ments in science. But this was found to be impracticable,
and the policy adopted was to find young men whose reputation was
yet to be made, and who would be the leading men of the future,
instead of belonging to the past.

All my experience would lead me to say that the selection of the
coming man in science is almost as difficult as the selection of
youth who are to become senators of the United States. The success
of the university in finding the young men it wanted, has been one
of the most remarkable features in the history of the Johns Hopkins
University. Of this the lamented Rowland affords the most striking,
but by no means the only instance. Few could have anticipated
that the modest and scarcely known youth selected for the chair of
physics would not only become the leading man of his profession in
our country, but one of the chief promoters of scientific research
among us. Mathematical study and research of the highest order
now commenced, not only at Baltimore, but at Harvard, Columbia,
and other centres of learning, until, to-day, we are scarcely behind
any nation in our contributions to the subject.

The development of economic study in our country during the last
quarter of the last century is hardly less remarkable than that of
mathematical science. A great impulse in this direction was given
by Professor R. T. Ely, who, when the Johns Hopkins University was
organized, became its leading teacher in economics. He had recently
come from Germany, where he had imbibed what was supposed to be
a new gospel in economics, and he now appeared as the evangelist
of what was termed the historical school. My own studies were of
course too far removed from this school to be a factor in it. But,
so far as I was able, I fought the idea of there being two schools,
or of any necessary antagonism between the results of the two methods.
It was true that there was a marked difference in form between them.
Some men preferred to reach conclusions by careful analysis of human
nature and study of the acts to which men were led in seeking to
carry out their own ends. This was called the old-school method.
Others preferred to study the problem on a large scale, especially
as shown in the economic development of the country. But there
could be no necessary difference between the conclusions thus reached.

One curious fact, which has always been overlooked in the history
of economics in our country, shows how purely p