ith the greatest
scientific efficiency, and no personal or local prejudices that will
restrict the work.

These plans may seem to you visionary, and too Utopian for the twentieth
century. But they may be nearer fulfilment than we anticipate. The true
astronomer of to-day is eminently a practical man. He does not accept
plans of a sensational character. The same qualities 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.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Future of Astronomy, by Edward C. Pickering

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