Page Two — THE BATTALION, College Station (Aggieland), Texas, Thursday, May 15, 1947:
Merchants of Light...
Parent’s Day Showing...
We have just fought the most costly war in history,
and have won for ourselves greater insecurity than ever
before. The a?iswer of every nation to its people can no
longer be more material tvealth. It must be more brain
power to outhink, outplan and outwit the forces of de
struction within and without its boundaries. And how
have we protected ourselves"! By permitting our great
est minds to be so exploited and taken for granted, that
in despair and disillusionment they have fled to busi
ness, and left our strategic laboratories and our higher
instructions of learning to the lame, the halt and the
timid.
Not that business itself has been too farsighted. Its
unwillingness to share will yet prove its undoing. The wealth
of the country is in large part the increment wheedled out of
its best brains. Business itself is a kind of legalized appro
priation of the intellectual gains won in colleges and labora
tories throughout the nation. In an engaging article written
for the Atlantic Monthly some years ago. T. Swann Hard
ing cites the example of a young scientist who held a $3,000
a year fellowship at a large university, a fellowship that
included the privilege of working in one of the finest chemical
laboratories in America. The stipend was granted by a drug
manufacturing concern; the young man was to “potter
around with ephedrine.”
For three years he pottered around, during which time
he was visited off and on by the company’s technical men.
They came merely to look on, ask an occasional question, and
“pick up scraps.” The scraps they picked up in those three
years, Harding points out, were worth a mere $150,000 to the
company.
Today college administrators know these facts better
than anyone else in America. They supplied the human
materials for the war projects that hastened the end of hos
tilities. They alone know how many of their best minds
have left their classrooms for more lucrative jobs in busi
ness. What one science department chairman pointed out
at a recent faculty meeting in my own college is true of all
higher institutions: “Unless something is done, scholar
ship (scientific research) will suffer a blow from which it
will not recover in a generation.” Failure to read these words
right may indeed be very costly.
No, business itself has not been too farsighted. If in
stead of doing the proverbial trembling in its boots about
the corruption of American youth by “red” professors it
would give these same professors incomes commensurate
with their training and worth, there would be far fewer
“red” professors. They would be as eager to retain the status
quo as business itself. Professors, too, are human. Busi
ness should take its time about thinking that over.
In steel mills, in railroads, in law offices, in button
factories, we hire “the best that money can buy.” In
schools and colleges we hire “the best we can get at the
price,” and the figure is so low that “the best at the
price” often turns out to be at the professional bottom
of the heap.
The young teacher looks around him and discovers that
the most effective teachers in his department are less often
among the older men (the Ph.D.’s) than among the younger
ones, who may not have gone through the “discipline” of the
doctorial regimen,. He observes that frequently these “un
disciplined” men are more abreast of the contemporary
world, write better, speak better and think more originally
than those who have been conditioned by “higher” research.
When, in additioh, he learns that with a Ph.D an instructor
can receive as little as $2,400, and an associate professor fre
quently no more than $3,500, the degree has lost all worth of
dignity.
Most demoralizing of all, he can think of leading schol
ars and teachers in America who were without benefit of
the doctor’s degree—scholars in Shakespeare, and Chaucer,
and American culture at Harvard, and Columbia, and Chica
go. He remembers that Oxford and Cambridge frankly
scorn the doctor’s degree, seeming to reserve it almost ex
clusively for Americans. He recalls that neither the Master
of Balliol nor George Saintsbury was handicapped by the
lack of a doctorate. He recalls, too, the Society of Fellows
that A. Lawrence Lowell founded at Harvard as a protest
against the “Ph.D. system”; its members are forbidden to
work for the degree. Yet one of them, the young scholar
Arthur Schlesinger^ Jr., won this year’s Pulitzer award in
history for his brilliant Age of Jackson.
It doesn’t add up, however the young college teacher
figures it. But the damage has already been done. He is
nearing thirty; he has not been able to put aside money to
venture a new career. By this time, too, he has acquired
a wife and child; so he makes his peace with his job and his
responsibilities. And like the philosophy of the common man
Santayana talks about, his teaching becomes “an old wife
that gives him no pleasure, yet he cannot live without her,
and resents any aspersions that strangers may cast on her
character.”
