This was Mr. Carnegie’s strong point; but Mr. Swasey did not belong to
that type of American manufacturer. His aim was few products but each
one of them as perfect as careful manipulation, personal attention
guided by superior intelligence, and inventive ingenuity, could
make it. Most of the telescope mountings of the great astronomical
observatories in this country were made in Mr. Swasey’s Cleveland
shops. His shop experience made him an engineer of a very high order,
so high indeed, that the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
elected him president, and, later, honorary member. The charter of the
United Engineering Society speaks of “advancing the engineering arts
and sciences in all their branches,” but there was no other visible
instrumentality for doing that work than the free engineering library.
Ambrose Swasey proposed to correct this deficiency when, in 1914,
he offered to the United Engineering Society a gift of two hundred
thousand dollars as a nucleus for an endowment the income of which was
to be used for “the furtherance of research in science and engineering,
or for the advancement in any other manner of the profession of
engineering and the good of mankind.” These words, dictated by an
American captain of industry, bear witness to the fact that there is
much idealism in American industry. The United Engineering Society
accepted Mr. Swasey’s gift, and established the Engineering Foundation,
which was managed by its own board, the Foundation Board, nominated
by the four founder societies. Its members acted as trustees of
Mr. Swasey’s gift and of any other gift that might be given to the
Engineering Foundation to serve a purpose similar to that of Mr.
Swasey’s gift. This Foundation became an instrumentality of the United
Engineering Society for the stimulation, direction, and support of
scientific research. It became, furthermore, the liaison agency between
the engineers on the one hand and the technologists and scientists on
the other hand, in activities concerned with research in all branches
of mathematical, physical, and biological sciences. In other words,
one of the great captains of American industry, Andrew Carnegie, was
instrumental in bringing the great national engineering societies
together into the United Engineering Society, and another great captain
of American industry, Ambrose Swasey, invented and by his generosity
constructed an instrumentality, the Engineering Foundation, which he
put into the hands of the United Engineering Society for the purpose
of enabling it to do the work which its charter demands, “advancing
the engineering arts and sciences in all their branches.” I never
think of these two generous acts on the part of Mr. Carnegie and of
Mr. Swasey, without being reminded that these two great organizers of
American industry were guided by the same motives of idealism which had
guided the great men of the revolutionary times when they organized
the United States. Read the charters of the Carnegie Institution, of
the Engineering Society, and of the Engineering Foundation, and you
will find that no trace of materialism can be found in the proposed
scientific activities of these institutions founded by two men who made
material things but never lost touch with the spiritual world which
gave direction and discipline to all their acts.
The Engineering Foundation became an operating instrumentality in
April, 1915, and in a year from that time it was called upon to engage
in a scientific enterprise which, in my opinion, has proved to be of
the very greatest national importance. In April, 1916, it appeared that
we were to become involved in the World War on account of the sinking
of the _Sussex_ by German submarines. The charter of the National
Academy of Sciences, passed by Congress and approved by President
Lincoln in 1863, provides that “the Academy shall, whenever called upon
by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment,
and report upon any subject of science and art.” The early records
indicate that during its very earliest days the National Academy of
Sciences, under the leadership of Joseph Henry, and while the Civil War
was still going on, dealt actively with scientific research relating to
military and naval problems. It was, therefore, perfectly natural that,
in view of the threatening crisis, the National Academy of Sciences
should, in April, 1916, offer its services to the President of the
United States, who accepted them and requested the Academy to organize
the scientific and technical resources of the country in the broadest
and most effective manner. This is how the _National Research Council_
was born. It is the offspring of the National Academy of Sciences.
The mother was born during the Civil War, and the offspring was born
during the World War. Blessed be the country which even in times of war
creates institutions the highest aim of which is to cultivate the arts
of peace!
The members of the National Academy of Sciences are elected on account
of distinguished services to science, and not on account of their
cleverness as administrators or organizers. The National Research
Council was to be organized for the purpose of “stimulating research
in mathematical, physical, and biological sciences, and in the
application of these sciences to engineering, agriculture, medicine,
and other useful arts, with the object of increasing knowledge, of
strengthening the national defense, and of contributing in other ways
to the public welfare.” The words just quoted are taken from President
Wilson’s executive order, and describe a splendid conception. But from
conception to reduction to practice is a long pull, requiring efforts
along most practical lines of endeavor in which scientific men as a
rule do not excel. But it was very fortunate for the National Academy
of Sciences and for the people of the United States that among the
scientists of the Academy there was one man who had always displayed
just as remarkable a genius for organization as he had for original
scientific research; I mean Professor George Ellery Hale, director of
the Mount Wilson Observatory. Several other members of the Academy,
including myself, did our best to aid him in the task of reducing to
practice many of his ideas relating to the National Research Council.
