STARVING OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 41 



at which research work is carried on. Money can 

 be given to provide books and tools and apparatus, 

 and, still more important, time. It is already given 

 to some extent in England; but that which is 

 given to provide for scientific research is minute 

 in comparison with the huge amounts derived from 

 the development of the results of research. 



On Christmas Day, 1821, Michael Faraday, 

 who had been working on a previous experiment 

 by Oersted made in 1819, called his wife into his 

 laboratory to see, for the first time, a magnet 

 going round an electric current. That was the 

 first of all the electric motors. It would be hard 

 to say how many millions, nay thousands of millions, 

 the electric motor has added to the wealth of the 

 world. But it is quite safe to say that no more 

 than a small fraction of one per cent, of that sum 

 has gone back to encourage further research. 



In a paper in the Scientific Monthly of November, 

 1915, Professor T. Brailsford Robertson quotes 

 census returns showing that the annual value of 

 manufacturing industries in the United States 

 developed from patented scientific invention was, 

 in 1909, about eighty millions sterling. He adds 

 that in 1913 the whole income of all the higher 

 institutions of learning in the States was about 

 eighteen millions sterling, of which a minute 

 percentage was expended in research. Any corre- 

 sponding figures for the United Kingdom would 

 certainly be far worse. Strike out all processes 



