SEPTEMBER 7, 1916] 
is adequately rewarded. But it is also true that a 
supply will create a demand, and since the Committee 
of Council was established in order to encourage a 
demand for research, we are anxious to see a sufficient 
supply of trained workers forthcoming to enable a 
reasonable start to be made on the new road when 
peace is restored. Before the war the output of the 
‘universities was altogether insufficient to meet even 
a moderate expansion in the demand for research. The 
annual number of students graduating with first and 
second class honours in science and technology (in- 
cluding mathematics) in the universities of England 
and Wales before the war was only about 530, and 
of these but a small proportion will have received any 
serious training in research. We have frequently 
found on inquiry that the number of workers of any 
scientific standing on a given subject of industrial 
importance is very limited. 
It is in our view certain that the number of trained 
research workers who will be available at the end of 
the war will not suffice for the demand that we hope 
will then exist. We are too apt to forget in this 
country that with industry as with war a brilliant 
group of field officers, and even a _ well-organised 
general staff, need armies of well-trained men in order 
to produce satisfactory results. Our people have no 
reason to fear or envy the scientific pioneers of other 
races. They have had, and will probably continue to 
have, their full share of the outstanding minds to 
which each century gives birth, but as time goes on 
the sphere of the solitary worker tends to become 
relatively, if not absolutely, smaller. Effective re- 
search, particularly in its industrial applications, calls 
increasingly for the support and impetus that come 
from the systematised delving of a corps of sappers 
working intelligently, but under orders. We have 
not yet learned how to make the most of mediocre 
ability—particularly in things of the mind—yet with- 
out the scientific rank and file it will be as impossible 
to staff the industrial research laboratories which are 
coming, as to fight a European war with seven divi- 
sions. There is as much place and need for plodding 
labour in scientific research as in other kinds of work. 
The responsibility for dealing with the grave situa- 
tion which we anticipate, rests with the education de- 
partments of the United Kingdom. We shall be able 
to do something to encourage a longer period of train- 
ing by the offer of research studentships and the like; 
but that will not suffice. It is useless to offer scholar- 
ships if competent candidates are not forthcoming, 
and they cannot be forthcoming in sufficient numbers 
until a larger number of well-educated students enter 
the universities. That is the problem which the 
education departments have to solve, and on the solu- 
tion of which the success of the present movement in 
our opinion largely depends. 
As regards the second condition of success, pro- 
gress in co-operative effort is undoubtedly being made 
in many directions, and we have mentioned some in- 
stances of it. But we wish to point out that there are 
specially strong reasons for more co-operation between 
the various British firms in each industry and between 
the industries and the State in the furtherance of re- 
search. The particular difficulties encountered in the 
day-to-day routine of manufacture, the possibility of 
improving a process, of diminishing cost of working, 
enlarging output or enhancing the quality of a pro- 
duct, are matters which we may expect the individual 
firm to attack directly it begins to believe at all in 
the application of science to its own trade. But this 
is not enough. We are looking to the growth of a 
demand for fundamental research, and fundamental 
research, as we have seen, requires a very large ex- 
penditure on brains and equinment. It also requires 
NO. 2445, VOL. 98] 
NATURE II 
continuous effort. The firm that starts out upon this 
quest must either be very powerful or it must find the 
necessary strength in association with others. If the 
general level of manufacture can be rapidly raised by 
co-operative effort in the exchange of information be- 
tween firms, and in the support of national trade 
institutes for research, as well as in the improvement 
of the conditions and efficiency of labour, this country 
will have gone far towards establishing its industrial 
prosperity on a firm basis. 
There is already a certain number of large firms in 
this country who, realising the unity of interest be- 
tween employers and employed, have systematically 
striven to raise the standard of living among their 
workers and to give them a direct interest in the 
firm’s success. Some of these efforts have not been 
philanthropic; and where they have been so in inten- 
tion, they have been proved by experience not to 
require any such spur. But the small firm finds it as 
difficult to provide pensions or clubs as to pay for 
research laboratories or original workers. We believe 
that some form of combination for both purposes may 
be found to be essential if the smaller undertakings 
of this country are to compete effectively with the 
great trusts and combines of Germany and America. 
The economic problem lies outside our province, but 
it is an important aspect of the great issue with which 
we are concerned, and we do not believe that issue 
can be met effectively unless a co-ordinated advance is 
made simultaneously on the whole front. We think 
it possible that the voluntary efforts of manufacturers 
in friendly union which enabled the problem of muni- 
tions to be rapidly solved may lead to a new kind of 
reciprocity between firms which will avoid the evils 
both of monopoly and of individualism. We think 
that as people have learnt to combine against the 
risks of fire or shipwreck without losing either initia- 
tive or freedom, so firms may come to look upon 
expenditure for research as a necessary kind of insur- 
ance. It is certain that the costs to be met will, on 
any adequate estimate, have to be counted, not by 
tens of thousands nor even by hundreds of thousands. 
Quite apart from this general and fundamental point 
of view, team-work is needed, because when we come 
to deal with the great industries which have an out- 
put worth many millions sterling a year and employ 
labour in proportionate amount, the problems to be 
solved are too manifold, and too complicated, to be 
dealt with by individual firms, or even, we may add, 
by a Government department. The coal-winning in- 
dustry, the textile industries, the steel industry, the 
great engineering and shipbuilding industries, the 
rubber industry, need research on a scale which calls 
for the financial and intellectual assistance of all par- 
ties concerned. When co-operation has done all that 
is possible in the common interest, there will still 
remain a mass of research work to be done by indi- 
vidual firms in their own interests, which will amply 
repay the cost and effort. 
We have repeatedly spoken in the pages of this 
report about the initiation of particular researches, 
and the solution of particular problems. It has been 
the inevitable concomitant of the line of procedure we 
have advisedly selected. But if it is supposed that 
modern industry can be developed or even maintained 
by a process of detailed investigations, a series of par- 
ticular inquiries, however careful, the time, trouble, 
and expense involved will be largely wasted. Such a 
supposition is based on fallacious conceptions of the 
manner in which scientific research proceeds, and of 
the way in which the great scientific industries have 
been built up. It is impossible for the most acute 
investigator to be sure that a particular line of research 
will lead to a positive result; on the other hand it 
