SCIENCE, INDUSTRY, AND EDUCATION 



which concerns so closely the object for which this Society 

 exists. 



The testimony of these expert witnesses was all but 

 unanimous in showing that one of the most obvious short- 

 comings affecting our national industries, namely, the 

 relatively small number of suitably trained men possessing 

 the technical knowledge and creative skill needful for the 

 improvement of our chemical, electrical, and engineering 

 industries, must be regarded as a secondary symptom, 

 following upon the smallness of the demand for such men. 

 Further, that this smallness of demand is itself the necessary 

 consequence of a wider and more serious state of things, 

 which is affecting injuriously all our national activities, 

 namely, the absence, speaking generally, of a sufficiently 

 intelligent appreciation on the part of the leaders of the 

 nation, whether as legislators, capitalists, manufacturers, 

 or merchants, of the supreme importance of scientific 

 knowledge and scientific methods, not only for the success- 

 ful carrying on and improvement of all industrial enter- 

 prises, but also, and not less so, for the working out of 

 all national problems whatever, whether of education, of 

 economics, of hygiene, or especially of national defence 

 in the construction of our armaments by sea and by land, 

 and the training of our soldiers and sailors. 



Here again we are face to face with a cause which is 

 itself secondary, and dependent upon some wider antecedent 

 state of things. Let us endeavour to get to the root of 



the matter. 



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