Industrial Research 



93 



our household electrical appliances, is the result of re- 

 search in such a commercial laboratory. Some 24 trade 

 associations reported in the United States Chamber of 

 Commerce survey that they utilize this type of organi- 

 zation to carry on their technical research. 



University Fellowships and Grants 



Fellowships at technical schools and universities are 

 sponsored by 21 trade associations. These fellowships 

 are generally founded in an institution where some 

 member of the faculty is known to be especially versed 

 in the particular research problem involved. The fel- 

 lowships are usually extended to graduate students 

 working for higher degrees. For a relatively modest 

 sum, half of a fellow's time is obtained and, in addition, 

 the consulting services of the professor are available. 

 Such arrangements arc particularly effective if the 

 boundaries of the problem arc well defined so that a 

 planned line of procedure can be laid down. They are 

 not as effective in fields where the problems are ill de- 

 fined. Similar to these fellowships arc money grants 

 made to members of university faculties to enable them 

 to pay for supplies, apparatus, and laboratory assist- 

 ants for research on problems submitted for study. In 

 such cases it is often not possible to arrange that a 

 specific amoxmt of time be devoted on projects under- 

 taken. Usually such research is secondary to the regu- 



lar university work of the researcher and must be done 

 by him as time permits. 



The National Fertilizer Association, for example, has 

 employed these methods for research with excellent 

 results. Funds for fellowships in agronomy were made 

 available to a number of universities where the college 

 of agriculture and the State agricultural experiment 

 station were jointly operated. The problems selected 

 for these research activities were not only of scientific 

 interest to the faculty, but their successful solution 

 also promised benefit to agriculture in general. The 

 problems naturallj^ concerned some phase of plant feed- 

 ing because the fertilizer, or plant food, industry was 

 supplying the necessary funds. In carrying out some 

 of the projects, grants were also made for traveling and 

 other expenses to representatives of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture who cooperated and assisted 

 in coordinating the various studies. At least a dozen 

 such projects were supported, some of them lasting 

 several years, and in some years several thousand dol- 

 lars were appropriated. 



The most extensive and probably the most important 

 research carried out under these plans was the study 

 of the proper methods for applying fertilizers to various 

 crops in order to produce the most effective results. 

 A number of fellowships and grants were established for 

 this purpose and, in addition, research projects covering 



Figure 15. — National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association, Washington, D. C 



