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