There was, fortunately, one thing which greatly assisted our earliest
and most difficult efforts in behalf of this national movement; it was
the existence of the Engineering Foundation.
My former pupil, Gano Dunn, was in 1916 the chairman of the Engineering
Foundation, and I was one of the two vice-chairmen. It did not cost
me much effort to persuade Dunn that one of the biggest tasks which
the Engineering Foundation could take up was to grubstake the
National Research Council during its formative period. The Board of
the Foundation accepted enthusiastically this suggestion, recommended
by Mr. Dunn and myself, and from September 1916 to September 1917
the administrative organization as well as the total income of the
Foundation was devoted to the organizing work of the National Research
Council. I am very proud that during a part of that period I was the
chairman of the Engineering Foundation, succeeding Mr. Dunn, and had
splendid opportunities to aid Professor Hale and his committees in
the historic work of organizing the National Research Council. Mr.
Swasey was very happy in this national work of the Foundation, and he
added to its income for that year a sum of five thousand dollars as
additional aid for its great undertaking. At the expiration of that
year, the National Research Council did not need any further financial
assistance from the Engineering Foundation, but the co-operation
started in 1916 between the two national bodies continued and produced
splendid results; so much so that in 1918, during my term of office
as chairman of the Foundation, Mr. Swasey added one hundred thousand
dollars to his original gift, and in 1920 two hundred thousand dollars
more, and the Engineering Foundation became the guiding and controlling
factor in the activities of the engineering division of the National
Research Council. Mr. Swasey always hoped that others would follow
his example and by their generous contribution increase the income of
the Engineering Foundation to what it should be. This institution, as
the directing instrument of the engineering division of the National
Research Council, could, with an adequate annual income, say one
hundred thousand dollars or more, do a world of good in the research
of our great national engineering problems. I trust that Mr. Swasey’s
hopes will not meet with disappointment, because his hopes are based
upon his accurate estimate of what the engineering profession needs.
An estimate supported by the judgment and vision of a Swasey, and by
his generous financial efforts, should receive the most respectful
attention and warmest sympathy of our public-spirited men.
It goes without saying that during the World War the National Research
Council was organized mainly with a view to aiding the government in
the pursuit of the war, and for that purpose it was closely associated
with the government’s scientific bureaus, and with the technical
department of the Army and Navy. This arrangement is referred to, and
receives the highest official sanction, in the executive order issued
by President Wilson, which I quote now in full:
EXECUTIVE ORDER ISSUED BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
The National Research Council was organized in 1916 at the request
of the President by the National Academy of Sciences, under its
Congressional charter, as a measure of national preparedness. The
work accomplished by the Council in organizing research and in
securing co-operation of military and civilian agencies in the
solution of military problems demonstrates its capacity for larger
service. The National Academy of Sciences is therefore requested to
perpetuate the National Research Council, the duties of which shall
be as follows:
1. In general, to stimulate research in the mathematical, physical,
and biological sciences, and in the application of these sciences
to engineering, agriculture, medicine, and other useful arts, with
the object of increasing knowledge, of strengthening the national
defense, and of contributing in other ways to the public welfare.
2. To survey the larger possibilities of science, to formulate
comprehensive projects of research, and to develop effective means
of utilizing the scientific and technical resources of the country
for dealing with these projects.
3. To promote co-operation in research, at home and abroad, in
order to secure concentration of effort, minimize duplication, and
stimulate progress; but in all co-operative undertakings to give
encouragement to individual initiative, as fundamentally important
to the advancement of science.
4. To serve as a means of bringing American and foreign
investigators into active co-operation with the scientific and
technical services of the War and Navy Departments and with those
of the civil branches of the Government.
5. To direct the attention of scientific and technical
investigators to the present importance of military and industrial
problems in connection with the war, and to aid in the solution of
these problems by organizing specific researches.
6. To gather and collate scientific and technical information
at home and abroad, in co-operation with governmental and other
agencies and to render such information available to duly
accredited persons.
Effective prosecution of the Council’s work requires the cordial
collaboration of the scientific and technical branches of the
Government, both military and civil. To this end representatives
of the Government, upon the nomination of the National Academy
of Sciences, will be designated by the President as members of
the Council, as heretofore, and the heads of the departments
immediately concerned will continue to co-operate in every way that
may be required.
(Signed) WOODROW WILSON.
The White House, May 11, 1918.
