SCIENCE'S JOB TO HELP THE WORKERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3438, 3 February 1920, Page 51

SCIENCE'S JOB TO HELP THE WORKERS.

The business of science at the present time, as seen by Prof. R. A. Millikan, of the Univ&rsity of Chicago, is to make possible the increase of production without incommoding 'the worker. We are noted in America for our large productiin, which is two to five times as great, per worker, as in European countries. At the same time our distribution of wealth is more uneven. It is a mistake, however, Professor Millakan argues, for the workman to conclude that he would benefit §reatly by a more equal distribution, uch a levelling down would not increase labourers' incomes by more than 10 per cent. The greater prosperity of the American labourer. Professor Millikan believes, is due solely to his ability to produce more, and increase in his prosperity is conditioned on further improvement of that ability. In telling science that its job is to devise ways of increasing production, Professor Millikan has in mind, therefore, the improvement of the working man's condition. He says, during the course of a lecture on "The New Opportunity in Science," printed as a leading article in "Science" (New York): "It goes without saying that it is impossible to distribute more than is created, and where the wealth is once created there is no little evidence that natural processes in the long run do a good deal, at least in democratic countries, toward producing a more or less reasonable distribution. The inequalities and injustices which strike the eye are of much less general significance than the superficial observer realises. A progressive economist told me the other day that I was probably making an overestimate when I stated that a complete levelling of all incomes in the United States might possibly increase the income of the average worker by 10 per cent. I am informed by one who is in a position to know the facts that such a complete levelling in the telephone industry, for example, could not increase the average income of the wage-earner bv more than 2 or 3 per cent., and I have been given, from what I consider fairly reliable sources, about the same figures for the steel industry. It is orobable that the total possibilities of improvement of conditions through changes in distribution are very limited, while possibilities of improvement through increase in production are incalculable. But whether rough figures and estimates like the foregoing- have any value or not, this much may be set down as certain. The present distress in Europe is not due to bad distribution, but simply to lack of production. Equally certain it is that no one who visited Europe frequently before the war and came back to this country, as I have often done, with the observation that here one finds in comparison witli Europe larcre comfort, large intelligence, large well-being in the case of the average man, will claim that the prosperity and comfort of the average American citizen as compared with his European brother is due to a better mode pi wealth-distribution which is in use in this country. Our critics claim that we have the worst svstem of distribution in the world, since it is here that the great fortunes are piled up. There can be no question that the better wage and the greater prosperity of the American workman are due primarily, if not wholly, to the fact that the American workman in ev6ry line of industry actually produces from two to five times as much per manhour as does his European brother. The reasons for this fact iieed not concern us here. They lie partly, no doubt, in our national resources, partly in a spirit of accomplishment which has been created here, and partly, though not wholly, in our use of labour-saving machinery. But it is the fact and the obvious consequence of it in the increased opportunity

and well-being of the average man to which I would here call attention. How unimaginable, then, the stupidity and how pathetic the blundering of that large class of labour leaders who are endeavouring to improve the conditions of labour by limiting production. Such efforts can only bring disaster. If successful, they merely result in robbing one class at the expense of another, and the robbed class is, in general, the one which is already least favourably situated. "However important, then, the problems of distribution may be, there can be no uncertainty about the even greater importance of the problems of production. One little new advance like the discovery of ductile tungsten, which makes electric light one-third as expensive as it was before, is a larger contribution to human well-being than all kinds of changes in the social order. The man who finds a way to harvest his hay so as to make a given plot of ground feed twice "as many cattle as it did before, has contributed immeasurably to human welfare. So has the biologist who shows mankind how to defeat the law of Malthus and to propagate rationally instead of in accordance with the law of the jungle. Or, again, the pure scientists who for ten years worked out the properties of discharges of negative electricity through highly exhausted bulbs and so made possible the use of pure electron discharges in multiplying enormously the possibilities of telephonic and telegraphic communication —the corner-stone of international goodwill—have made their lives count for humanity as very few political or social reformers have ever been able to do. These are the sort of opportunities which lie before the young man who is now choosing his life work in science, and incomparable opportunities they are. "Imagine' a country which is made up of hills and valleys and in which the valleys often become flooded so as to drown out the valley-dwellers. A part of the people of this country set to work to level down the hills and fill the valleys so that all the inhabitants may live in safety. These are the political and social reformers. And another part, without attempting to interfere with the togography, set themselves the task of raising the whole level of the land or lowering the level of the water so that the danger of floods is altogether gone. These are the creators of new wealth, the scientists and engineers. Both groups are needful to progress, but I suspect that the second group is less likely to make costly mistakes and more likely to accomplish useful results than is the first group. Neither group, however, should slacken its effort." If we are to ask this of science, however, Professor Millikan says, we must assure a sufficient crop of scientific workers and favourable conditions under which they may work. This means not only ample facilities for instruction, but endowed laboratories for research. One of the most urgent needs, then, of America to-day is for the development of great research institutes in the natural sciences, such as do not exist at all to-day, institutes in which there will be as many able investigators devoting two-thirds of their time and' energy to research as are now found in the detached research institutions like those of the Carnegie Institution arid the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, or the research laboratories of the Western Electric, General Electric, and the Westinghouse companies. We have developed a highly patriotic and highly intelligent public sentiment which stimulates men of wealth and power to devote themselves and their fortunes to great public enterprises. The great opportunity in science, then, for the man who wishes to invest his funds where they will count most for his country and his race lies in the endowment of research chairs, or, better, semi-research chairs, in a few suitably chosen educational institutions. Such monuments ought to be infinitely more attractive than those of brick and stone. Such a chair endowed in such a way as to attract the ablest men whom we' develop and filled continuously by fertile men will yield bigger returns to the donor and to the world than any other investment which can be made.