Carolina watchman. [volume] (Salisbury, N.C.) 1871-1937, 1934-06-29

SCIENTISTS at vork
The popular idea of a scientis
is an old man with an absent-mind
ed expression hunting through a mi
croscope for something tina
wouldn't be any use if he found it
l wish l coild take every one 0.
my readers through any of tn
great industrial laboratories witt
which l am familiar, and in which
| have often watched scientists a
work. One of them employs NOR
than a thousand young men, ,eacl
of whom has a university Doctor:
degree, in chemistry, engineering
or philosophy, and has had to prove
his ability to do original research
work before he could get his job.
They are very far from being the
%doddering dodoes which the public
imagines men of science to be,
They are as keen, human and inter-
esting a group of men as l have
ever encountered anywhere. Their
prime purpose is to find ways to
make the telephone work faster,
better and cheaper. But as BY
products of their discoveries such
inventions as talking pictures, chain
broadcasting, television and many
other things have come out of that
laboratory.
PROGRESS look back
L have little patience with the
common complaint that inventions
and machinery have brought the
world to ruin. Exactly the oppo-
site is true. Who would be con-
tent to go back. even % the days of
my own boyhood?
| can remember when there were
no telephones, no electric lights
mol electric power, no airplanes, no
motion pictures, no monographs,
no typewriters, no Portland cement.
no bathtubs or plumbing to speak
of, no gas engines, no automobiles.
of course, and not even any BIZ
cycles. Wireless telegraphy and its
offspring, radio broadcasting, were
undreamed of; the dirigible aircraft
was a romatic novelistts fantasy.
l could fill this column with
products of the application of
science by invention to serve hu-
manity. I think the world is bet
ter off.
HEALTH life SAFER
saw a notice posted in a New
York subway car the other day in
which the Health Commissioner
pointed out that only 81 babies died
in the big city of diptheria last
year, whereas several thousand died
of it annually only a few years ago.
Anti-toxin has put an end to this
massacre of the innocents.
One by one. in my own time. 4
have seen the scourges of mankind
vanish under the advance of medi-
cal science. Smallpox, bubonic,
yellow fever, malaria, typhus, ty-
phoid, tuberculosis, scarlet fever,
all the long list of diseases that took
high toll of human lives when 1
was a boy, have been banished or
are rapidly being conquered by the
forward march of civilization and
and the steady advance in medical
knowledge and public hygiene
measures.
CANCER needs research
One of my friends lost his wife
a few months ago. She had a can
GER. The other day he told me that
he had been inspired by that trag-
edy to investigate the whole subject
of cancer, and was surprised to
find that nothing that could prop
erly be called scientific research by
modern methods had been under
taken, into either the cause or the
possible cure of this most dreadful
of all diseases.
My friend is a man of scientific
training, familiar with the methods
of the great research laboratories.
81 am sure" he said that with
three or four million dollars avail
able with which to hire competent
chemists. biologists and patholo-
gists. any Of the big industrial la
boratories could find the cause of
cancer and a cure for it, in a few
years"
1t is easier to get money with
which to do research that is ex-
pected to result in more money,
than it is when nothing more i'm
portant than human lives is in
volved.
BLOOD ... Jour tybes -.