During the World War the National Research Council was only partly
supported by the government, although it did exclusively government
work. After the war, however, the activities of the National Research
Council were reorganized without departing from the spirit of the
President’s executive order, and its support was derived from private
sources only. Its organization can be described broadly as follows:
It consists of two groups of divisions; one group comprises seven
divisions of science and technology, representing, respectively,
physics, mathematics, and astronomy; chemistry and chemical technology;
biology and agriculture; the medical sciences; psychology and
anthropology; geology and geography; and, finally, one of the largest
and most important of its divisions, the division of engineering. The
other group comprises six divisions of general relations, representing
foreign relations, government relations, state relations, educational
relations, research extension, and research information. In this
scheme of organization the National Research Council enjoys the active
co-operation of about seventy-five major scientific and technical
societies of the country. It is, therefore, national in its character.
It promises to become one of the most precious assets of this nation,
and the nation should know much more about it than it does.
The splendid work done by the Council even during the first two years
of its history attracted much attention from the best men in the
country, with the result that the trustees of the Carnegie Corporation
of New York made a gift of five million dollars to the Council.
A part of this, a little over one-quarter, was to be spent on an
administrative building, the future home of the Academy and of its
offspring, the National Research Council. The remainder was to be a
permanent foundation from the income of which the administrative work
of the Council was to be and is now being supported.
The Rockefeller Foundation and the Rockefeller General Education Board
gave the Council one million dollars for the maintenance, during
five years, of research fellowships in physics and chemistry, and in
medicine. Other gifts came from philanthropic organizations, individual
concerns, and individuals, for the support of special scientific
projects, and more than a score of individuals interested in the
promotion of science contributed two hundred thousand dollars for the
purchase of land in Washington on which the administration building of
the Academy and Council has been under construction during the last two
years.
[Illustration: DR. GEORGE ELLERY HALE
Honorary Chairman of the National Research Council]
Facing the Mall near the Lincoln memorial in Washington stands to-day,
nearly completed, the administrative palace of the National Academy
of Sciences and of its offspring, the National Research Council. The
classical simplicity of its design and its snowy marble make it
appear at a distance like a Grecian temple. It will always invite the
visitor to the nation’s capital to its peaceful precincts, whence
one can get the impressive view of the beautiful monument to great
Lincoln and of the Arlington heights on the distant bank of the Potomac
River. When Lincoln and those buried on these sacred heights died, the
National Academy of Sciences was born. The lives of these dead heroes
of sixty years ago, as well as the life of the institution born then
and living to-day, will always remind us that national defense is a
stern reality and the most sacred of our patriotic duties. National
defense is and always should be the uppermost idea in the history of
the National Research Council, but national defense in its broadest
sense, that is, defense by powder and sword and scientific invention
when a brutal enemy attacks us, and by the stored-up accomplishments of
scientifically trained intellects and disciplined spirits whenever this
nation engages in peaceful competitions with other nations.
[Illustration: THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL BUILDING,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
From a preliminary sketch by the architect,
Bertram G. Goodhue]
The rapid rise of the Council into public favor is due principally to
its wise programme and to the standing of the men and of the scientific
organizations engaged in the carrying out of that programme, the
fundamental feature of which is “to promote scientific research and the
application and dissemination of scientific knowledge for the benefit
of our national strength and well-being.” This expression, often heard
within the ranks of the National Research Council, always reminds me of
the following words in Washington’s Farewell Address:
Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for
the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure
of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that
public opinion should be enlightened.
In no branch of human activity does public opinion need enlightenment
so much as it does in the fundamentals of science, and in their
relation to technical arts. One weak point in every democracy,
particularly when poorly understood and practised, is the belief among
those who control political patronage that any man can do any job as
well as any other man. The scientific man believes that a man must be
trained for the job; hence his profound respect for the expert. Nothing
in his opinion will advance our national strength and well-being so
much as the ability of enlightened public opinion to differentiate
between the expert and the clumsy product of political patronage. A
motto of the Allies in the World War was: make the world safe for
democracy. But those who are to-day associated in the National Research
Council believe that it is even more important to “make democracy safe
for the world” by the dissemination of scientific knowledge for the
benefit of national strength and well-being. Many of us believe that
this is the most important part of the national defense, to which the
Council will always be pledged.
The National Research Council is not an organization which operates
scientific laboratories; it confines its attention to the stimulation
of co-operation between scientific workers, where such co-operation
is necessary. This is not the place to discuss in detail all the
aims and aspirations of the National Research Council and of the
instrumentalities which it has created in order to reach these aims.
