SEI'TEMbER 15, 19 10] 



NATURE 



347 



for example, the steel industry. I suggest that the growth 

 of this attitude corresponds generally in time with increased 

 recognition on the part of the teaching institutions that 

 engineers cannot be wholly made at college. The colleges 

 have at length realised that the student must from the 

 first learn the limitations of practical engineering, and that 

 this can be done by the introduction of a practical atmo- 

 sphere, and without sacrificing any of the physical prin- 

 ciples of engineering already well taught at the colleges. 



One of our ancient universities says, " We have not now 

 much reason to be dissatisfied with the attitude of em- 

 ployers towards our (engineering) students." Several of 

 the largest of the teclinical institutions say they have no 

 difficulty in placing their best students, and one university 

 college states that there is a standing demand as soon as 

 the college year ends, from several of the heads of 

 engineering establishments within the neighbourhood of the 

 college for the best students. But these heads of firms 

 demand the " best," and are willing to pay a living wage 

 right off to youths who have never before been in works, 

 and have only their college training as qualification. It is 

 added that second- or third-rate men are in very little 

 demand, and there is often a difficulty in not being able to 

 recommend youths of sufficiently high standard to fill 

 vacant posts. This case recalls other colleges where 

 students (the " best," at all events) have no difficulty m 

 securing places owing to the personal connection estab- 

 lished between the heads of the neighbouring works and 

 the head of the engineering department. 



The return issued by the Appointments Board of the Uni- 

 versity of Cambridge in February of this year is specially 

 interesting. This return shows that the number of candi- 

 dates for the mechanical sciences tripos whose names appeared 

 in the honours lists of the years i8q4 to 1906 inclusive was 

 252, that the Board obtained information as to the posts 

 held by 176 of these men ; of the 176, only 23 were 

 engaged in teaching, while 122 were engaged as engineers 

 in some manufacturing or commercial concern or in the 

 public service at home or abroad. The return is the more 

 satisfactory in that 13J of the names belong to the years 

 1902 to igo6, and in that most of the men have to spend 

 at least two years as probationers of some form in works 

 before they can secure a definitive appointment of any 

 kind. 



It has been pointed out to me, both by professors and 

 the heads of large engineering firms, that there is still a 

 defect in the college training of young engineers which 

 ought to be immediately remedied. The view is so well 

 presented by one of the colleges that I give it in extenso. 

 " There are certain defects in the average college training. 

 I consider that the question of cost in design, and the 

 commercial side generally, receive quite inadequate atten- 

 tion in most colleges. Practically all engineering firms 

 exist for making profit. Modern competition makes 

 economic design, good efficiency, and cheap upkeep abso- 

 lutely imperative. The employer wants men who can in 

 their designs give the most for the money. It is therefore 

 insufficient to teach design on physical principles alone. 

 Methods of production, ease of repair, depreciation, even 

 conditions of transit in large machines, all these and more 

 must be considered in effective design. Such limitations as 

 these should, I think, be brought before the student in 

 greater measure than they are attempted at present. This 

 will tend to ' practicalise ' the student while his mind is 

 still formative." 



Chemistry. 



The case of chemistry is more difficult. There is, un- 

 fortunately, no room for doubt that the British chemical 

 industry has suffered largely by foreign — chiefly German — 

 competition ; and possibly no section of British manu- 

 facturers has been so severely lectured as those in whose 

 processes applied chemistry was capable of playing a large 

 part. The chemical manufacturers were told to follow 

 their German rivals by enlisting the assistance of the 

 chemist trained in the scientific laboratories at our lead- 

 ing institutions, and that> the industrial face of Great 

 Britain would be changed. The manufacturer did not 

 apparently grasp the meaning of the arguments or the 

 appeal : he may possibly have comforted himself with the 

 feeling that as things had been, so would they be; he may 

 even have looked at the works that needed reconstruction, 



NO. 2133, VOL. 84] 