One exception might be noted. The doctor’s degree in
science is a much more honest and realistic affair. A thesis
need not run into hundreds of pages in which an ounce of
fact is assaulted by a ton of footnotes. And once a student
has acquired his doctor of science degree he can go into the
various commercial laboratories of the country and command
a respectable salary for his achievement. In science, only the
born teacher or the very timid will prefer the sanctuary of
a $3,000 to $6,000 position in the average college to an out
side laboratory post paying twice as much. Therein lies the
real problem for the advancement of science today. Unless
universities hold on to those scientists who demand that their
salaries match outside offers, a collapse in higher education
will precipitate a crisis in the nation’s welfare too alarming
to contemplate.
L. Ruth Middlebrook
in The American Scholar
The Battalion
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The A. & M. student body can be proud of the showing it
made this past week-end for visiting parents.
No doubt many people were pleasantly shocked to find
that Aggieland was not in the midst of a student riot, civil
war, or communistic uprising, as many reports have had it.
The Agriculture and Engineering exhibits on AE Day
were adequate proof of the fact that students have not been
spending all their time plotting to undermine the statutes of
the state of Texas. These exhibits should form a graphic
sequence to the written fact in the registrar’s office. A. & M.
students have a higher academic standing today than at any
other time in the history, of this school!
Coupled with this is the fine performance made by the
Cadet Corps on Parent’s Day. The traditional customs of
pinning flowers on each man of an organization by the
C. O.’s Mother and Sweetheart, the presentation of watches
to C. O.’s by their “outfits”, the Parent’s Day Review, the
atmosphere of Aggieland .... all these add up to one sig
nificant fact! A. & M. is still on its feet! Students are at
tending their classes, studying, and living in an orderly
manner. The Cadet Corps has remained a well-disciplined
body, the veteran students are still primarily interested in
pursuing their studies and getting an education. Through
all the turmoil that has resulted from their efforts to re
move Gilchrist from the presidency, Aggies have kept their
equilibrium.
Parents returning to their homes over the state will
probably do much to dispell the popular notion that “Texas
A. & M. has gone to the dogs”.
Yes, after a bitter setback in A.&M.’s post-war plans,
things are definitely looking up.
Patents of the Week . . .
Water Shining in Dark Is
Next Aid for Navigators
By Science Service
WASHINGTON, May 11—Chemicals that create a bright glow
when dropped on water, of great possible usefulness to seamen and
trans-ocean flyers, are the subject of a patent just issued here to
three chemists working in the laboratories of the American Cyanamid
Company of New York, Dr. H. T. Lacey, H. E. Millson and F. H.
Heiss. Among possible uses are marking the surface for a plane
making an emergency night landing at sea, giving a “seamark” for
navigational purposes for either ships or planes, and showing the loca-
ftion of lifeboats or liferafts to
searching planes in the dark.
A typical formula consists of 3-
amino-phthalhydrazide, sodium
perborate, potassium ferricyanide
and trisodium phosphate. The in
gredients, ground to fine powder,
are mixed dry and preferably form
ed into tablets or cakes with a
binder. Only on contact with water
do they react to produce chemilu-
A dye used in photography may minescene.
turn out to be a cure for one of ★
Photo Dye
Used to Cure
Elephantisis
the tropical diseases most dreaded
by our forces stationed in the
South Pacific during the war—
elephantisis, the repulsive condi
tion sometimes resulting when fil-
ariasis, a worm-caused disease, is
not treated and becomes chronic.
Cotton rats infested with the
worms almost invariably were
cured by the dye, Drs. Arnold D.
Welch, Lawrence Peters, Emest
Bueding, Arthur Valk, Jr., and
Aeme Higashi of Western Reserve
School of Medicine reported in the
Journal “Science.”
The dye they used is known as
No. 863. It is one of a number
of cyanine dyes which the West
ern Reserve scientists investigated
for the Army and the Office of
Scientific Research and Develop
ment. Cyanine dyes are indispen
sable in photography as color sen
sitizers.
No. 863 has now been given to 27
patients at the School of Tropical
Medicine, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The drug usually does not cause an
immediate disappearance of the
worm larvae, so it may be months
before blood tests show whether
or not the parent worms have been
sterilized or killed.
