July 8, 1909] 



NA TURE 



51 



There is a widespread feeling that it is too academic, and 

 must be made more practical. In any case, it must aim 

 at developing character and intelligence rather than merely 

 imparting book knowledge. 



If it is urged that further time for schooling is com- 

 mercially impossible, it must be remembered that our 

 great trade rivals, the Germans and the United States, 

 have compulsory continuation schools or a higher exemp- 

 tion age. In Germany it is the custom for parents to put 

 their boys to a skilled trade, and apprenticeship is as 

 flourishing there as ever it was. " The Imperial Law on 

 the ■ Regulation of Industry ' of 1891 decreed that the 

 masters in any branch of industry were bound to allow 

 their workers under the age of eighteen to attend an 

 officially recognised continuation school . . . for the time 

 fixed as necessary by the authorities." The local council 

 might make such attendance obligatory for all male workers 

 under the age of eighteen. Every raising of the school 

 age or Factory Act limiting child labour has been in turn 

 objected to as fatal to industry, but the community has 

 very quickly adapted itself to the new conditions. 



The removal of the supply of cheap boy labour under 

 fifteen would probably lead to very useful readjustments of 

 industry and to the substitution of mechanical labour for 

 some of their work and for a greater employment of adult 

 labour. It is, of course, true that to start boys at fifteen 

 instead of thirteen or fourteen will not prevent a period 

 of transition from boys' to men's jobs, but it will give 

 a better chance of skill to the boy. A better and longer 

 education should give the boys firmer and more disciplined 

 characters and a greater power of adapting themselves 

 to new work. Increase of efficiency, even in imskilled 

 labour, means increased wage to the mutual benefit of 

 employer and employed. It is the over-supply of unskilled 

 labour which is not worth a good wage which is the real 

 difficulty. 



Again, in skilled trades proper there is little doubt that 

 there is room for more boys, and they are not supplied 

 now with the best material available. It is probable 

 that labour exchanges for boys leaving school would be 

 of very great value in securing that all the more intelligent 

 and able boys had a chance of securing good openings. 

 It is the ignorance of the boy which so often leads him 

 into employment which is not suited to him. 



Furtlaer, some better grading of wages is most desirable. 

 At present, comparatively high initial wages are often 

 paid to tempt hoys into an unprogressive occupation. The 

 value of the old apprenticeship scales lay in their attempt 

 to make the wage increase with the capacity, but the low 

 initial earnings have been the reason of the unpopularity 

 of apprenticeship with the more needy and less far-sighted. 

 It is quite possible that the boy leaving school at fifteen 

 will still not earn more than he now does at fourteen. 

 There is little doubt that in that case the employer would 

 gain, because he would get a better article, but the boy 

 would also gain, because he would be a better article and 

 more fit to develop into a still higher efficiency, com- 

 manding better wages later. It is better that he should 

 be paid less in his early years and be worth more as an 

 adult. Under existing conditions he is bribed by large 

 wages to spend his time on uneducative work which gives 

 him no opportunity afterwards, and he is unfit to spend 

 wisely the large wages which he receives. The present 

 system demoralises the boy. The temptation to leave one 

 job to get higher wages in another is almost irresistible, 

 and the resulting instability is detrimental to himself and 

 not economical to his employer, who is perpetually trying 

 to train new boys. 



E VOL UTTON IN APPLIED CHE MIS TRY.' 



T7 VERY chemist, to be worthy of the name, should in 

 his own work be a specialist ; but there are few 

 amongst us to whom it has been given to produce in their 

 own particular line of research results of deep general 

 interest. Our distinguished president. Sir William 

 Ramsay, is one of the privileged few ; I am one of the 



1 Address to the combined sections of the Seventh International Congress 

 of Applied Chemistry on Monday, May 31, by Prof. Otto N. Witt, of 

 Berlin. 



NO. 2071, VOL. 81] 



many, whose scientific results are lil^e the grains of sand, 

 the importance of which lies in their aggregation. 



But a chemist, to be worthy of the name, should also 

 be able to step forth from his own small sphere of activity 

 and to look upon his science and allied domains of human 

 tlrought as a whole, to contemplate its history and its 

 future, its aims and progress, and to glean a few useful 

 truths from such considerations. This is what I shall try 

 to do. 



The simple daily wants of mankind in a primitive con- 

 dition are all supplied by nature. It is the progress of 

 civilisation which led to the necessity of transforming her 

 gifts, and thus created a chemical industry. Human 

 chemical work supplements the chemical work of nature, 

 and is therefore subject to the same governing laws. It 

 is strange that no attempt has yet been made to trace 

 the many coordinated points which exist between biology, 

 the science of life, and chemistry, the science of molecular 

 changes, without which life is an impossibility. 



The subject is extensive enough for a book. I cannot. 

 hope to do justice to it in a short lecture, but I shall 

 try to point out some of the relations existing between the 

 results of biology and applied chemistry. 



Biology as a science is of very recent date. The manner 

 in which our forefathers tried to gain an insight into the 

 overwhelming variety of the vegetable and animal- 

 kingdoms was purely systematic. Linnaeus, de Candolle, 

 Cuvier, and others, enabled us by their systems to classify 

 nature, but they did not teach us to understand it. 

 Hardly a century ago the dawn of a deeper insight began 

 to rise on the horizon of science, and just fifty years have 

 elapsed since that memorable meeting of the Linnean 

 Society in which the flaming truth of evolution was given 

 to humanity by one of the greatest minds that ever stood 

 up amongst men. Botany and zoology, the pedantic 

 histories of plants and animals, became suddenly united 

 in biology, the great science of life, itself a living thing, 

 capable of development and evolution. 



Evolution is no longer a working hypothesis of natural 

 science ; it has become a new way of thinking, a method 

 of harvesting everlasting truth from the fleeting changes 

 of passing life. It is not applicable to living plants and 

 animals only, but to everything that is capable of growth, 

 alteration and improvement. Why should this method 

 not be extended to the study of human achievements, of 

 science as a whole? Why not to applied chemistry, which 

 is so full of changes, and more vigorous in its growth and 

 development than many another discipline? 



It seems to me that England, the country which has 

 given to all the other nations the invaluable gift of 

 evolution, is the classical soil on which an attempt might 

 be made to apply it in a new manner. It may help us 

 to understand, and therefore to forgive, the struggle for 

 existence, which in chemistry and its applications is as 

 rife as amongst the organisms of the deep sea or the 

 tropical forest. Looking at that struggle wit'h the calm 

 soul of the man of science, we shall easily recognise the 

 underlying promise of the survival of the fittest and of 

 certain progress in coming days. 



As a rule, one takes it for granted that anything 

 applied must have existed before its applications. It is 

 not so with applied chemistry. Cheinistry as a science 

 is, as we all know, a comparatively new creation. Its 

 applications, on the other hand, have existed since times 

 immemorial, and may be traced back to the very 

 beginnings of human civilisation. The men who in the- 

 past devoted their thought and energy to problems which 

 we now call chemical had to reach their ends with the 

 help of sound empiricism. Though their progress was slow 

 it was sure, so that to this day we have sometimes 

 occasion to marvel at their successes. More than that, we 

 mav safely say that some of our best industrial methods 

 would never have been discovered if we had had chemical 

 theory only to guide us. Science itself stands on an 

 empirical basis — we cannot draw general conclusions unless 

 we have well-established observations to start from. 



It is perhaps not superfluous to remember these facts 

 at the present time, when the brilliant success of theoretical 

 chemistry is apt to make us forgetful of the services 

 derived from purely empirical methods of research. 

 Empiricism investigates without foregone conclusions. 



