February io, 191 6] 



NATURE 



663 



fact of which many of us have been painfully aware 

 for a good many years, and one which through the 

 stern teaching of the war is gradually being brought 

 home to the bulk of the nation. This, however, is a 

 matter which is intimately bound up with our whole 

 system of education, and until that system has been 

 thoroughly reformed it is hopeless to expect that chem- 

 istry and the other experimental sciences will take 

 v'ir proper position. 



So far as our colleges are concerned, I feel very 

 . Liongly that a more thorough training in analytical 

 cliemistry ,is desirable, and 1 would, in addition, 

 venture to suggest that the present curriculum of those 

 chemical students who intend to become professional 

 chemists should, whenever possible, be amplified so as 

 to include a further year of study. During this post- 

 graduate year, the student should be trained by 

 thoroughly competent and specially selected teachers 

 under conditions approximating more to those of the 

 lechnical than to those of the academic laboratory. 



Whilst words fait to express the indignation which 

 one sometimes feels at the miserable wages (the word 

 "salary" would be out of place) offered to men who 

 have devoted several years and a not inconsiderable 

 sum of money to their training, yet, on the other 

 hand, the young chemist seeking a position should 

 remember that his future lies very largely in his own 

 hands. The manufacturer on his side must under- 

 stand that in engaging the services of a young chemist 

 from one of our universities he is getting the partly- 

 manufactured material, and not the finished product. 

 He should be told that his future employee is merely 



well-trained apprentice who knows how to use the 



uis of his craft, but will have to be given time 

 in which to find his feet and to learn something of the 

 new conditions under which he''will have to work. It 

 is here that our university professors can do much to 

 prevent misunderstanding and disappointment by point- 

 ing out to manufacturers the limitations of the men 

 whom they may be recommending. 



.V good many manufacturers (I am not, of course, 

 referring to the heads of large concerns where many 

 chemists are employed, and where their functions are 

 thoroughly well understood and appreciated) do not 

 always know very clearly what they want. They have 

 a vague idea that some sort of chemical assistance is 

 necessary in a modern factory, and they consequently 

 go to one of our colleges and state that they want "a 

 chemist." As one of the objects of our colleges is ver\- 

 properly to find employment for the men they have 

 trained, he is offered the services of a man who has 

 perhaps just finished his chemical course, but knows 

 I!rt!e or nothing of the nature of industrial chemistry 

 the requirements of the factory. 

 It is at this point, however, that the trouble to which 

 1 have alluded commences, for the young man in ques- 

 tion is offered to the manufacturer labelled '"chemist" 

 without any qualification at all. As a very general rule ho 

 intimation is given to the manufacturer that his pro- 

 sf>ective employee is little more than a senior student, 

 rmd, in the absence of any statement to the contrary, 



lere is some justification for regarding him as thor- 

 lughly competent not only to carry out the routine 

 work of the factory, but also to un'dertake industrial 

 research, to cheapen production, and to effect improve- 

 ments in the manufacturing processes concerned. At 

 the end of the year, in many cases, nothing very 

 definite has resulted, no additional profit has been 

 rriade, and there is no obvious improvement in the 

 factorv- working, and the manufacturer is ven,' apt to 

 give emphatic expression to his disappointment, and to 

 inveigh against science in general and chemistry in 

 particular, 



I wish it to be understood that my remarks apply 

 especially to the general works chemists, to whom is 

 NO. 2415, VOL. 96] 



entrusted the testing of the raw materials and finished 

 products, and the exercise of a general scientific super- 

 vision. With the more important question of indus- 

 trial chemical research it is quite impossible to deal 

 within the limits of an annual address. 1 would only 

 say that chemists competent to initiate and to carr\ 

 through to a successful issue the kind of investigation- 

 which are of importance to manufacturers are, com 

 paratively speaking, few in number, and that th'- 

 chemical investigator, like the poet, must be born. H' 

 may be shaped, but he certainly cannot be made, am 

 it would sav:i^ not a little disappointment if it wei' 

 recognised more generally on the industrial side th;i 

 men possessing all the special qualities of intellect and 

 of character which go to make a successful chemical 

 investigator are not very frequently combined in any one 

 man, and that the chances of obtaining the services of 

 such a man in a more or less haphazard way, and at 

 a salary which would be rejected with scorn by many 

 an artisan, are not very great. 



Summarising the points on which I have briefly 

 touched in this address, I would appeal for — 



(i) Greater sympathy, freer intercourse, and clos<:^r 

 co-operation between the two great branches of tht 

 chemical profession — the teachers and the practitioners. 



(2) The establishment of chairs of analytical chem- 

 istry in our universities and colleges as a practical stejj 

 towards securing the more adequate treatment of that 

 important branch of our science. 



(3) The more general provision in our universities 

 and colleges of post-graduate facilities for acquiring a 

 good general knowledge of certain subjects which form 

 an indispensable part of the professional equipment of 

 every technical chemist. 



SCIENCE AND BRITISH TRADE. ^ 



\17E were appointed on July 13, 1915, to be a Sul 

 *» Committee to prepare and submit a Repoi 

 showing what steps should be taken to secure the 

 position, after the war, of firms who have undertaken 

 industries in consequence of the Exchange meetings 

 leading up to the British Industries Fair, held under 

 the auspices of the Board of Trade. 



The following were the branches of industry to 

 which it apjx?ared that our inquiries could most use- 

 fully be directed, having regard to our terms of refer- 

 ence :— (i) Paper manufacture ; (ii) the printing trade 

 (including colour printing); (iii) the stationery trade; 

 (iv) the jewellers' and silversmiths' trade; (v) cutlery; 

 (vi) fancy leather goods; (vii) glassware, including 

 table glass, laboratory ware, and glass bottles; (vm> 

 china and earthenware ; (ix) toys ; (x) electrical appa- 

 ratus ; (xi) brush, etc., trade; (xii) hardware. 



The value of the imports into the United Kingdom 

 of goods of the kinds included within the scope of our 

 inquiry mav be taken as approximately i6,ooo,oooZ., 

 and of this' total nearly 7,700,000^. represented goods 

 of German origin, and 500,000/. goods of Austro- 

 Hungarian origin. But it has to be remembered that 

 there is also a large German and Austro-Hungarian 

 export of these classes of goods into other parts of the 

 British Dominions. In the absence of strictly com- 

 parable statistics, no absolutely definite figures can 

 be given, but we estimate that the total value of such 

 goods imported into the five self-governing Dominions 

 and India in 1913 cannot have been less than 3,000,000?. 

 .\ustro-Hungarian competition is noteworthy only in 

 the case of jewelry and glassware. As regards Ger- 

 man competition in the branches of trade under review, 

 it is limited, as a rule, to certain special lines of good- 



1 Abridgerf from the Report of a Sub-Committee of the Advisory Com- 

 mittee to the Board of Trade on Commercial Intelligence with respect to 

 measures for secunnif the position, after the war. of certain b'anrhes of 

 British industry. (London : Wymau and Sons. Ltd.) [Cd. 8181.I Price 2W. 



