In America, attention until recently had been almost exclusively absorbed in methods to promote the diffusion of knowledge. Our entire public-school system, culminating in the college, was designed to instruct young America in the culture and the knowledge of the past. A new movement was instituted in 1876 when Johns Hopkins University introduced the graduate school to promote research work, and to provide training for original effort. This early attempt was widely imitated, and the underlying idea has been developed on a larger scale. Probably the most significant step toward the promotion of scientific discovery was the foundation of the Carnegie Institution for Original Research, in Washington, under an endowment of ten million dollars. The Smithsonian Institution, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and the Russell Sage Foundation are among the indications in American scientific life of the recognition of the fact that research is becoming more and more co-operative, and should consist of organized, rather than haphazard, co-operation. Such an organization for co-operative research work, correlated with an improved system of diffusion, would represent the highest integration of inter-mental communication and of reflective socialization!

While America is becoming conscious of the benefits of organization for research and for practical invention, Germany is enjoying the advantages of organized effort in industry. Wilhelm Ostwald states the situation as follows: "The organization of the power of invention in manufactures on a large scale in Germany is, as far as I know, unique in the world's history, and is the very marrow of our splendid triumphs. Each large works has the greater part of its scientific staff—and there are often more than a hundred Doctors of Philosophy in a single manufactory-occupied not in the management of the manufacture, but in making inventions. The research laboratory in such works is only different from one in a university from its being more splendidly and sumptuously fitted. I have heard from the business managers of such works that they have not infrequently men who have worked for four years without practical success; but if they have known them to possess ability, they keep them notwithstanding, and in most cases with ultimate success sufficient to pay all expenses." " 27

In comparison with the magnificent showing of Germany's industrial organization for chemical research, the report on "chemicals" in

27Iles, op. cit., pp. 275-76.

the Twelfth Census Report cited28 only 276 chemists in the establishments of this country. Yet this beginning is an indication of the trend in many American industries. Many manufacturing establishments have experimental departments where experts are employed at high salaries. For instance: "In the larger [sewing-machine] factories the experimental department is one of the most important and expensive. Here the inventor has every facility for developing new ideas and putting the results to preliminary tests. When, after a great deal of time and labor has been expended on an invention, and it has reached an apparently perfect condition, it is sent to a factory engaged in the class of work for which it is designed, and is thoroughly tested. If its operation proves satisfactory, a special plant of machinery is installed for the manufacture of the new machine or attachment, so that any number of duplicates can be made. After all this expensive preparation and experiment, the invention may be soon replaced by something better, and abandoned!"29 Similar illustrations might be obtained from many branches of industry. Mechanical, civil, and electrical engineering are professional departments of invention; they exhibit the application of scientific principles reduced to an art.

Conscious effort directed toward the organization of experimental departments and toward the establishment of technical institutions. and professions indicates the crystallization of a social valuation of the importance of securing the practical utilization of the highest scientific knowledge. The principles underlying the movement are twofold: first, increased contact between theory and practice; and secondly, increased co-operation of effort in discovery and invention. No matter how artificial and attenuated may be the contact implicit in modern organization for scientific research and practical application, the mechanism of the process is to be found in the higher integration of communication and co-operation, the twin expressions of socialization.

Social organization, then, is an important factor in promoting or in retarding invention. The stable mental attitudes of the group, division of labor by sex and by trade, the development of a leisure class, the differentiation of a scientific group, organization for cooperative research and practical application are stages in mental and

28 Loc. cit., IV, 528.

29 Ibid., 417.

social organization. This process of development in the cognitive phase of the social life will not be complete until scientific knowledge is democratized, and until free opportunity is provided for each person to take part, to the measure of his ability, in the discovery and application of truth. St. Bernard saw clearly that progress was due not so much to the superior genius of innovators as to the support and the opportunity guaranteed by the social organization. "We are as dwarfs mounted on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more and further than they; yet not by virtue of the keenness of our eyesight, nor through the tallness of our stature, but because we are raised and borne aloft upon that giant mass." 30

30 Poole, in Social England (Traill and Mann, editors, 1905), I, 341.

CHAPTER V

ORIGINATION AS A FUNCTION OF SOCIALIZATION. III. SOCIAL STIMULI AND DEMAND

Personal participation in the social heritage, the extra-organic equipment of the race, is necessary to secure a basis for innovation. The complexity and character of the social organization either extends or contracts the scope of personal freedom, the measure of opportunity, and the degree of possible efficiency and specializationall big factors in determining the rate of the acceleration of progress. But another factor, conditioning invention and, like the social heritage and the social organization, also an aspect of socialization, is social stimuli and demand. While the social heritage affords the basis for the innovation, and the social organization accelerates or impedes progress, social stimuli and demand largely determine the direction and character of invention. For example, the technical preconditions for two possible inventions may be altogether similar, yet one materializes and is perfected, while the other is never conceived or else dies still-born. The explanation of this situation involves the analysis of this additional factor, namely, social stimuli and demand.

The distinction between social stimuli and social demand is only relative. They are the two sides of the same shield. By group stimulus is meant all the intangible and tangible social influences which control the direction of the attention of the individual, arouse his interest, and determine his activity. By social demand is meant the entire gamut of group needs, unconscious as well as conscious, which impinge upon the individuals in the group. The stimuli are objective and more or less definite; the demands are subjective, but are mandatory if not always specific.

1. Social stimuli are of two kinds: natural and artificial. Natural social stimuli, praise and blame, fashion and fad, many economic advantages, are only slightly under rational group control. Artificial stimuli, such as rewards and special privileges, are arrangements sanctioned by the group and designed to direct the course of inventive talent.

a) Under the natural social stimuli we shall consider those operating in two situations: first, those arising in the thought-provoking

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eddies of intimate social intercourse; and secondly, those found in the deeper currents of the social stream.

We can hardly overestimate the influences generated in the intimate face-to-face groups. By means of conversation, through the give-and-take of ideas, the horizon of the person is enlarged, his interests are widened, his attention is drawn to the needs of the group, his ingenuity is directed and stimulated. Accounts of the decisive influence of the intimate group upon invention are familiar. A chance debate on the possibilities of the invention of a weaving mill drew out the assertion from Cartwright that the difficulties were not so great as in devising an automatic chess player,1 and finally led this argumentative clergyman to put his theory into practice. Arkwright's attention was turned to textile inventions because he was brought "into constant intercourse with persons engaged in weaving and spinning," and because "inventions . . were a constant topic of conversation among the manufacturing population." 2 That Whitney, a Yankee, should invent the cotton-gin was due to the faith3 in his mechanical ingenuity of the southern woman in whose home he was tutor. In all three instances the attention of men of mechanical genius was directed to a field of activity by reason of their membership in intimate groups.

How far-reaching in every activity are the group influences! The standards of achievement are erected in the group; here the pace is set; records are established only to be broken. Personal ambition, envy, admiration, self-seeking are all placed under the social yoke to cultivate and to enrich the social field. The concrete process of human association for the twofold achievement of personal and group ends intensifies the socialization and results in important human achievements. This personal participation of the person in the life of the group is the means by which the individual secures for himself the heritage of the past and is fitted for a part in the co-operative achievement of further advance. Socialization, then, in this aspect of a social environment furnishing the strongest possible stimuli for action, has a determining influence over the course of invention.

Burnley, History of Wool and Woolcombing, 1889, p. 111. 2Dictionary of National Biography, II, 82.

Crabtree, op. cit., p. 637.