sgiz] Industrial Research in Canada 223 



THE CRYING NEED OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH IN CANADA 



By Rev. Geo. Bryce. M.A., D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.C. 



Member of Royal Commission on Industrial Training and Technical 



Education. 



(Read jrd February, igi2.) 



Canadians, I fear, Mr. President, are disposed to be a self-satis- 

 fied people. We have not yet reached our jubilee as a Nation of the Em- 

 pirei but we are inclined to think that we have done pretty well. It may 

 be that the contrast between our condition before Confederation and our 

 status at the present time is so great that we are apt to think more highly 

 of ourselves than we ought to think. The student who fears the result 

 of his examination is hilarious if he should make a bare "pass, " the work- 

 man who has been receiving a low wage regards himself as rich if he is 

 given a slight increase, and the Government which has had a deficit or a 

 falling revenue is highly pleased if expenditure does not go beyond receipts. 

 But excellence in each case means more than that. So, when we recall 

 the homespun garb and the impassable roads, and the unsettled markets, 

 and the poor school facilities which some of us knew some forty or fifty 

 years ago, we are inclined to self-congratulation over our present cir- 

 cumstances and achievements. No doubt to-day Canada is the land of 

 opportunity, but that is just because it is still far from what it may be- 

 come. 



I am a patriotic, and, in some respects, a proud Canadian, but to- 

 night I cannot be a prophet of smooth things. 



After a survey of many countries, in the last year or two, I feel it 

 to be appropriate to choose as a subject for this evening's address, "The 

 Crying Need for Industrial Research in Canada." 



I have been in the cities and towns of England and Scotland, in many 

 of the centres of Germany and Holland, and in several of the States of the 

 American Union, and all these places, I find, are earnestly taken up with 

 enforcing laws of compulsory education and in organizing Continuation 

 Schools, so that a general elementary education may be secured for vir- 

 tually the whole population. 



What have we seen in Canada? Several provinces with no com- 

 pulsory educational requirement; except in a few places no real insistence 

 on general education, and the adjuncts of a sympathetic and persuasive 

 education entirely lacking. When we think of the hundreds of small 

 groups of children in Canada in the so-called little red school-houses, 

 when there are uncertificated and incompetent teachers by hundreds in 



