March 8, 191 7] 



NATURE 



3/ 



In both these industries, the production of indigo 

 and tannin, the problems are so very similar that 

 the lesson of the former should be the incentive for 

 the latter in the superlative degree. It is oft-times 

 the wail of the profitmonger that the industry will 

 not "stand the expense," and in annual balance-sheets 

 we look in vain for the record of "investments" in 

 the future of the industry- itself. The work of the 

 botanist and chemist is the corner-stone upon which 

 these organisations must -not only be built up initially, 

 but also must be conducted throughout. Each must 

 have had the highest training possible, must be thor- 

 oughly skilled in his work, thoroughly conversant 

 with all that has been done, and must be selected for 

 the work on these grounds and no other. They must 

 be provided, so far as they can be, without stint or 

 question with all that they deem necessary for the 

 prosecution of their investigations, and results will 

 follow. The days of rule-of-thumb experience, the 

 legacy of a former generation, are as dead as the 

 dodo, and he who still clings to them will be left 

 behind his more enlightened contemporaries as the 

 cab-horse is outdistanced by the aeroplane. 



Chemical industry' requires a complex organisation 

 beginning with the chemist and ending with the 

 patent agent and advertising salesman, sometimes 

 also the machinery for running to earth patent thefts 

 and fraudulent imitations. 



But at the outset the chemist is the mo.st important 

 factor in chemical industry, because it is in the first 

 degree upon his work that the operations depend. 

 This may seem to some a self-evident truth, but, as 

 a chemist, I can give the assurance that it is, unfor- 

 tunately, otherwise in most instances in South Africa, 

 with, of course, results which are easily foretold; in 

 fact, this is one of the main reasons why our chemical 

 products are not up to the standard of imported goods. 

 Given the chemist and the problem of the industn,- 

 to be undertaken, the next procedure is its complete 

 investigation — in other words, to ascertain as much 

 as f>ossible of what is already known, for which access 

 to a good technological and scientific library is re- 

 quired, and then to carry out, after complete analyses 

 of the raw materials have been made, such tests on 

 a small scale as will give some clue to the difficulties 

 to be encountered on the large scale, for which purpose 

 the establishment of a properly equipped laboratory is 

 indispensable. If these meet with success, and the 

 industry is undertaken, the laboratory can be utilised 

 to aid the engineer in selecting the best materials of 

 construction, until such time as it is necessar\' for 

 controlling the daily routine. At the same time, it 

 should serve as an instrument of research with the view 

 of improving methods of daily control, methods of 

 manufacture, and the discovery- of new methods or 

 processes. Whether gny or all of the functions be 

 efficiently performed depends on the equipment and 

 staff of the laboratory, but more especially on the man 

 who is the head. Routine operations soon become to 

 a certain extent standardised, and can be carried out 

 efficiently bv well-trained assistants, but research work 

 of tlie beneficial kind can only be effectively performed 

 by the head of the laborator}' in touch with ever\- phfl'se 

 of the manufacturing process, or bv chemists specially 

 appointed for this purpose workins? independently. 

 The sad asoect of the soecial cases with which we are 

 concerned here is that it has hitherto been considered 

 sufficient for these industries to emplov business men 

 and engineers alone, all excellent in their own lines, but 

 quite unfitted to govern an industr\- the fundamental 

 basis of which i? a chpmical nroces*:. Th5<:, in f^ct. 

 is one of the chief reasons why England lost her 

 supremacy and was outstripped bv Germany, and the 

 appreciation of this fact at the present moment by 



NO. 2471, VOL. 99] 



the Americans is manifesting itself in a keen en- 

 deavour to take the lead. 



Another reason is that Germany has appreciated to 

 the full the value of scientific research and education, 

 and it is necessary for us to realise this in like measure 

 if we are to utilise efficiently the abundance of raw 

 material found in this countr>'. We have seen above 

 in the case of one industry the vast sunxs of money the 

 Germans were willing to spend to effect its capture, 

 and this was strictly in keeping with their general 

 policy, both on the part of the State and the individual. 

 That the Empire is beginning at last to appreciate this 

 is shown by the steps being taken in England, Canada, 

 and Australia. Little has, as yet, been done in England 

 compared with what we should expect, but this may 

 be partly accounted for by the war. The Canadians, 

 at the instigation of Lord Shaughnessy, have made a 

 beginning in the establishment of- the Canadian Re- 

 search Bureau at Montreal, thus seconding the excel- 

 lent work which has been accomplished in recent years 

 by their Mines Department. The proximity of the 

 United States will doubtless assist in making for 

 efficiency, as the work of the scientific departments 

 attached to their bureaux of agriculture, geology, 

 mines, commerce, standards, etc., is too well known 

 to need description. The Australian Government has 

 endowed a similar institution, the Commonwealth In- 

 stitute of Science and Industry, to the extent of half 

 a million pounds as a beginning, the object in both 

 cases being the development of the natural resources 

 for the benefit of the country in the first, and of the 

 Empire in the second, place. So far as I am aware, 

 in South .\frica nothing has yet been done in this- 

 direction other than the meeting of the scientific 

 societies of the Rand held recently in Johannesburg, 

 which laid stress on this matter and formed a com- 

 mittee to further the project. 



No opportunity like the present has ever before 

 presented itself, and the cessation of the war wilt 

 witness the still fiercer struggle of industrial com- 

 petition, for which we must gird on our armour. .'\t 

 present we are, as I have shown, exporting our raw 

 materials and importing the articles manufactured 

 from them ; hence our first and foremost need is to 

 attempt to make ourselves independent of others, so 

 far as our own wants are concerned. For this purpose 

 research is necessary, and, in my opinion, the prime 

 mover must be the State, since its proper execution 

 demands, if f>erformed efficiently, an organisation 

 which is beyond the scope of the individual. It would 

 take too long to enter fully, as the subject most rightly 

 merits, into all the details of its requirements, and I 

 shall therefore content myself with a brief summar\- 

 of the most essential considerations and necessities. 

 In the first place, however, I desire to explode a 

 popular fallacy, that there are two kinds of research, 

 which have been miscalled pure and applied research. 

 Thev correspond to the undignified and unworthy 

 divisions into which even science itself has been classi- 

 fied. If research be undertaken, as it is. to thrust 

 back the boundaries of the unknown, and to widen 

 the areas of existing knowledge, then, ho matter if 

 the purpose for the moment be, in a sense, the abstract, 

 such as the proof or establishment of a law, principle, 

 or hvpothesis, or the concrete, such as we find exerh- 

 plified in the successful development of the contact 

 method of manufacturing sulphuric acid, as a result 

 of the commercial preparation of indigo, it is some- 

 what of an anachronism to draw a sharp line of 

 division. More especially- is the practice to be con- 

 demned, since in the popular mind research of the 

 former kind is suoposed to have no utility whatever, 

 wherf^as without it the latter would be absolutely im- 

 possible, and hence in any scheme which may be put 



