While Eliot was in Europe, he was again presented with the opportunity to enter the world of active business. The Merrimack Mills, one of the largest textile mills in the United States, tendered him an invitation to become its superintendent. In spite of the urgings of his friends and the attractiveness of what for the time was the enormous salary of $5000 (plus a good house, rent free), Eliot, after giving considerable thought to the offer, turned it down. One of his biographers speculated that he surely realized by this time that he had a strong taste for organizing and administration. This post would have given it scope. He must have felt, even if dimly, that if science interested him, it was not because he was first and last a lover of her laws and generalizations, not only because the clarity and precision of science was congenial, but because science answered the questions of practical men and conferred knowledge and power upon those who would perform the labors of their generation.
While Eliot was in Europe he was again presented with the opportunity to enter the world of active business. The Merrimack Mills, one of the largest textile mills in the United States, tendered him an invitation to become its superintendent. In spite of the urgings of his friends and the attractiveness of what for the time was the enormous salary of $5000 (plus a good house, rent free), Eliot, after giving considerable thought to the offer, turned it down. One of his biographers speculated that he surely realized by this time that he had a strong taste for organizing and administration. This post would have given it scope. He must have felt, even if dimly, that if science interested him, it was not because he was first and last a lover of her laws and generalizations, not only because the clarity and precision of science was congenial, but because science answered the questions of practical men and conferred knowledge and power upon those who would perform the labors of their generation.