These are but instances of the many which exist where talented individuals are working under great handicaps which neither promote their talent nor secure fecundity of results to collective man. In nearly every line of human endeavor gifted individuals are consuming in an unnecessarily wasteful manner, from the point of view of social improvement, their splendid abilities. In educational institutions trained experts and specialists are doing the work which very ordinary ability of a merely clerical kind could conduct, sacrificing the higher and more fruitful attainments thereby. I have known a faculty of some forty members who were compelled to register the term standings by sitting in a circle and calling off the grades of several hundred students student by student and class by class for each student as it came their turn, while a clerk recorded the grades. The process consumed about ten hours per member each term, or something over a thousand hours a year for the whole faculty. Both economically and socially it was expensive and wasteful because a cheap clerk could have done the whole far better and have released the talent for productive purposes. We shall be wise when we realize the worth of our workable talent and so establish its working conditions that it may secure the full measure of its productiveness. If scientific management for the mass of laborers of a nation is worth while how much more serviceable would it be to extend its fructifying influence to the most able members of the community. But how to proceed in order to make the discovery of the latent talent is the pressing problem. For a long time our methods promise to be as empirical as are those we employ for the advancement of science. Relative to the latter, after enumerating a large list of conditions for promoting science of which we are ignorant, Professor Cattell says: 'In the face of endless problems of this character we are as empirical in our methods as the doctor of physic a hundred years ago or the agricultural laborer to-day. It is surely time for scientific men to apply scientific methods to determine the circumstances that promote or hinder the advancement of science.'[6] [6] "American Men of Science," p. 565. Since the discovery and utilization of genius and talent in general are so closely related to the problem of the promotion of science, his statement may be adopted to express the demand existing in those directions. WAR, BUSINESS AND INSURANCE[1] [1] Chairman's address on Peace Day of the Insurance Congress, Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, October 11, 1915. BY CHANCELLOR DAVID STARR JORDAN STANFORD UNIVERSITY