The drug is given by injection
into the veins. It has not caused
any toxic symptoms other than a
passing low blood pressure and
rapid heart beat which the doctors
say is of no clinical significance.
The present studies are being con
tinued under a grant from the U.S.
Public Health Service.
Comet Becvar
Heading South
By Science Service
BERKELEY, Calif., — Comet
Becvar, discovered just about six
weeks ago in the vicinity of the
pole star, is rapidly making its way
toward the celestial equator. But
the comet is getting fainter as it
speeds across the sky and now,
of the eleventh magnitude, can be
seen only with a good telescope.
Since its discovery on March 27
by the keen-eyed Czechoslovakian
astronomer, Dr. Antonin Becvar,
the comet has raced far from the
constellation of Draco, the dragon.
When located, Comet Becvar was
of the ninth magnitude and had a
declination of plus 81 degrees, 47
minutes.
Moving first over to the con
stellation of Camelopardus, the
giraffe, it sped all the way down
to the constellation of Gemini,
the twins, now visible low in the
west. Calculations made by Dr.
Leland E. Cunningham of Stu
dents’ Observatory, University of
California, here show that the com
et will soon enter the constellation
of Orion, the giant hunter.
Throughout the first part of
May, Comet Becvar will have a
right ascension of six hours, zero
to two and a half minutes. On
May 3 its declination was 22 de
grees, 59 minutes; on May 7, it
was at 19 degrees, 47 minutes; on
May 11, 17 degrees, 2 minutes. By
May 19 the comet will have moved
down to 12 degrees, 26 minutes,
well on its way to the celestial
equator.
Four patents have been granted
to Prof. Adams, head of the chem
istry department at the University
of Illinois, one a series of synthetic
drugs with marihuana-like action,
which he states are useful in treat
ment of narcotic addiction by with
drawal. A typical compound is
prepared by condensing, pulegone,
a derivative of pennyroyal oil, with
one of the higher benzenes in the
presence of a phosphorous-con
taining catalyst.
★
A machine for making a contin
uous supply of finely flaked ice
has been i n v e n t e.d by F. W
Knowles of Seattle. Refrigerant
fluid is contained in a slowly ro
tating drum, which dips into a tank
of water. Around the drum is a
wide belt of wire mesh, which at
one side passes over two smaller
rollers, one of which is of soft rub
ber. Ice forms in the meshes, is
“popped out” when the belt passes
over the rubber roller, and scraped
into a collecting vessel.
★
A surgical instrument for the
easier extraction of iron and steel
fragments from both military and
industrial wounds has been de
signed by a Michigan inventor,
Raymond A. Mull.
Science . . .
Podophyllin
Mystery Drug
Colchicine, the old-fashioned gout
medicine that became a potent
chemical in the work of radical
evolutionary changes in plant
breeding, now has a rival—poddo-
phyllin—which is a resin extracted
from the rootstocks of the may-
apple plant. Podophyllin can do
the same things that colchicine
does, and costs only a small frac
tion as much.
Drs. B. J. Sullivan and H. L.
Wechsler, Fordham University bi
ologist declare that a lot more
needs to be learned about podo
phyllin. Its single name implies
that it is a single substance, where
as it contains at least four distinct
organic compounds; it is not known
which of the four has the colchi
cine-like effect of stopping cell di
vision half-way and thereby pro
ducing giant varieties of plants.
This is what the Fordham biolo
gists are undertaking to do.
Majors Lester S. King and Mau
rice Sullivan, in the medical ser
vice of the Army, were the first
two men to notice the effect of
podophyllin. Although podophyl
lin has been taken from the ap
proved list as an internal medicine
it is still used in the cure of a cer
tain type of skin ailment, and it
was the two medical officers who
led a more careful examination of
its effects on the division process
in animal cells.
Additional Flight Courses
To Be Offered in Summer
More flight training courses will
be offered this summer, it was an
nounced today. More than 180
students took flying lessons this
semester.
Big Polio Year
Is Predicted
By Science Service
CHICAGO, May 14—Another big
polio year is expected this summer
by infantile paralysis experts.
Without making any specific pre
dictions, they told members of the
American College of Physicians
that there will probably be a lot
of polio in the Unites States and
elsewhere for a number of years
to come.
