654 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B. 



is required in a chemical works, seem to me to be fundamentally unsound, and 

 the kind of training suggested by them for the works-chemist can only result in 

 the production of a sort of combined analytical machine and foreman. A two or 

 three years' course of science, followed by one year's practical work in the dye- 

 house, in paper-making, or in some other technological department, is quite 

 inadequate if the student trained in this way is expected to do anything beyond 

 routine analytical work and supervision. 



We cannot possibly expect such a. poorly trained Jack-of-all-trades to run a 

 chemical works successfully in the face of competition directed by a large staff 

 of scientific experts in chemistry and in engineering. It is no use spending 

 immense sums of money on expensive machinery of the newest type in order 

 that the works-chemist may be able to tell his future employer that the 

 machinery used in his employer's works is completely out of date. In the course 

 of time, moreover, iniless expenditure is practically unlimited, the reverse 

 conditions will obtain, and the technological department of the university or other 

 institution will become more of the nature of a museum of antiquities. The great 

 cost of the upkeep and of the working of such plant is also a very serious 

 matter. The conditions in a chemical works cannot be successfully imitated in 

 a university or polytechnic ; attempts to do so can only lead to mistaken con- 

 clusions, and thus have the effect of rendering the works-chemist quite helpless 

 when he passes from the elegant models of his educational apparatus to the 

 workaday appliances of the manufactory. 



Here, it seems to me, we touch the bed-rock of our trouble. The state of our 

 chemical industries must be attributed to the erroneous views which have beun 

 and still are held as to the functions, and consequently as to the training, of a 

 works-chemist. AVe have failed to realise that industrial chemistry must be 

 based on a foundation of continuous and arduous research work. In the past we 

 have sent out from our uuiveisities and other institutions students who no 

 doubt were qualified to undertake routine analytical work, but the great 

 majority of whom knew nothing of the methods of research. We are doing the 

 same to-day. Just when a student has reached a stage at which his specialised 

 scientific training should begin his course is finished, and whether he has been to 

 a university or to a polytechnic matters little ; he joins the band of those who 

 subsist on but who do nothing to advance chemical industry. lie enters a 

 works; the manufacturer does not realise exactly what his chemist ought to do, 

 but he expects sonje immediate results, and in consequence is generally 

 disappointed; the lack of success of the chemist is put down to his ignorance of 

 practical matters, and there is an outcry for technical education; science is most 

 unjustly discredited, and any suggestion of spending money on research work is 

 scouted as a mere waste. 



The consequence is that if there is a scientific problem which intimately 

 concerns all the members of some large industry what course do they adopt ? 

 Through their trade journal, and as an association representing a total capital 

 of which I should not like to hazard a guess, they offer a bronze or possibly a 

 silver medal, or may even offer the extravagant sum of 20/., to the happy person 

 who will provide them with a solution. It is difficult to imagine the class of 

 solvers to whom these princely rewards may appeal, more difficult still to believe 

 that any useful result can be attained, and it is almost incredible that such 

 methods should be adopted by any influential industrial organisation. This way 

 of attempting to get research work 'on the cheap ' is certainly not unknown 

 even in more enlightened countries, but that is hardly a sufficient justification for 

 its employment. 



Contrast these methods with those adopted by the Badische Anilin- und Soda- 

 Fabrik and Meister, Lucius, & Briinig in their attempts to solve the problem of 

 the commercial synthesis of indigo. Could there be a greater antithesis ? If 

 five thousand copies of Brunck's paper on this subject^ could be circulated among 

 the manufacturers of this country— a task which might be fittingly undertaken 



> Ber., 1900, 1. Ixxi. 



