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National Resources Planning Board 



supply is worth while. High school boys should be 

 given some inkling of the possibilities of metallurgy as 

 a career so that they may consider it as one of the 

 alternative occupations for which they might prepare 

 while still undecided about what they want to do. 

 Thus some might so choose their college courses, though 

 not necessarily by taking metallurgy, that they would 

 be sought by the metallurgical industries. This would 

 aid in long-range planning for a steady supply of men 

 for research. 



Job StablUty 



It is likewise important to make sure that men fitted 

 for ultimate success in research and with some accu- 

 mulated experience are not unnecessarily diverted from 

 research, or so placed that their past experience is not 

 utilized. During valleys of the depressions of the past 

 decade, especially the first one, some metallurgical re- 

 search groups built up during the previous boom years, 

 or somewhat replenished during periods of temporary 

 improvement, were scattered overnight by executive 

 decision, and many research metallurgists were thrown 

 into the ranks of the imemployed. Those executive 

 decisions in many cases have been repented and the 

 research staffs again augmented, but, since the capable 

 men usually found jobs with firms that did not disrupt 

 their research groups, their experience was lost to their 

 former employer. Security of tenure in research jobs 

 seems greater now than at any time in the past. 



Working Conditions 



Consistent with the trend toward picking men with 

 the right type of mind for research and who intend to 

 make research their sole business, is the trend toward 

 providing environment and working conditions that 

 will favor efficient work. Many research laboratories 

 are planned not merely for convenience, but attention 

 is also paid to dignity of architecture. Numbers of such 

 laboratories have been built in the last decade and 

 stand as evidence of the importance of environment. 

 In the direction of effective research, care is taken that 

 the men have time to think. Extreme pressure for 

 immediate results exerted on a research man seldom 

 helps to produce those results. An atmosphere of 

 much greater freedom than needs to be accorded the 

 men of the routine control laboratory is called for. 



Both for reasons of the workers' satisfaction and to 

 promote efficiency in their work, there is a growing 

 tendency towards complete relief of the research 

 organization from the responsibilities of production 

 control and trouble shooting. While every effort is 

 made to have the research men in constant touch with 

 the practical conditions of production so that they will 

 keep their feet on the ground and be able to solve 

 problems that arise, research is more and more being 



made a continuing, full-time activity rather than knit- 

 ting work to be picked up and dropped according to 

 the ebb and flow of plant difficulties. 



Reasonable freedom for the research worker to pub- 

 lish his results and thus secure professional recognition 

 is a factor in his satisfaction with his job, and generally 

 benefits the employer as much as it does the employee. 

 "Public relations" are benefited by pubhcation. 



Tlie Written Word 



No one thing affects the satisfaction and the efficiency 

 of a research worker more than the availability of proper 

 library facilities. The library is the most important 

 tool of research. Moreover, if we are not to require 

 prior formal metallurgical instruction of those engaging 

 in metallurgical research, but intend to leave the door 

 open to those of different basic training, upon which 

 they themselves must superimpose a specific, self- 

 acquired metallurgical education, the means for self- 

 instruction must be at hand. The availability of 

 printed metallurgical information, therefore, should be 

 considered here. This situation is very satisfactory. 

 The sharing of technical, scientific, and research infor- 

 mation in metallurgy is carried on to high degree 

 through the publications of the American Society for 

 Metals, the American Institute of Mining and Metal- 

 lurgical Engineers, The American Foundrymcn's Asso- 

 ciation, the American Society for Testing Materials, 

 the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the 

 Electrochemical Society, and others, together with tech- 

 nical and trade journals not connected with any society. 



British society publications and journals, pretty 

 much counterparts of the American ones, and a smaller 

 number of useful metallurgical journals in Swedish, 

 French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Russian, ab- 

 stracted by United States and British abstract services, 

 add to the bulk of printed information. The majority 

 of the pages published on metallurgy contain reports on 

 research. Indeed, though a metallurgical society starts 

 out with the primary aim of service to the practical man 

 and plans to make its meetings of the order of foreman 

 conferences, in time it comes to placing emphasis on 

 research in its publications. The early proceedings of 

 the American Brass Foundrymcn's Association, now the 

 Institute of Metals Division of the A. I. M. E., compared 

 with the often very abstruse theoretical publications of 

 the Division today, show this. So do the early trans- 

 actions of the American Society for Steel Treating, com- 

 pared with those of its successor, the American Society 

 for Metals. The same tendency is working in the 

 American Electroplater's Society and the Wire Indus- 

 tries Association. The appreciation of research and the 

 development of means for the dissemination of its re- 

 sults are characteristic of metallurgical societies. 



Outstanding as a means of making new metallurgical 