A survey, even a brief one, of the work of the divisions belonging
to the two groups of the National Research Council will give some
idea of these aims. There are, however, two great aims which should
be mentioned here, which have been well expressed by Doctor Vernon
Kellogg, Permanent Secretary of the Council and chairman of its
division on Educational Relations. He describes one of them as follows:
“It [the National Research Council] will try constantly to encourage
the interest of universities and colleges in research and in the
training of research workers, so that the inspiration and fitting of
American youth for scientific work may never fall so low as to threaten
to interrupt the constantly needed output of well-trained and devoted
scientific talent in the land.” The other principal aim he describes in
the following significant words: “Still another [assistance to science]
is the stimulation of larger industrial organizations, which may be
in the situation to maintain their own independent laboratories, to
see the advantage of contributing to the support of pure science in
the universities and research institutes, for the sake of increasing
the scientific knowledge and scientific personnel upon which future
progress in applied science absolutely depends.”
The appeal of the National Research Council to the American
universities and colleges in behalf of scientific research will not
be like a voice in the wilderness. There never was so much enthusiasm
for scientific research in the American colleges and universities as
there is to-day. This enthusiasm will continually increase as time
goes on, because many of the scientific workers in these institutions
are gradually catching that enthusiasm during their term of office as
members of the divisions of the National Research Council. Before very
long most of these workers will have served as such members, because
the election to membership is for a short term only, so that every
scientist in the land who wishes to serve will get a chance to serve,
and in this manner will become familiar with the aims and aspirations
of the National Research Council. This rotational term of membership
in the divisions of the Council is a splendid method of carrying on
the educational propaganda, particularly among the younger scientists
of the United States. Before very long the scientists associated by
service in the Council will be like the soldiers of a great army of
volunteers, each one of them believing in and ready to struggle for
the same ideals, and all of them controlled by the same _esprit de
corps_, which the world will soon recognize as the _esprit de corps_ of
American science.
With regard to the Council’s second principal aim, described so
well by Doctor Kellogg, I am happy to make the following comment: A
distinguished lawyer, chairman of the board of directors of a large
industrial corporation, which maintains a splendid industrial research
laboratory, said in my presence recently that he thought every
successful and prosperous industrial organization should set aside a
goodly portion of its profits from new developments, made possible by
scientific research, and turn it over to the universities, to enable
them to pay better salaries to their professors and instructors in
science and to increase their research facilities. He confessed frankly
that the training in scientific research in the universities is the
fountainhead from which success is derived in industrial research
and development, and that without industrial research American
industries will not gain and hold the leading position in the world
to which they may rightfully aspire. What a splendid thing it is to
hear a lawyer express an opinion which is in perfect harmony with the
opinion of every scientific man in the United States! It has been
this mental attitude on the part of the American philanthropists and
public-spirited captains of industry like Carnegie, Rockefeller,
Swasey, Eastman, and others which has helped us to accomplish wonders
in scientific advancement during the last twenty-five years. It has
been men of this type who have built research laboratories in the
American universities and endowed them generously.
Of the many physical laboratories which have arisen in American
universities through private munificence since the time when, fifty
years ago, Joseph Henry, Barnard, Draper, Andrew White, and other
American scientists started the great movement for higher research
in science, there may be mentioned, as an illustration, the Johns
Hopkins physical laboratory, the Jefferson laboratory at Harvard, the
Sloan laboratory at Yale, the Fayerweather laboratory at Columbia, or
the Ryerson laboratory at the University of Chicago. Similar research
facilities in other departments of physical science have been presented
to American universities by the public-spirited men of the United
States. But nothing has illustrated so well the possibilities of
intelligent public interest in and generosity to science as the rapid
rise of organized American science in the last twenty-five years,
culminating in the organization of the National Research Council.
To an untrained eye, necessarily looking at scientific things from a
superficial view-point, the National Research Council will appear as a
splendid institution organized as our third arm of national defense,
an indispensable supplement to the Army and Navy. This conception
is perfectly natural, because the time and the conditions which
called the Council into existence during the World War were such as
to demand immediate scientific efforts for national defense. Other
somewhat similar organized efforts were made at that time, but those
organizations disappeared into thin air as soon as the armistice of
1918 was signed. The National Research Council did not disappear; it
is stronger to-day than ever before, because, although designed to be
an effective weapon in times of war, it is fundamentally an instrument
of peace. Another superficial view will reveal the National Research
Council as a splendid organization for the cultivation of an intimate
relationship between abstract science and the industries. This also is
as it should be; national defense in its broadest sense demands such
co-operation. But both these aspects of the Council, prominent aspects
to the superficial observer, reveal only the purely material gains
to accrue to this country from the Council’s activities. The anxious
question will therefore be: What contributions will this organized
scientific activity make to the spiritual welfare of the country?