at the state of the Patent Laws, at the character of the 

 supplies of raw material, at labour, at capital, at agents,, 

 markets and means of transport, and may have come to 

 the conclusion that the professorial lecturers understood 

 none of these things; he may have chosen a chemist from, 

 an analyst's office or from a medical school, and have 

 failed to discover that chemists were of any value. What- 

 ever he did, and for whatever reason he did it, it has been 

 stated in the papers before me that he did not give much 

 heed to the scolding from the professorial chairs : he could 

 not be persuaded that scientific education was essential to 

 his business. And so in time the penalty had to be paid,, 

 and that, unfortunately, by many who had no choice in 

 the matter. Perhaps, after all, the chemical manufacturer 

 merited less odium than has been heaped on him. It is 

 a human quality to believe in your fortifications until they 

 are reduced to ruins at your feet. It may be true, also,, 

 that the chemical manufacturer was not tactfully wooed ; 

 and it certainly is true that under the name of chemist 

 enough rubbish was supplied to him to break down his 

 faith in the panacea. Twenty years ago the research 

 chemist qualified for industrial work could scarcely be 

 obtained from English laboratories. He had to be 

 imported from Germany. The English schools turned out 

 only analytical machines. The influence of a few well- 

 known chemists and of the 185 1 research scholarships has 

 changed all this, but the manufacturer has not yet re- 

 covered from his early disappointment. 



It is gratifying to find evidence of change. The public 

 may not yet believe that " scientific activity is the real 

 and solid basis of national prosperity," and all manu- 

 facturers may not yet be fully prepared to endorse the 

 view that " industrial development is ultimately dependent 

 on scientific development," or everywhere to demand 

 chemists trained in research writ large, but they are learn- 

 ing or receiving lessons sometimes in ways not altogether 

 creditable to British intelligence. One of our most dis- 

 tinguished chemists, and a man of large experience inside 

 and outside of the college laboratory, says : — " I am very 

 clearly of opinion that, with very few exceptions, the State 

 and municipal authorities do not lay themselves out to 

 take advantage of men from twenty to twenty-two_ years 

 of age who have received the highest technical training as 

 chemists. Municipal authorities require the services of 

 men who have had a speciahsed training as chemical 

 experts in connection with the working of the Food and 

 Drugs ."Vets, and there is a tendency on their part to prefer 

 the services of men who are willing to take underpaid 

 positions. This does not conduce to the efficiency of the 

 working of the Food and Drugs Acts, and the general 

 community suffers in consequence of the lax administra- 

 tion of these Acts. Municipal authorities occasionally 

 require the services of engineers and chemists in con- 

 nection with municipal undertakings, as in gas and water 

 supplies. As regards the chemists they employ in con- 

 nection with such undertakings, I think, on the whole, 

 the community is adequately served ; the chemists 

 employed, for example, in the manufacture of gas are, 

 as a rule, well trained and competent to discharge their 

 duties. As regards private employers, I am of the opinion 

 that British manufacturers, as a body, are not yet fully 

 sensible of the advantage which they might obtain by 

 the employment of skilled chemists in manufactures m 

 which chemistry plays a prominent part. There are, how- 

 ever, exceptions. Some of the best equipped works of this 

 countrv — usuallv wealthy concerns— strive to keep in the 

 forefro'nt of industrial p'rogress. We have in this^ country 

 an increasing number of men of foreign extraction who 

 are engaging in chemical manufacture, and it is significant 

 to note that such employers are far more prone to enlist 

 the services of expert chemists than are the rank and file 

 of our own manufacturers. I think this is due to the 

 circumstance that the advantages of a university training 

 have come home to these people more directly than to our 

 manufacturers, and they are more quick to perceive the 

 material advantages of the application of the highest 

 training in pure "and applied science to their industries. 

 I could give a number of illustrations of this fact bv 

 pointing to the existence of foreign firms who have secured" 

 for themselves in this country a pre-eminent position." 



The statement as to the increasing number of men of 



