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The latest case in point, Alfred Nobel's foundation of annual prizes for the reward of scientific discovery, of literary merit, and humanitarian endeavor, deserves special notice. Alfred Nobel, the dynamite king, as he was styled, belonged to a family of inventors and industrial magnates. His father, Emmanuel Nobel, was the inventor of nitroglycerine, and of fixed submarine torpedoes or mines.
It was Nobel's object to reward and help the pure man of science, too much absorbed in his researches to think of drawing any industrial or pecuniary advantages from his scientific discoveries.
Nobel's forty thousand dollars did not go to a comparatively obscure and uncapitalized inventor who had written a book to build a world with, or at least a great preliminary design, or sketch, toward a world. The Nobel Prize Trustees, instead of giving the forty thousand dollars to Allen Upward, looked carefully about through all the nations until their eyes fell on a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling.
But it certainly is a question that cannot but keep recurring to one's mind the unfortunate, and perhaps rather unlooked-for, way in which Mr. Nobel's Will works.
Of late, in place of the infusorial earth which formed the solid portion of Nobel's dynamite, such substances as sawdust, powdered bark, and even gunpowder, have been used, probably for the sake of economy alone, without, except in the latter case, any reference to the influence which they might have upon the combustion of the nitro-glycerine; but M. Roca, in testing a variety of samples, was struck by the difference among them in regard to energy of explosion, and discovered that if a portion of free carbon, sufficient to combine with the oxygen disengaged from the nitro-glycerine, was present at the moment of detonation, the effect was greater than where, as in the case of gunpowder, the solid portion alone furnished oxygen enough to burn all the free carbon, without calling upon the nitro-glycerine for any.
Leyds's system of misrepresentation was exposed. Whilst the Commission was actually taking evidence the then State Secretary in an interview with the Paris Temps strongly supported the dynamite monopoly, and stated that the price charged, namely, 90s. per case, was the same at which the Chamber of Mines had offered to enter into a sixteen years' contract with Nobel's factory.
Nobel's prize was given also to some German professors who are responsible for the new pedagogy in Germany. These three can be the best possible supporters or the worst enemies of your educational scheme. Mothers by nature adore their children and excite their individualism. Patriots try to engage the whole heart and imagination of a child for its own country.
Leyds had suppressed the essential fact that whereas out of the 90s. paid to the monopolists the Government only receive 5s. by way of duty, they would out of the 90s. which it was proposed to pay for Nobel's dynamite receive no less than 38s. per case as duty, and that if the contract proposed by the Chamber had been made the Government would have profited during the previous four years to the extent of £1,200,000 instead of £150,000.
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