38 



NATURE 



[September 9, 1920 



sources of supply for our raw material. India is 

 also developing- its cotton industry to supply its 

 own needs, and the tendency must always be in 

 this direction when a country concerns itself with 

 progressive industry. China has not yet reached 

 this condition, and therefore it exports raw cotton, 

 wool, and silk, and imports textiles made from 

 them. We are able Ko send into China cottons 

 and woollens to the value of about ten million 

 pounds annually, solely because we are in advance 

 of that country in science and invention. 



We have reached our position as a great indus- 

 trial nation by the use of scientific knowledge, and 

 we cannot go back to the time when domestic 

 manufactures and home markets were our only 

 concern. China is rich in the very natural 

 products to which our country largely owes its 

 prosperity, and through which a large part of the 

 population secures profitable employment. There 

 is enough coal in the province of Shansi alone to 

 last the world for several thousand years, yet 

 China has not benefited from its riches because of 

 its indifference to progressive knowledge. Two 

 hundred years ago we were in much the same 

 condition. At that time the total quantity of coal 

 raised in Great Britain was not more than a few 

 thousand tons, whereas now the annual output 

 approaches three million tons. Our early coal 

 mines were not more than about i8o ft. deep, and 

 it was the invention of Newcomen's pumping 

 engine that enabled the depth to be extended to 

 about 300 ft. Now, thanks to Watt's steam- 

 engine, and modern methods of ventilation and 

 coal-getting, shafts can be sunk and coal seams 

 worked at ten times this depth. Our buried 

 treasure would have remained hidden in the bowels 

 of the earth to this day, and the million or so 

 miners who derive their living from them would 

 be without an occupation which owes its growth 

 entirely to the steam-engine and other machinery 

 which science and ingenuity have provided. 



These workers now number about 5 per cent, 

 of the occupied persons in this country, and they 

 threaten to hold up most of the nation's industries 

 unless certain demands they make are granted. 

 Whether their peremptory action can be justified 

 or not we will not attempt to discuss, but we do 

 ask them to remember that they owe their occupa- 

 tional existence to science, and that men of 

 science really hold the key of power to all indus- 

 trial positions. A few hundred chemists engaged 

 in dye manufacture, or a few thousand in the pro- 

 duction of sulphuric acid, could paralyse almost 

 every industry if they adopted the action by 

 NO. 2654, VOL. 106] 



which the coal-miners now challenge the Govern- 

 ment of this country. 



The closing of the coal mines would mean the 

 stoppage of our iron and steel trade, upon which 

 our industrial greatness has been built, and here 

 again the industry owes its modern development 

 to such men of science as Sir Henry Bessemer, 

 Dr. William Siemens, and Sir Robert Hadfield, 

 to mention three only. Iron ore occurs in China 

 almost as widely diffused as coal, but it is a talent 

 buried in the ground, and the country derives 

 little profit from it, either in employment or in 

 power. The Chinese possess to a supreme degree 

 the conservative spirit which opposes aU advance 

 or change, and we should have remained in their 

 position if vested interests, either of employer or of 

 employed, had been permitted to control national 

 development, and industry had failed to take 

 advantage of scientific discovery. Manganese and 

 nickel, titanium, molybdenum, tungsten, vana- 

 dium, and other elements now used in steel- 

 making were all products of scientific investiga- 

 tion, and from them wealth has been created and 

 work provided. 



It would be easy to show that science has been 

 the source of development of our chief industries 

 and that a single scientific discovery, like that of 

 magneto-electricity by Faraday, for example, con- 

 tributes far more to human progress than the 

 action of all the politicians and labour leaders put 

 together. The discovery of thorium and cerium 

 made possible the manufacture of incandescent 

 gas mantles, of which about four hundred millions 

 are now produced annually, and from osmium and 

 tungsten have developed the great production of 

 metallic filament lamps. Aluminium, discovered 

 in 1827, has risen from the position of a rare 

 metal to a yearly tonnage exceeded only by iron, 

 lead, copper, zinc, and tin, and it is manufactured 

 exclusively by electrolytic methods, which would 

 never have come into existence but for the investi- 

 gation by men of science of the chemical effects 

 of the electric current. 



The workers are now strong enough to exact 

 their fair share of the profits arising out of the ap- 

 plications of science, and no one wishes to dispute 

 their just claims in this respect. In their delibera- 

 tions, however, they should occasionally show 

 that they realise the part which science plays in 

 opening up new fields of work without itself 

 sharing in the distribution of the wealth it creates. 

 Probably, if there were a complete levelling of all 

 incomes, wage-earners would not benefit by more 

 than about 5 per cent., yet this is the subject 



