000,000.

In "The Unseen Empire," the forceful and prophetic drama of Mr.
Atherton Brownell, the American ambassador, Stephan Channing,
tries to show the chancellor of Germany that war with Great
Britain is not a "good business proposition." He says:

'Our Civil War has cost us to date, if you count pensions for
the wrecks it left--mental and physical--nearly twenty billions
of dollars. And that doesn't include property losses, nor
destruction of trade, nor broken hearts and desolate
homes--that's just cold hard cash that we have actually paid
out. You can't even think it. There have been only about one
billion minutes since Christ was born. Now if there had been
four million slaves and we had bought every one of them at an
average of one thousand dollars apiece, set them free and had
no war, we should have been in pocket to day just sixteen
billion dollars. That one crime cost us in cash just about the
equal of sixteen dollars a minute from the beginning of the
Christian era.'

The war as forecast in the play is now on in fact, and one
certain truth in regard to it is that it is assuredly not "a
good business proposition" for anybody in any nation, excepting
of course, the makers of the instruments of death.

DAILY COST OF GREAT EUROPEAN WAR (Charles Richet, 1912)

Feed of men. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $12,600,000
Feed of horses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,000,000
Pay (European rates) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,250,000
Pay of workmen in the arsenals and ports (100 per day)1,000,000
Transportation (60 miles in 10 days) . . . . . . 2,100,000
Transportation for provisions. . . . . . . . . . 4,200,000
Munitions: Infantry 10 cartridges a day. . . . . 4,200,000
Artillery: 10 shots per day. . . . . . . . . . . 1,200,000
Marine: 2 shots per day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400,000
Equipment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,200,000
Ambulances: 500,000 wounded or ill ($1 per day). . 500,000
War ships. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500,000
Reduction of imports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,000,000
Help to the poor (20 cents per day to 1 in 10) . 6,800,000
Destruction of towns, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000,000
Total per day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$49,950,000

The actual war began, in accord with Professor Richet's
calculation, at a cost of $50,000,000 per day. Previous to this
the "dry war" or "armed peace" cost only $10,000,000 per day.
This is Richet's calculation in 1912, an underestimate as to
expenses on the sea and in the air. These with the growing
scarcity of bread and shrapnel, the equipment of automobiles,
and the unparalleled ruin of cities have raised this cost to
$70,000,000 per day.

This again takes no account of the waste of men and horses,
less costly than the other material of war and not necessarily
replaced. All this is piled on top of "the endless caravan of
ciphers" ($30,000,000,000), which represents the accumulated
and unpaid war debt of the nineteenth century.

War is indeed the sport for kings, but it is no sport for the
people who pay and die, and in the long run the workers of the
world must pay the cost of it. As Benjamin Franklin observed:

'War is not paid for in war time) the bill comes later.'

And what a bill!

Yves Guyot, the French economist, estimates that the first six
months of war cost western Europe in cash $5,400,000,000, to
which should be added further destruction estimated at
$11,600,000,000, making a total of $17,000,000,000. The entire
amount of coin in the world is less than $12,000,000,000. Edgar
Crammond, secretary of the Liverpool Stock Exchange, another
high authority, estimates the cash cost of a year of war, to
August 1, 1915, at $17,000,000,000, while other losses will
mount up to make a grand total of $46,000,000,000. Mr. Crammond
estimates that the cost to Great Britain for a year of war will
reach $3,500,000,000. This sum is about equivalent to the
accumulated war debt of Great Britain for a hundred years
before the war. The war debt of Germany (including Prussia) is
now about the same.

No one can have any conception of what $46,000,000,000 may be.
It is four times all the gold and silver in the world. It
represents, it is stated, about 100,000 tons of gold, and would
probably outweigh the Washington monument. We have no data as
to what monuments weigh, but we may try a few other
calculations. If this sum were measured out in $20 gold pieces
and they were placed side by side on the railway track, on each
rail, they would line with gold every line from New York to the
Pacific Ocean, and there would be enough left to cover each
rail of the Siberian railway from Vladivostock to Petrograd.
There would still be enough left to rehabilitate Belgium and to
buy the whole of Turkey, at her own valuation, wiping her
finally from the map.

Or we may figure in some other fashion. The average working man
in America earns $518 per year. It would take ninety million
years' work to pay the cost of the war; or ninety million
American laborers might pay it off in one year, if all their
living expenses were paid. The working men of Europe receive
from half to a third the wages in America. They are the ones
who have this bill to pay.

The cost of a year of the great war is a little greater than
the estimated value of all the property of the United States
west of Chicago. It is nearly equal to the total value of all
the property in Germany ($48,000,000,000) as figured in 1906.
The whole Russian Empire ($35,000,000,000) could have been
bought for a less sum before the war began. It could be had on
a cash sale for half that now. It would have paid for all the
property in Italy ($13,000,000,000); Japan ($10,000,000,000);
Holland ($5,000,000,000); Belgium ($7,000,000,000); Spain
($6,000,000,000) and Portugal ($2,500,000,000). It is three
times the entire yearly earnings in wages and salaries of the
people of the United States ($15,500,000,000).

We could go on indefinitely with this, playing with figures
which nobody can understand, for the greatest fortune ever
accumulated by man, in whatever fashion, would not pay for
three days of this war.

The cost of this war would pay the national debts of all the
nations in the world at the time the war broke out, and this
aggregate sum of $45,000,000,000 for the world was all
accumulated in the criminal stupidity of the wars of the
nineteenth century. If all the farms, farming lands, and
factories of the United States were wiped out of existence, the
cost of this war would more than replace them. If all the
personal and real property of half our nation were destroyed,

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