active support of the public. If he is disappointed in commanding these requirements, if he finds neither co-operation nor support, if some great scheme to which he may have devoted much of his life thus proves to be only a castle in the air, he may feel that nature has dealt hardly with him in not endowing him with passions like to those of other men. In treating a theme of perennial interest one naturally tries to fancy what the future may have in store. If the traveler, contemplating the ruins of some ancient city which in the long ago teemed with the life and activities of generations of men, sees every stone instinct with emotion and the dust alive with memories of the past, may he not be similarly impressed when he feels that he is looking around upon a seat of future empire-a region where generations yet unborn may take a leading part in molding the history of the world? What may we not expect of that energy which in sixty years has transformed a straggling village into one of the world's great centers of commerce? May it not exercise a powerful influence on the destiny not only of the country but of the world? If so, shall the power thus to be exercised prove an agent of beneficence, diffusing light and life among nations, or shall it be the opposite? The time must come ere long when wealth shall outgrow the field in which it can be profitably employed. In what direction shall its possessors then look? Shall they train a posterity which will so use its power as to make the world better that it has lived in it? Will the future heir to great wealth prefer the intellectual life to the life of pleasure? We can have no more hopeful answer to these questions than the establishment of the University of Chicago in the very focus of the commercial activity of the west. Its connection with the great Yerkes observatory suggests some thoughts on science as a factor in that scheme of education best adapted to make the power of a wealthy community a benefit to the race at large. When we see what a factor science has been in our present civilization, how it has transformed the world and increased the means of human enjoyment by enabling men to apply the powers of nature to their own uses, it is not wonderful that it should claim the place in Vol. 7-6 education hitherto held by classical studies. In the contest which has thus arisen I take no part but that of a peacemaker, holding that it is as important to us to keep in touch with the traditions of our race, and to cherish the thoughts which have come down to us through the centuries, as it is to enjoy and utilize what the present has to offer us. Speaking from this point of view, I would point out the error of making the utilitarian applications of knowledge the main object in its pursuit. It is an historic fact that abstract science-science pursued without any utilitarian end-has been at the base of our progress in the utilization of knowledge. If in the last century such men as Galvani and Volta had been moved by any other motive than love of penetrating the secrets of nature they would never have pursued the seemingly useless experiments they did, and the foundation of electrical science would not have been laid. Our present applications of electricity did not become possible until Ohm's mathematical laws of the electric current, which when first made known seemed little more than mathematical curiosities, had become the common property of inventors. Professional pride on the part of our own Henry led him, after making the discoveries which rendered the telegraph possible, to go no further in their application, and to live and die without receiving a dollar of the millions which the country has won through his agency. In the spirit of scientific progress thus shown we have patriotism in its highest form-a sentiment which does not seek to benefit the country at the expense of the world, but to benefit the world by means of one's country. Science has its competition, as keen as that which is the life of commerce. But its rivalries are over the question who shall contribute the most and the best to the sum total of knowledge; who shall give the most, not who shall take the most. Its animating spirit is love of truth. Its pride is to do the greatest good to the greatest number. It embraces not only the whole human race but all nature in its scope. Should you ask me how it is in the future to use its influence for the benefit of humanity at large, I would say, look at the work now going on and study its spirit. Here are the agencies which will make "the voice of law the harmony of the world." Here is the love of country Here the love of knowledge blended with love of the race. is as unconfined as your commercial enterprise. Let not your youth learn the forms of vertebrates and the properties of oxides, but rather to imbibe that catholic spirit which, animating their growing energies, shall make the power they are to wield an agent of beneficence to all mankind. CHEMISTRY IN THE UNITED STATES. BY F. W. CLARKE. [Frank W. Clarke, chemist; born Boston, March 19, 1847; graduated from the Lawrence scientific school at Harvard in 1867; instructor at Cornell, 1869; professor of chemistry, Howard university, Washington, 1873-74; professor of chemistry and physics, University of Cincinnati, 1874-83; chief chemist United States geological survey since 1883; author, Weights, Measures, and Money of All Nations; Elements of Chemistry; Constants of Nature; Report on the Teaching of Chemistry and Physics in the United States; Laboratory Manual; Elementary Chemistry, etc.] If we consider the subject of applied chemistry at all broadly, we shall at once see that it has several distinct aims -such as the discovery of new products, the improvement of processes, and the utilization of waste materials. It seeks also to increase the accuracy of methods, to make industrial enterprises more precise, and therefore more certainly fruitful; in short to replace empiricism by science. It is, perhaps, in this direction that applied chemistry has made its most notable advances in America, and that within comparatively recent years. Three decades ago even our greatest manufacturing establishments employed chemists only in a sporadic fashion, sending occasional jobs to private laboratories, and then only after counting the cost most parsimoniously. Except in a few dyehouses and calico printeries, the chemist was not fully appreciated; great losses were often sustained for lack of the services which he could have rendered, and the cost of goods was, therefore, higher than necessary. By degrees, however, a change was brought about. One effect of industrial competition was to narrow margins and to render greater accuracy of manipulation imperative, and so the chemist was brought upon the scene. To-day it is almost the universal custom among manufacturers to maintain chemical laboratories in connection with their works, and this is especially true with regard to metallurgical establishments, oil refineries, soap, candle, and glass works, in the making of paints, varnishes, and chemicals, and so on in many directions. Even the great firms whose industries are connected with the Chicago stock yards, with their artificial refrigeration and their manufacturing of lard, lard and butter substitutes, meat extracts, pepsin, and fertilizers, all employ skilled chemists and provide well equipped laboratories. In the making of steel and iron the processes are followed by analyses from start to finish, from ore, fuel, and flux, to the completed billets; and the chemists who are thus occupied have gained marvelous dexterity. The analytical methods have been reduced to great precision, and are extraordinary as regards speed, work which once required a day to perform being now executed in less than twenty minutes. Exact measurement has replaced rule of thumb, certainty has supplanted probability, industry has become less wasteful and surer of a fair return, and to all this the chemist has been the chief contributor. Without his aid the manufactures of the world could never have been developed to their present magnitude and efficiency. His influence reaches even beyond the furnace or the factory and touches the greatest economic questions. Take, for example, the financial agitation through which our country has so recently passed, with its discussion of monetary ratios. Chemical processes have profoundly modified the metallurgy of gold and silver, cheapening the production of both metals and changing the commercial ratio of their values. Can the bimetallic question be intelligently investigated with the chemical factor left out? Furthermore, chemistry has created new industries in which both gold and silver are employed, and so, affecting both supply and demand, touches their ratios still more deeply. When politics becomes true to its definition, when it is really the science and art of government, then we may expect politicians to consider questions like these and to study the evidence which chemistry has to offer. One other phase of applied chemistry, chiefly developed in this country, remains to be mentioned. In 1875 the Pennsylvania railroad company opened a laboratory at Altoona, in charge of Dr. C. B. Budley; and eight or nine other railroads have since followed its lead. In these railroad laboratories, which employ many men, all sorts of supplies are tested, and large contracts for purchases depend upon the |