One authority, Dr. Thomas Riv
ers of the Rockefeller Institute,
was quoted as having said that he
feels we are in a pandemic. Pen-
demic is the term scientists use
to describe a world-wide epidemic,
such as the influenza outbreak of
1917-1918.
During the last four years there
has been the largest total number
of cases of polio in the United
States in the history of the nation,
Dr. Edward A. Piszczek of Chica
go reported.
The increase is not just a mat
ter of more accurate reporting.
Doctors actually are seeing more
cases, Dr. Piszczek said. The virus
germ that causes infantile paraly
sis has grown more virulent. Until
it begins to lose some of its viru
lence, we shall go on having lots
of polio cases every year, the
authorities believe. Since the be
ginning of this year 33 states have
reported more polio than for the
same time last year. Authorities
are watching with special concern
increases in some states which for
the past four of five years have
had very little polio.
Doctors are also getting better
results in treating polio, though
there still are no “miracle drugs”
for the disease.
Over 6,000 veterans declared el
igible for hospitalization by Vet
erans Administration during Feb
ruary were emergency cases.
~7j -
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connections and tickets
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j ..?LYmG.*&A%SEHGBBS—5€~Al*MAIL—EXPRESS'
SALESMAN WANTED!
A good opportunity for college men. Open
ing for neat and aggressive men to sell Vita-
Craft Aluminum Utensils in their own dis
trict through leads in spare time, as well as
full time. Never sold in stores. Sales ex
perience unnecessary. We’ll teach you.
Good income for the right man.
Contact the A. & M. Placement Office
If Interested.
THE VITA-CRAFT COMPANY
OF TEXAS
336 West Davis, Dallas 8, Texas
CASH
FOR SLIDE RULES—
T-SQUARES
DRAWING INSTRUMENTS
DRAWING BOARDS
BOOKS
LAMPS
— Best Prices At —
College Book Store
— North Gate —
ORCHIDS FOR YOUR DATE
For the Senior Ring Dance
Our agent will call in the dormitory . . Day
students call at the Green House.
STUDENT FLORAL CONCESSION
Faires to Speak At
Minneapolis Meeting
V. M. Faires, head of the depart
ment of management engineering
and a nationally-recognized auth
ority on thermodynamics, has been
named a speaker for the conven
tion of the American Society for
Engineering Education, to be held
June 18-21 at Minneapolis.
He will speak before the heat-
power group of the mechanical
engineering section on the desira
ble sequence of heat-power courses
in a college curriculum, citing re
sults of streamlining these courses
at A. & M.
COME OUT TO
- FIN FEATHER
COUNTRY CLUB
DINE and DANCE
On the Terrace or Inside.
No Cover Charge Until
8 p. m. Good Food.
M. W. (Pete) SLAUGHTER
’43
BRYAN, TEXAS
THURSDAY, FRIDAY
and SATURDAY
SPENCER TRACY
— In —
“SEA OF GRASS”
PREVIEW SATURDAY
NIGHT, SUN., MON.,
and TUESDAY
KATHRYN GRAYSON
— In —
“IT HAPPENED
IN BROOKLYN”
Opens 1:00 p.m. Ph. 4-1181
Air Conditioned
THURSDAY - FRIDAY
and SATURDAY
“THE HIT PARADE
OF 1947”
PREVIEW TONIGHT
SUNDAY - MONDAY
A Paramount Picture starring
, Paulette Goddard • •
Fred MacMurray jj
^ • wiiii Macdonald Carey • Arleen Wlielan Jt|l
; aMilchfill [COT flotation
Pfoducod by Claude Bmyon
Directed by Mitchell leisen
THURSDAY ONLY
GEORGE RAFT
AVA GARDNER
— In —
“WHISTLE STOP”
FRIDAY - SATURDAY
with
TOM l ,
OTA C0RDAY . VINCE BARNETT • JANE 6REER • EUSHA COOK. JR
^.froducad WIUIAM BERK£ v Diractad by RAY Me CAREY .
Scruff Jlay by PAUI YAWlTZf
— Plus
“JOHNNY COMES
FLYING HOME”
_ With —
RICHARD CRANE
FAYE MARLOWE