Former President Ernest Fox Nichols has recently given up his professorship
at Yale to enter the research laboratories of the General Chemical Company. THE MAGAZINE extends congratulations to both the parties at interest. The arrangement is suitable. It will be productive of good results in industry, and it is in line with a great deal of procedure that is barely under, way, but seems likely to gain momentum with surprising speed.
Doctor Nichols has proved himself a brilliant and daring investigator. He has the vision that quickly perceives the end to be achieved, and the ingenuity, scholarship and long patience that bring the achievement to pass. He is practicalminded; he appreciates and believes in pure research, but utility does not disturb his serenity of spirit.
His transfer of interest and activity from the academic to the industrial field will prompt a question as to whether, after all, the larger part of important chemical and physical research may not be carried on in industrial laboratories better than in endowed collegiate establishments. Are the contributions to fresh knowledge on the part of most of our university laboratories of research worth their maintenance cost?
Just now college and university alike are bewailing the loss of their physicists and chemists to industry. The present inconvenience of this loss is not to be denied. That it will continue to be detrimental may be doubted. If the successful college teacher and investigator stands a chance of promotion into the industrial field, the resultant tendency will be that of improvement in the number and quality of the teachers, and of giving a renewed stimulus to vital investigation.
It may come to pass, further, that where university and industrial plant can link up in common interest, they will increasingly do so very much as is being done in the case of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Where such a union may not occur, the college should be relieved of financial burdens which industry can as appropriately carry, and far more successfully finance.
The educational and investigative functions once assumed by universities and colleges, and now assumed in duplicate by other agencies, are increasingly numerous. This does not mean that the traditional institutions are being crowded out: it does mean that they are facing social and economic changes which are to be met less by superficial alterations in the curriculum than by drastic changes in fundamental policy.
Dartmouth has tackled its curriculum vigorously and effectively; but its procedure of long-time moment lies more in the direction of administrative changes and extensions that are in part matters of immediate expediency, in part carefully considered steps in the direction of new and important adjustments between the world of college and the world of living and struggling men.
Some interest was created by the editorial in last month's MAGAZINE concerning tuition fees and their relation to academic support of motor equipment for the families of undergraduates. Our good friend the Quadwrangler, commented on ht editorial, in the Boston Transcript for April 23. That the subject possesses inherent interest of wide appeal is indicated by the circle of ripples that his column set in motion. The Quadwrangler returned to the subject again on May 7.
In a later issue of THE MAGAZINE this material will be brought together, examined and discussed. There is strong temptation to undertake that task now. But the question is really a very practical one of serious importance. The same implement that was used to break it open wide enough to let in the light of day will hardly serve the purposes of finer analysis. It was to be proved that such analysis was worth while. There can be small doubt of it now.
This is an apology. No one will doubt the sound foundation in the classics of Dr. J. W. Barstow '46, but, it is nevertheless, due our senior alumnus to say that the error in the Latin quotation found in his letter printed last month crept in between copy and finished MAGAZINE. The letter contained the word "paucorum" but the powers that rule decreed that it should appear otherwise.
The Colleg towel has been sent to the laundry, and the annual crop of Commencement discomforts for alumni is ripening to the harvest. Most crops that the papers tell us about in these days seem to show a tendency to abbreviation proportioned to increasing population; but not so the discomfort crop. The outlook was never so encouraging. For one thing the Hanover shortage of workers is just as acute as is the shortage elsewhere, — more so in fact. That constitutes a foundation for the kind of service that begets discomfort.
Given the foundation, the superstructure is easy to erect. Indeed it will grow without any outside help. The fortunate element in the situation is the long training of the alumni. They have learned that he is blessed who expects nothing; and they have made such expectation a regular part of their traveling equipment. But it hardly seems fair to trap their wives into the endurance of suffering which is entirely undeserved and usually quite unexpected.
Did anyone ever hear of the re-uning alumnae of a woman's college dragging their husbands back to the academic shrine? Perhaps, but not probably. At Vassar husbands and progeny are not even allowed on the premises. The authorities do not put it just that way, of course; but they imply it unmistakably. Whatever the rule does for Vassar, it does more for husbands. May it not be that the wives would welcome a Dartmouth ruling that would enable them to remain comfortably at home instead of camping out on a drygoods box and trying for three days to make the back of a wrist watch do substitute duty for a mirror ?
Doctor John W. Bowler undertakes again this summer, at his Marlborough Farm the task of physically rejuvenating the old and stabilizing the young. His success in this particular is something that Dartmouth men might bear in mind occasionally in winter as well as in summer, for the College has arranged to extend the courtesy of the gymnasium to those pilgrims to Hanover who come seeking invigoration at Doctor Bowler's hands. At times some of these visitors escape from the doctor to become pretty well acquainted with the College and College things, and to add something of its spirit to the refreshing of their own. It is a good way of spreading the Dartmouth acquaintance.
