216 THE PATH OF SCIENCE 



training to selected young men who plan to follow industrial 

 research as a career. 



The Armour Research Foundation developed in 1936 from 

 industrial research directed by the faculty of the Armour 

 Institute of Technology. It has grown very rapidly and in 

 the year 1943-1944 had in operation 117 long-term projects 

 with a total budget of $1,670,000. It carries on its work 

 under a plan whereby each problem is subjected to the col- 

 lective thinking and co-operative action of a permanent staff 

 of research workers in many fields of science, and in which 

 every possible routine operation is removed from the research 

 T worker's responsibility and placed in the hands of auxiliary 

 service laboratories. 



In general, these technological research institutes are in- 

 creasing both in size and in number and are rendering a great 

 service to American industry. During the year 1945 alone, 

 two new ones were founded— the Southern Research Insti- 

 tute, at Birmingham, Alabama, and the Midwest Research 

 Institute, at Kansas City, Missouri. Research facilities are 

 thus made conveniently available to industries within 

 these regions. The institutes provide equipment, often on 

 a semi-plant scale, that would not otherwise be available for 

 experimental work, and they often specialize in certain fields 

 of work with a long-range, continuous progiam approximat- 

 ing to the work of a specialized research group. They are 

 also of great value for training men; and in many cases manu- 

 facturers who have endowed an industrial fellowship even- 

 tually establish research laboratories of their own, employing 

 in them the men who have carried on the work as fellows. 

 These technological institutes thus serve as nurseries for pri- 

 vate industrial research laboratories in addition to doing work 

 directly and training men. This influence is of the greatest 

 importance, because however effective is the actual research 

 work done in an external laboratory, that ^vork should supple- 

 ment rather than take the place of scientific work done as an 

 integral part of the business. 



