CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 783 



The absence of this organisation has shown itself for many years to those 

 who are able to read the signs of the times by the way in which German applied 

 science has assisted commercial activity in trespassing on markets created and 

 formerly occupied by British enterprise. The result of organised co-operation 

 on the one hand, and of disconnected effort on the other, has now been brought 

 home to us all, suddenly and painfully, by the war. In the utilisation of tech- 

 nical science the German army has had an enormous advantage, for which we 

 have had to pay by the lives of some of our best officers and men. 



In Germany the scientific, technical, and commercial community (not com- 

 munities) is mobilised, and each individual in it has been given his appropriate 

 function. In this country, on the other hand, we still have endless instances of 

 right men in wrong places," while scientific activity seems to be devoted to the 

 voluntary formation of innumerable and often irresponsible committees, with 

 overlapping functions, and with no apparent common ami in view. Nothing 

 could more clearly demonstrate our shortcomings in organisation than the columns 

 of the daily Press, which are filled with complaints from scientific men, who, 

 though among the most distinguished in the world of pure science, are in this 

 great struggle still unemployed, and unfortunately often show by the tone of 

 their complaints that they are also unemployable. 



A small fraction of the time now devoted in this country to discussions in 

 committee would be sufficient, if turned to well-directed effort, to remove many 

 of the handicaps from which our Navy and Army are now suffering in this 

 critical stage of the war. Most of our committees might be justifiably likened to 

 two athletes at the east end of a church discussing the better route by which to 

 get round to the tower, while a cripple starts off at once by one of the routes 

 (possibly even by the less easy of the two) ; yet the cripple gets there while 

 the athletes are still wrangling. 



The root trouble with us is due to the fact that our committees are generally 

 composed of members appointed, not because they are best able to solve the 

 problem in hand, but because they represent vested interests ; and vested interests 

 have now grown to dimensions beyond power of removal, because our institutions 

 are often the products of worthy, local, unconnected, and therefore unorganised 

 effort. 



In their relations to one another institutions that profess a common public 

 aim show a spirit of jealous competition more prominently than any communitj' 

 of ideal. One cannot study the recent history of University education in London 

 without being painfully impressed with the fact that internal friction in a 

 machine without design results in a consumption of energy that costs more 

 than the educational output is v*'orth. 



Our scientific and technical societies similarly suffer from overlapping and 

 conflicting interests, and this Conference will be of some value if, instead of 

 discussing for once some special scientific problem, its members become inspired 

 with a desire to direct the activities of the societies they represent, so as to 

 reduce the quantity of machinery ; to correlate their activities with those of the 

 metropolitan institutions with headquarters in London ; to subdivide those 

 institutions composed of dissimilar elements, and to assist, so far as practicable, 

 the regrouping of those who work with common data and with a common aim. 



An excellent illustration, exists of the way in which reform of this kind is 

 possible when n>embers are sufficiently public-spirited to distinguish between the 

 wider interests of science and those of their own special societies. Up to 1889 

 there were in this country about eight separate societies devoted to the technical 

 interests of coal mining. In that year four of these societies federated their 

 interests, and during the few following years three others joined the federation, 

 and pooled their resources to meet the cost of a common publication and to 

 maintain a common office at Newcastle. 



In 1892 the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy was founded in London 

 to meet the wants of technologists devoted mainlv to the requirements 

 of metalliferous mining. The rapid growth of this institution, its metropolitan 

 location, and its comprehensive name, challenged the premier position of the 

 Federated Institution of Mining Engineers. The latter consequently changed 

 its name to The Institution of Mining Engineers, and moved its central office 

 to London. Thenceforward each institution not only published papers on its 

 own special branch of mining, but trespassed frequently on the natural domains 



