Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/120

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116
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

are needed in directing a great observatory successfully, as in managing a railroad, or factory. Any one can propose a gigantic expenditure, but to prove to a shrewd man of affairs that it is feasible and advisable is a very different matter. It is much more difficult to give away money wisely than to earn it. Many men have made great fortunes, but few have learned how to expend money wisely in advancing science, or to give it away judiciously. Many persons have given large sums to astronomy, and some day we shall find the man with broad views who will decide to have the advice and aid of the astronomers of the world, in his plans for promoting science, and who will thus expend his money, as he made it, taking the greatest care that not one dollar is wasted. Again, let us consider the next great advance, which perhaps will be a method of determining the distances of the stars. Many of us are working on this problem, the solution of which may come to some one any day. The present field is a wide one, the prospects are now very bright, and we may look forward to as great an advance in the twentieth century, as in the nineteenth. May a portion of this come to the Case School and, with your support, may its enviable record, in the past, be surpassed by its future achievements.