158 The Forest Products Laboratory 



You have heard also of the estabhshment of the Forest Products 

 Laboratory in Canada, and the Canadian Parhament has planned 

 the establishment of something similar to our Bureau of Standards 

 and the Mellon Institute where the training of men as well as the in- 

 vestigation of scientific problems will be the outstanding features. I 

 think, therefore, that the way in which our foreign friends have investi- 

 gated our conditions and found them satisfactory speaks very well 

 indeed for our position and gives us some right to claim that we are 

 well toward the front in the field of industrial research. 



Another j^iece of evidence on the same point is the status of indus- 

 tries founded on scientific data. I know of no better argument to offer 

 in urging people to undertake research in their own industries, founded 

 upon cut and dry methods, than to point to such experiences. 



^Nlany of the older institutions still use rule of thumb methods 

 and refuse to accept the full measure of aid science affords. An exam- 

 ple of this is the ceramics industry. On the other hand, our electrical 

 industries and chemical industries have developed much more rapidly 

 than the older industries and are more progressive. These new ones 

 have founded themselves upon science and hold their present status 

 due to scientific endeavor. 



In America we have many such industries ; the petroleum industry 

 is an outstanding fact of what science can accomplish. I can remind 

 you of the work of Frasch in the elimination of sulphur from petro- 

 leum making it possible to use that material from Ohio, Canada and 

 other points for illumination purposes. This, overnight, raised the 

 price of that oil from 90 cents per barrel to many times that amount. 



The packing house permits us to enjoy meat products at even the 

 present prices only because of the by-products which have been devel- 

 oped through industrial research. At one time two per cent of the 

 annual turnover was the net profit made by the concerns on the edible 

 products. 



The electro-chemical and electrometallurgical industries are con- 

 spicuous examples, and we might spend all of the time at our disposal 

 on the progress made, especially during war times. The fact is that 

 these industries gave us our abrasives and whole industries have been 

 built up around our artificial graphite and electrolytically refined cop- 

 per upon which all electrical industries depend. What industrial 

 research can do in this particular field has been proved, and electro- 



